PerryMakes

Close... it will be circling a "leg lamp" I got my father for Christmas a while back. Most people have seen "A Christmas Story" so you probably know what I'm talking about! My folks have a fairly large bay window in the front of their house. My mom usually fills it with Christmas'y stuff right after Thanksgiving, but nearly approaching my 1 year mark out from the dark ages, I thought it would be loads of fun to fill it with a few of my favorite sets (so far). So we've got your expected Winter Village trio, the Medieval Market Village buildings & tree that have been "winterized", and the latest train station - winterized & decorated to reflect the holidays. Oh ... and the leg lamp :) As I mentioned above, Technic and NXT were my main focus prior to getting involved with trains - due to most of the dynamic elements found in earlier LEGO train systems either being removed or having become manually controlled, I find the combination of these two LEGO Themes a nice match. I've built little "tool houses" onto my crossover pieces to control track switching. I'm now in the process of using the NXT sensors to detect the trains' positions to automate most of that switching. Anything I come up with will, of course, be shared with this group ... I've found this place to be a tremendous resource that has saved countless hours and who knows how many pre-mature grey hairs! Keep on truckin' ~ Perry P.S. - I discovered something a few days ago I'd like to share with those who aren't aware of... those small windows in E.N. (BrickLink Part# 60032) are available in at least one other set that has not yet been inventoried by the major online sites... 4637 Safari Building Set. It comes with two of them in tan - no transparent window - but it does have the two holes to accept it. BrickLink only has one of these for sale, but I found a ton of them available at the several B&M Toys"R"Us stores in my area. If you're interested in getting this set, but can't find it locally, get in touch with me and perhaps we can work something out. Cheers. P.S.S. - I wonder if aging minifigs no longer get grey hairs ... but now bley hairs instead?? Hrmm....

Sorry - I meant to say something in the original post that my current knowledge of trains is next to nill. I did enough research on the Emerald Night to know that it's based on the Flying Scotsman (UK), however since this is going to be running laps in front of a US window - and both my nieces and nephews happen to be from the US ... I'd have real hell to pay if they didn't get a Caboose One thing I've been wondering though ... the color scheme used for Emerald Night ... is that common for Flying Scotsmans?? The reason I ask is because I came across a few images of what I believe are SR V Schools class engines with a color scheme very similar to the E.N. Here's one example: And a very important question just occurred to me... In UK cinema... when the hero of the film is super late getting to the station... because the love of his life has just boarded a train... a train that's never coming back... our hero - he has yet to let his love know that she is THE ONLY person on the face of the planet wonderful enough to make him complete... only the train has already began its departure... of course... without a caboose... What the hell is he suppose to jump onto at the end of the train??!!!?? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

These past few BOGO sales + Black Friday deals are the reason why I've got eight train sets in my basement right now! I've had a blast with them so far - I can only imagine the future getting better. A couple months back I went looking for a LUG in my area - the only one being NILTC. I was a bit apprehensive due to "trains" being in the name ... and I made sure the guys knew that trains weren't really my thing - Technic + Mindstorms + Modulars being my favored cup of tea. I'm still waiting to attend my first meeting with them, but I'm sure a few that I've already met will have a good laugh when they see how obsessed with trains I've become in just a handful of weeks Cheers ~ Perry

I spent a few hours last night focusing on buffer stops and a caboose for Emerald Night. Here's what I came up with for the caboose... Several of the ideas are based on an image found on Google Images. From the looks of the image, it came from someone selling instructions for this build. So if you happen to sell instructions for a caboose that looks amazingly similar to that in this image - rest assured - I have not purchased your instructions -> now making them available here... And you can see by what's posted here, most of the ideas for this build come straight from the official Emerald Night set itself. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought this caboose -was- from an official set :) The only difference in the two cars has to do with the black circular object on the roof. Would someone with knowledge of what this is please be so kind as to enlighten me/us? Thanks! LEGO Digital Designer File (.lxf) Enjoy ~ Perry

It was perfectly intelligible - and although I was born in Reggio Calabria, I can't speak a word of Italian :( The points you make are valid. From the beginning I had every intention on making the post meets the criteria set forth for the thread. Perhaps it just came down to laziness, but it being late and me being tired was more likely the reason for taking shortcuts first -> making fixes later... Most of my comments regarding the index are a result of spending countless hours to produce a handful of Technic models over 5 months ago - but never see them get indexed*. I don't even want to imagine how much work must be necessary to perform this task, but logic tells me that the longer it takes for this to happen - the more work/time it's going to take in order to complete. Would it help if you had more people involved with that task? I know that most of the time it's hard to trust others with something that's only ever been done by one certain person... but in some instances it's the only workable solution. * I can't lie... there was also a time when I was super excited to hopefully one day have the cool "LDD Builder" trophy under my avatar... That excitement is mostly gone, but somewhere deep down inside... there is still a glimmer of hope of achieving the prestigious title ... of "LDD Builder"

Thanks for taking the time to offer up the advice Calabar. As you can see, I realized this was incorrectly posted - I corrected what I could, but obviously an admin will have to remove this thread. Responses to your comments: - This set has been released for quite some time now. I used a hard-copy of the official build instructions sitting in front of me right now. Perhaps you see the word (pre-release) in the title - in this case I'm referring to the fact that my model is not complete - it requires minifigs, some color corrections, and a complete error-check before I consider it "released". I did, however, want to offer up what I had to those who would benefit due to the holiday we are quickly approaching. Hopefully this well-intended gesture is not also in violation of one of the guidelines. - Please see read the thread that was posted in the correct place and your question re: roof color should be answered. - Although I'm a bit surprised you have a problem with an image that is thirty-some pixels too wide x two hundred some odd pixels high (a total image size far less than a 512x512 image), I'm certainly one who follows guidelines to the letter. Again - if you read my post you will see that it's been a while and that my memory re: the guidelines has faded. In this case, I was thinking about the site guidelines - which allow for images up to 800 x 600. Regardless... the guidelines laid out for this thread are provided for those wishing to have their posts indexed. Honestly, it doesn't appear like that task is high on anyone's priorities right now - would you disagree? I think that's it, but please realize I'm giving my time and resources for the benefit of the community. Following the guidelines is not a problem, but if people are going to unfairly nitpick without proper cause, I can certainly find other uses for my time. Cheers ~ Perry

Thanks for taking a look Aanchir - I didn't have internet access yesterday when I put this together. Before finalizing it, I'll get the proper part list from LDD Manager and do a comparison. So I guess with an error of this nature, it should be said: DOWNLOAD AT YOUR OWN RISK (until fixes are made).

10222 - Winter Village Post Office (pre-release) Note: it's been quite some time since I posted an official set LDD file, so I'll have to go back and refresh myself on the guidelines. But since we are very close to Christmas, I figure someone out there might be looking for this set to go with the other two... It's not 100% complete (missing minifigs for one), but the meat and potatoes are here for your LEGOing pleasure. Image Download the LXF Enjoy!!! p.s. updated version with missing items coming soon! p.s.s. yeah... right after I update the previous twenty "updates coming soon!" posts from the past!

10222 - Winter Village Post Office (pre-release) Note: it's been quite some time since I posted an official set LDD file, so I'll have to go back and refresh myself on the guidelines. But since we are very close to Christmas, I figure someone out there might be looking for this set to go with the other two... It's not 100% complete (missing minifigs for one), but the meat and potatoes are here for your LEGOing pleasure. Download the LXF Enjoy!!! p.s. updated version with missing items coming soon! p.s.s. yeah... right after I update the previous twenty "updates coming soon!" posts from the past! Crap... it's been so long that I posted a new topic rather than the intended reply in the correct place!!! @admin - could you please delete this thread??? Thanks :)

Speaking of... how often is the index updated? That list of stragglers seems to be growing fairly large ;) Cheers ~ Perry

Don't get me wrong - I like this app - only a couple of things come straight to mind when I saw the paid features suddenly appear: - Don't live with broken windows. - Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Please don't flame ... I did mention that I like the app ;) Regards ~ Perry

I'd like to add a little bit of 'thank you' as well!! This looks superb! ~ Perry p.s. - I've noticed yellow to be one of the colors most affected by the color variations inherent to the pigment injection debacle that's been going on for half a decade now. Would you agree?

I grabbed two of these sets from eBay about a year ago - mostly for the propeller. I'll post a few pics of the alt when I get my camera back here shortly. It's a space shuttle model, though a bit odd-looking in yellow! (edit: just noticed alt images were already here!) So... I was pretty disappointed with the prop. It nice and big, but the way it's mounted gives the thing terrible balance. I'm finding it extremely difficult to run it fast via power functions. Anyone else try this? Similar results or were you able to perform magic? Regards ~ Perry

I think the product ideas related to motors and pneumatics are absolutely fantastic. My only question is whether or not Cuusoo is the correct avenue. It certainly couldn't hurt - as any promotion of these product ideas will no doubt help spread the word and gather some necessary momentum - but I'm pretty sure 10,000 votes is not as achievable as people may think. Remember - back when the needed votes was just 1,000 it was very difficult to get the necessary support. Are there statistics for number of users on this forum? Has there been any Ambassador input on this issue? LEGO was just asking for folks to use their Ambassadors to their fullest potential (something I have definitely noticed a lack of). I'd like to see what comes back if we could get a few of these product ideas mentioned on the Ambassador forum... So hopefully even though I'm kind of poo pooing the idea of seeing this to fruition by route of Cuusoo, like everyone else who've replied so far I love the ideas and would most definitely benefit from these product being produced. Regards ~ Perry

I'm a little embarrassed for neglecting to check this against the LEGO MINDSTORMS theme. I'll update the appropriate .lxf where differences exist and a more suitable approximation exists :) Regards ~ Perry