MOC: Chevrolet Ambulance

[Ralph_S]

It is no secret that I like emergencey vehicles. Ever since I moved back to the Netherlandsa few months ago I've been thinking about building an ambulance in the colours typically seen in the Netherlands: yellow with red and blue diagonal stripes.

In part because I couldn't imagine this working on minifig scale I decided to build it on the scale I use for my larger vehicles (1/22). This halso had the advantage of enabling me to add a detailed interior and working features such as opening doors. Because I already had an older model of a Chevrolet van that I quite liked and this model is a fairly common choice as Ambulance in the Netherlands I chose to make my Ambulance a Chevrolet.

Photos are links to flickr (as usual), but here's a link to the whole

photo set, including more pictures.

Cheers,

Ralph

[Rick]

You captured the shape perfectly (and I'm not talking about the female paramedic). The striping is also spot-on. And I really like how you've - even at this scale - managed to capture the interior so well. The only thing bothering me a little is the gap towards the top of the front window, but I guess there was no way around that.

[Big Cam]

Looks great, my only complaint is the stripes are so crooked since it's built with bricks.

What am I saying of course it's built with bricks. I'm not sure how you could fix it, so I'll just keep stop typing now.

[Dryw Filtiarn]

You perfectly captured the looks of the female ambulance employee ambulance. It's immediately recognizable to anyone who knows the dutch ambulances I think.

[fenrir]

Great work,

I work in a hospital and can see one in real life right now.

I can see you've done a great job.

[Milan]

Very nice work, as always!

As all your vehicles, this too has very real "oval" shape, which resemble on real vehicles very well!

I like the sliding door very much. It is not common to see this in lego!

Details are nice, too, and I like that stripes, yes it is hard to make good looking stripes but these are just fine.

[lightningtiger]

I like what you have designed, great colour scheme and rear interior for patient and paramedic - fanastic.

Keep up the good work, 'Ralph_S'.

[Ralph_S]

Thanks for all the comments.

Obviously I must have done something right to the shape of the female paramedic. At least most of you seem to have recognised her as such.

There were three bits of this van that gave me trouble.

-The half stud offsets on the front bumper. They're not very visible on the pictures I posted here, but you can see them a bit better on some of the other pictures I took (such as this one).

-The sloped area above the windscreen. Because I chose to build the extended roof of the van using half-stud offsets, I couldn't simply use sloped bricks for the front of it -certainly not with a thin red stripe running through it- and instead decided to built it using regular bricks attached to the windscreen and set at an angle. Getting all of it to fit wasn't easy and in this there still are a few gaps here and there.

-The stripes. I really only considered two ways of making them. By stacking plates or by building the panels in yellow and applying stripes of red and blue adhesive tape over them in the right pattern. I'm pretty sure the latter would have looked more like the real deal. However, although I do use some stickers on this vehicle, I did want it to be mostly purist. I also liked the challenge of making the pattern work using a purely Lego solution. I was quite happy with the overall effect I achieved and I'm glad most of you agree.

Cheers,

Ralph

[danim]

That is amazing ralph, I do know one way to have the stripes as lego without having them looking crooked which if you give me your email address I will send you a pdf document that I got online about 2 years ago which describes different building techniques

[Jetro]

Do you mean this one? http://photos.freelug.org/main.php/v/6studs/docs/SB/SBv1.pdf

Edited December 4, 2009 by Jetro

[badboytje88]

This looks perfect. You really did an amaizing jobon the outside and inside of the ambulance! Don't know how the interior of a real ambulance looks like, never been in one and hope to keep it that way! But the interior of your ambulance looks neat!

[danim]

yes jetrio that is the one that I found, I had forgotten where I had found it

Thanks

[Ralph_S]

That is amazing ralph, I do know one way to have the stripes as lego without having them looking crooked which if you give me your email address I will send you a pdf document that I got online about 2 years ago which describes different building techniques

Do you mean this one? http://photos.freelug.org/main.php/v/6studs/docs/SB/SBv1.pdf

Thanks guys. I already have a copy of it somewhere on my harddrive. Unfortunately the techniques in it for diagonal stripes aren't suitable for this vehicle for a combination of reasons. The stripes are narrow and there are lots of them side-by-side and that pretty much rules out making them using slope bricks. Another issue is that there's a half-stud wide step running all along the side of the van and the fact that much of the striping runs across the doors, which rules out complicated structures to mount SNOT work.

This looks perfect. You really did an amaizing jobon the outside and inside of the ambulance! Don't know how the interior of a real ambulance looks like, never been in one and hope to keep it that way! But the interior of your ambulance looks neat!

Fortunately I have never been inside an ambulance either. It's best avoided! However, I did a lot of searching on the internet and found quite a few pictures of the interior of this type of ambulance which helped with building the interior of my model.

Thanks

Ralph

[Jetro]

Fortunately I have never been inside an ambulance either. It's best avoided! However, I did a lot of searching on the internet and found quite a few pictures of the interior of this type of ambulance which helped with building the interior of my model.

Thanks

Ralph

I have and it looks perfect! (nothing serious, lot of fun with the driver!)

[Captain Green Hair]

Looks great Ralph, very recognizable!

I live close to an ambulance station and they have 3 of these babies, they often disturb me with their sirens.

The drivers are well done too, without saying i would know that they were Ambulance staff.

Never been inside one either, and I intent to keep it that way as long as possible!

[Legostein]

Hello Ralph!

That's an incredible design! I rarely see Miniland scale vehicles, and it's always a pleasure to see the big relatives to mini models. Although I am not from the Netherlands, I immediately recognized it as Dutch ambulance car. It's very impressive how functional the vehicle is with all its opening doors, the sliding door, and the detailed interior. Everything well-designed!

Cheers,

~ Christopher

[Ralph_S]

I have and it looks perfect! (nothing serious, lot of fun with the driver!)

Thanks. Good to know it wasn't serious.

Looks great Ralph, very recognizable!

I live close to an ambulance station and they have 3 of these babies, they often disturb me with their sirens.

The drivers are well done too, without saying i would know that they were Ambulance staff.

Never been inside one either, and I intent to keep it that way as long as possible!

Thank you. Building convincing figures on this scale obviously isn't particularly easy, so I'm glad you recognise the crew's uniforms. I used pearlescent grey for the reflective stripes.

Hello Ralph!

That's an incredible design! I rarely see Miniland scale vehicles, and it's always a pleasure to see the big relatives to mini models. Although I am not from the Netherlands, I immediately recognized it as Dutch ambulance car. It's very impressive how functional the vehicle is with all its opening doors, the sliding door, and the detailed interior. Everything well-designed!

Cheers,

~ Christopher

In the last half year or so I've built around 30 minifig scale vehicles for a large layout and I was getting a bit fed up with them. It is fun to build vehicles to a larger scale. Some of my minifig scale vehicles have opening doors, but adding functionality is much easier on something bigger. I also don't think I could have done anything remotely like the stripe pattern on a smaller scale.

Cheers,

Ralph