Princess Amy

Hi guys. I can't quite afford Diagon Alley, so I was thinking of buying it block by block, as someone is splitting the set on eBay right now. The building I like best is Quality Quidditch Supplies, were it not for the hot pink shop front. While it's accurate to the set, the set has appeared in murky green too: I wonder what you guys think to a recolour. And then, sand green, earth green, olive green or lime? I've seen it done in stone but while I like it, it doesn't suit the pic above. It would look roughly like this:

There was an 8443 next to it, too, for £1.75, but I didn't buy it as I didn't think what was in the box would actually be the model. It was gone the next day so someone else got a bargain at least.

8868 Air Tech Claw Rig. £3.25 from a charity shop, all pieces accounted for.

Apologies for two reasons: firstly, because I'll probably offend some Lego fans by mixing clone brand and Lego. Secondly, because as this is a clone but also an MOC, I wasn't sure where to post it. I know clone discussion goes here though and I don't want to tarnish the train tech board with bricks with CB on the studs. I happened upon a Click Brick set for £30, down from a £100 RRP. I bought it, carry handle and all, and opened it up, and was amazed. 2000+ bricks, and most of them Lego quality. The only exceptions: - The figures are a custom design - White pieces look just as bad as the Poundland brands, with a "dirty" weak colour - Clear pieces can sometimes have small defects (had to use some straight nail clippers to remove a tiny bit of flash that stopped them interlocking) Other than that, for the price, I couldn't complain. I had lying around the blue cargo train, 60052, and seeing that this stadium seemed almost aimed at train collectors, I promptly caused a stadium disaster that led to it turning magically into a train and station. I set an intentional limit that I would only use pieces from these two sets which altogether cost me about £150. I forgot to take any before pics. The stadium is constructed of ten individual grandstands that I locked together by swapping a few pieces around. The Works The best feature by far is the design of the roof, which I stole for use in my MOC. I was impressed by the supports and wanted to reuse them in a new context. _______________________________________ The complete build _______________________________________ The train Because 60052 has three different lengths of wagon, the train is a mishmash, but it runs well around the track. These show just how many 1x3 cheeses and 2x2 windows you get in this set. Almost every brick in the set is this same grey colour. If I had the time I would like to change it about a bit adding blue bricks from my collection for some detail. Here's how it matches up with the locomotive: ______________________________________ The station Two platforms straddling a single track, so I could just use the 60052 pieces and have a loop. The design is based on a British Rail 1960s station. Because I had all of the dull grey bricks, I came up with a new genre: Interestingly dull And that's what the station's aimed for all around. ____________________________________ The roof Here you can see the roof held up with the supports from the original stadium, but I've rotated the roof tiles to create a much more epic expanse. This shows just how strong the Click Brick pieces are. The supports and the hinges hold this whole roof up, although I have added the yellow supports from 60052 for some added support in case I knock it, as it's annoying to put back up again. You can also see some features here: the dull entrance with some glass that doesn't really add anything to the scene, and an expensive bull statue, because people are forever spending millions on statues to brighten up stations instead of spending the money on the actual stations! (I also wanted to use the bull from 60052). Here is a close up of the roof supports. Individually they're weak, but together they are strong and add just that little bit of needed tension. ____________________________________ Platform 1 Just like a real British Rail station, the platform to London has a roof, and some (for show) back rooms for toilets and such. The staircase leads to a footbridge. There are no seats for passengers as they might be dangerous and people might sleep on them. ____________________________________ Platform 2 Again, just like a British Rail station, the platform to elsewhere is just a glorified halt, plain all over with a steel wall on one edge. There is here a ticket office, not to sell tickets as that would be useful, but to charge people who haven't bought one. It's the excess fares room. It's suitably grey, using the computer screen from 60052 but making sure there are no windows, to make the poor soul's job a little harder. The main feature of Platform 2 is the working elevator. Once more, this is fashioned after a British Rail elevator: it only works half the time. It gets stuck sometimes. I'm new to designing elevators so am not sure quite how to get it to go up and down smoothly without obstructing too much. Nonetheless, if you push it down, it will come back up again with the winch. Connects to the footbridge like so: ________________________________________ Not in the set This is my enlighten train. It's bootlego, but it's much lower quality than Click Brick. It runs smoothly on the track though. This is my passenger train. I modified the engine car to be a full passenger car, and then tried to make another car from my available pieces. The third car doesn't look *too* bad but I'm not too happy with it. I use it as a DMU/EMU type thing. That's about it!

I stopped buying Lego for about five years in my teens. Then when I went to Uni I happened to see the big yellow Lego lorry down to a tenner in Tesco, and thought I'd buy it for the hell of it. I was really taken aback by how detailed it was and how complicated it was compared to the old, <insert that tiresome argument> City I was used to. From then I just went and bought up every City set... much to my wallet's demise.

The Maersk is nice, but from a financial point of view if you're having difficulty justifying spending that much, consider how sought after it is and that the price is way over what it originally went for - I'd wait for the next special train to be released and buy that instead. The blue cargo train is a similar design to the Maersk engine although the cars are utter rubbish. The new red cargo train has nothing to make a good container wagon out of (nor does the blue). The best option, IMO, is this. Buy the Maersk once, and any other train - even a cheap passenger one, for parts. Then buy the split height chassis bricks off bricklink, which look to be £2.18, and construct container cars out of that. You might even end up with more container cars afterwards, and spare bricks that you can sell on or use for other things. -and won't have the extra, expensive loco. Or just buy two Maersks

Oh man, I love the passenger cars. They're the most realistic I've seen and the livery reminds me of the old British Rail intercity livery. (The engine's good too of course )

Is anyone else disappointed by the helicopter though? I love the set, the crane, the engine especially, but the helicopter just breaks the realism for me. Maybe I'm too old. I'd prefer they went back to containers, as those are fab and the introduction of new ones would add a load of variety to the existing stock. The hopper car is great but I'd want dozens of the to replicate a proper freight loco. Love the red engine though. The bootleggers have picked that one up too and for good reason. It's a great design. I'd like to have a set of red passenger cars pulled by it instead of having it as a DMU type thing.

I like the set but the URP actually disappoints me as it could easily have been made of its constituent parts.

My solution would be to produce a new one that is useful as a part in itself. Perhaps a flat plate with a slight change at the end for the separator bit, but other than that could be used in sets. Especially if several could be combined to create something useful like a flat sidewalk.

I actually think that's the best term to describe me as I am literally addicted to the Lego fix. I can't help buying quick sets whenever I have the chance and the euphoria is always followed by regret when I realise I don't have the time to do anything with them. My Lego just sits there in several huge boxes with nobody to play with them :( But nonetheless, I am a Lego fan. I got through Uni by buying pretty much every Lego City set from '09 to '12... I'm a big trains fan but can't really afford the huge collections some people have, so mine's kind of some cobbled together MOCs that look sort of like trains. The only sets I own are the red passenger and blue cargo trains. Er... I'm from England, I work in retail, have aspirations to open my own shop (was going to be a Lego store 'til I found out they don't let you do that), and I'm 24. That's about it. Hi!

I suppose that if they replaced those large pieces with smaller more useful ones the price might become prohibitive. Even the difference between £190 and £200 would put some people off. I do wish these bits would be a bit more "lego-y" and made up of smaller pieces, like the old mountain blocks.

I've got laughed at a few times for having Lego in the canteen at work. I don't care.

I would say the Click Brick mega stadium, which is currently selling for £30 in The Works. It has some 2200+ pieces, most of them plain dark grey admittedly. But amongst those pieces are hundreds that are useful to train collectors mostly including several dozen plain glass 2x2 windows. It's a clone brand, but Click Brick are the closest I have ever seen to Lego quality, for the most part. Their white bricks are awful, but apart from that their bricks are a decent match for Lego. For the price I can't complain.