jmupton2000

My 4625 has just been delivered if it is of any help, I took a snap of the inventory on the box:

Try here: http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Other B5 resources are also available. I have to admit having acquired a couple of what I later determined to be Lego dinosaur tails in black I did have an idea about trying to recreate a shadow vessel!!!

I found a minifig head on a train last year. Took it home and duly added the required remaining parts!!!

Latest recreation: The Taxi (almost a minivan in my opinion) from the 1985 Lego Ideas Book (Ref No. 200) Seems to bare a resemblance to the taxi that appeared in the railway station set last year. Someone asked about the buses, well we all know Genesis as far as Lego buses was concerned was the classic 379 Bus Station from 1979 and fortunately I had most of the original parts (the stickered pieces) to put it back together: Over the years the design was developed by myself and I have had numerous buses of varying designs. Many have been derived or based on the chassis design of Ambulance models, notably 6680 and 6688 as well as that from 379 above. To go through the generations of Lego City buses I have built over the years could take time so instead for now I shall leap to the present day and present the most recent one I assembled using 1980's City vehicle principles, an adaptation of the chassis from the 1982 6680 Ambulance and all new parts from PAB, seen here alongside its predecessor some thirty five years older!!!

First adaptation of an old design here. Started off with the instructions for the 1978 Flatbed Truck, ref number 643: In those days despite the arrival of minifigs, in fact this set had a generous two of them, there was no way they could get into their truck! So I took the basic instructions, built it and then adapted the design of the front end to mid 1980's standard minifig compatible design: A couple of other modifications were the addition of basic red tail lights and a squared off old grey rear wheel arch as I could not find one of the chamfered ones anywhere. Of course there is still one slight problem, now we have gone from room for none to room for one, still leaves Steve walking whilst Dave gets to drive the motor!!!

Spot on, it's the two main characters car from the 1979 6000 Lego Ideas Book. The car whose windscreen moves backwards and forwards at various points for no readily apparent reason!!

Technically instructions didn't exist for this one but it was produced by Lego, sort of, so I will see if anyone can guess from where this car comes from: It should really have another minifig with it as well but I haven't been able to locate him just yet.

The majority of my minifigs I am assembling these days are using the more modern version of the standard grin as most of my older 1980's vintage standard grin heads are pretty badly worn. I was lucky to get a good stock of them from Lego PAB before they were pulled from the list last year. I do prefer the traditional looking face although I am not adverse to using some of the more recent designs from time to time. I am tonight looking at the 1978 issued 643 Flatbed Truck and thinking of adapting the design to be able to accommodate a minifig inside as per later vehicles. One vehicle I have that I have not shown yet is my 6627 Convertible from 1980: This one isn't technically a recreation. I managed to pick up this off of Ebay for about a pound or two, needed a couple of bricks replacing and a bit of reassembly but it is 90% original. I had this one new and was always fascinated by the opening bonnet feature whilst the minifig got called J.R. after the character in Dallas who of course wore that kind of hat!! Various versions of basically the same car design seem to turn up in various sets in the early to mid 1980's.

I seem to have developed a bit of a thing for recreating the classic four stud wide City vehicles of the 1980's!! It all started off a couple of weeks ago when I discovered the 6390 'Main Street' set of 1980, I never recall seeing it available in the UK when I was a child but I was immediately taken by the classicness of the maintenance truck in the set so I downloaded the instructions, went raking around for the parts and got to work and here is the result: So here we have Eddie and his truck. He picked it at the dealers as his missus liked those classic lattice side panels I think!! I decided to set a couple of rules, firstly I had to use only parts I had in my collection and they had to be as near as possible of appropriate vintage if possible, also the correct configuration minifig must also be supplied. In the creating of the truck one compromise had to be made. The original front end had a sticker for the radiator grille that I of course did not have so I substituted a somewhat more modern black profile brick instead which definitely looks the part. During the raking through the very large bin of very old grubby Lego I discovered a loader buckets, red lifting frame and the correct brick into which it would be mounted, another search on Brickfactory duly found the instructions for 6630, the Bucket Loader from 1982: So Fred here duly got his excavator back, I know for a fact I did have this set so the loader and lifting arm almost certainly came from this very set, just a pity I didn't clean the bucket interior though, it is in a right state!! With a pile of yellow bricks sitting in a tray in front of me, next to be recreated was from 1983, 6607 'Service Truck': Al here has the correct blue flat cap as well for the occasion of taken delivery of his lovely little runabout complete with recessed tool clips. That was the thing about many early City vehicle sets, small, affordable and well thought out whilst using the minimum of special bricks. Then I got ambitions and decided to create a modernised version of 6607: For my most recent project however it was time to attempt something even older and so after an entertaining evening looking through the years of instructions (and recoiling in horror at some of the dreadful rubbish Lego was issuing during my dark ages in the early 2000's!!!) I decided to recreate the classic 646, the Auto Service Truck: I never had this set although I do recall seeing a brick with 'AUTO' on it many years ago that came from a second hand bag of bricks my Dad bought me. The trickiest bit was recreating the stickers for the AUTO SERVICE signs and the front radiator grille and headlights. Fortunately the Brickfactory instructions site included a decent scan of the original sticker sheet and so after some experimentation with scaling, I printed it in colour onto self adhesive sticker paper and Barry here has got his truck to drive around in. Coming up in the next few weeks, firstly I need to amass some more classic car parts, some of the ones I have are in a pretty dire state, I have a few downloaded instructions for some vehicles that appear as part of larger sets which I fancy having a go at so more to come!!

I have started to concentrate on either recreating classic 1980's City vehicles from existing parts I have from my childhood or creating new or adapted vehicles based on the same principles. Just the other day I found about for the first time about the 1980 '6390 Main Street' set and downloaded the instructions from Brickfactory to recreate the maintenance truck: I only used original old parts (much scrabbling about in a huge bin of old forgotten about Lego bricks duly resulting!) except for one thing, there appears to have been a sticker for the centre radiator grille so I used a modern 'profile brick' instead. Also put together the correct configuration minifig to go with it all be it with the more modern production of the traditional smiley head. Then I found some loader parts and so went and recreated 6630 as well: This is starting to get addictive!! Just wish the current yellow bricks produced were the same shade as the 1980's versions, its annoying!!

Seems to have been a problem with certain batches of mid to late 1980's blue bricks from my experience, for example I have this old thing just lying on my desk at the moment: It was left in direct sunlight for a number of years and the exposed part of the brick, the two studs on the far right have now faded with a definite yellowy hue. (It is also mucky as well I admit, didn't seem any point cleaning it really!) I also have a couple of 1x2 and 1x4 tiles that were part of the same model where only the ends were exposed to the light and the end faces have gone the same way. Now all consigned to the scrap skip at the back of the Lego City builders merchants!!

Pretty much ever vehicle set made until the early 1990's had these or the other version which was a 2x2 brick rather than a plate. Red wheel hubs is the most common colour but there were also a few white ones as well. Still have a whole pile of these and actually still like to use them all be it usually with fresh tyres from PAB.

I am glad I got this, really like it however the blue cap that is supposed to hang on its hook was completely missing!! I have a spare so it wasn't worth contacting Lego just over one piece. Seriously considering getting a second one now which would be MOC'ed in some way. A newsagents or some sort of record store in place of the pet shop interior is my first thought, also I would be tempted to build the town house part in mirror image and marry it up as a pair to the other one. So many possibilities, so little time...

My first minifig, a classic builder type in the iconic red hat (which I am astounded is still in production!) dating from about 1978: Known as Charlie, his hands have faded with age (and hard work!) the sticker on the fantastic old style yellow bib is in a right old state and his hat is a bit dusty but he still gives the orders to the younger upstarts he recruits to his construction firm!! Mind you the new guys get gloves....

Although I cannot find it at the moment, I do have from the mid 1980's a 1x2 white tile that should have had POLICE printed on it, unfortunately it seems to have got stuck in the machine at a 90 degree angle as a result it says ICE twice. Someone somewhere must have the matching tile with two POL on it!! Another oddity is this fellow: I acquired him a bag of minifigs and bits a couple of years back. All the others in there were 1980's classic face, this guy however has a sad version, is the only one I have ever seen and I have yet to track down if this was an official release and if so from what set.