Kamenice Town

[Jonas]

Layout

A few days ago, White Fang made a call to city builders. The aim of the call was to contribute to the index of existing city layouts with their descriptions and pictures.

OK. I decided to present you my layout. It took me almost 4 years to complete it. Most work had been done in 2006-2008, i.e. before I joined EB. That is why I have not publish it here. Actually, during the last 2 years I was just adding some small items and improving details here and there. Anyway, I think that my experience with building a larger home layout may be useful for other builders and therefore I publish it now.

My city is called Kamenice. (In Czech it means the same as Stonecity or Brickville.)

When I was preparing the project I wanted my city and its layout to be:

- built entirely from Lego components,

- made of buildings and vehicles (mainly MOCs) in the same scale,

- looking realistic as much as possible, and

- fitting to a limited space in my house.

So, here is the result of my work:

For a larger (1600x705) picture, click here.

And now a few words and couple of pictures to show the evolution of the layout.

The only place I could use for the layout was a corner in my home office room. It looked like on this picture:

I simply mounted a shelf on the wall and used it to keep three solid wooden beams. After that I placed several polystyrene plates on them.

In this way I got a building space of 290 x 125 cm. It allowed me to design only a simple railway oval with some space for station tracks.

Then, I started to build the station.

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Of course, a real railway station also needs a store and engine shed, a water tower, a signal box, etc. Their design is shown here.

The city of Kamenice consists of three parts, each one from a different historical era.

Close to the station are blocks of houses built in about 1900s. One of them is the Cafe Corner house (it has the privilege to be the only LEGO-set-based building in the city), a hotel, a post office, a city hall, a toy shop, etc. My houses are built on their own baseplates and later attached to road baseplates.

The second part of the city is a residential area built by rich city people in 1910s. The two villas are replicas of real houses. For details look here or here.

The third part of the city dates to medieval times. Obviously, in those times, towns were built on elevated places. Therefore, I had to do some intensive landscaping. A small castle, a block of medieval houses and a ruin was built on the hill. The hill also allowed me to hide the part of the railway oval in the tunnel and thus create an illusion of real city panorama. One may think that the railway and the road go through the tunnels to somewhere beyond the horizon.

When speaking about the transportation I should say a few words about trains, cars, trucks, buses, etc. Again, almost all of them are MOCs and often they are replicas of the vehicles that can be seen here in Czechia.

And, of course, the city is full of life. People travel, work, picknick, swim in a pond, mow grass, shoot photos, ... simply they enjoy their lives.

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If you like the city of Kamenice, you are welcome to come and see more.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Phred

[greg3]

WOW!! That looks brilliant... I love the town's history and from the large buildings to the tiny detail (such as the mower cutting grass) the layout is simply stunning!!

Excellent work!

[The Yellow Brick]

I simply Adore your town It has a very 'Classic town' feel to it .

Must be hard to sit on that sofa now .

[BlueBard]

Congratulations! You've the best personal Lego town layout I've ever seen

[Fuzzylegobricks]

This is so beautiful especially cause these are almost completely mocs!

you must love having this to loom at everyday!

can you show sometime the interiors of the buildings?

[Mrlegoninja]

Wow! This is a really great city! Nice work!

The white castle with the man climbing up the side is just !

Edited October 31, 2010 by Mrlegoninja

[Rick]

Very impressive. I like the height differences. Very clever use of the space by building on different levels and putting a 'mountain' in the background. A great source of inspiration.

[kabel]

so where are the concrete blocks from the era of communism? just, kidding, it's ablsolutely flawless, very nice design, and i'm a bit jealous, my wife would never allow me to "waste" so much space on lego ...

[Jonas]

Thanks for your positive replies.

Must be hard to sit on that sofa now .

You can only lie (very carefully) on the sofa, now. That is the price I had to pay.

so where are the concrete blocks from the era of communism? just, kidding, it's ablsolutely flawless, very nice design, and i'm a bit jealous, my wife would never allow me to "waste" so much space on lego ...

You mean the concrete blocks like in the 7633 set? I hate them, both in real life as well as in Lego version.

As to the Lego space. Fortunately, I am the master in my room (but only there ).

Edited November 1, 2010 by Jonas

[Captain Green Hair]

Great, it really has that classic Lego look to it and I love the fact that you integrated historic buildings and made tunnels under them!

[lightningtiger]

AWESOME town...no city more like it - excellent work 'Jonas' and I'm a conformist! !

[escortmad79]

Your town is fantastic!! Similar size to what I want to build

[MightySlickPancake]

*Jaw hits the floor*

wow. I wish I had skills like that. I like that it has a classic lego feal to it while still looking new. Great castle scene as well .

Thanks, CB

[buddy]

Brilliant town/layout, the level of detail is just simply amazing!

I wish had enough space/money to have a layout like this!

~buddy~

[efin]

hahahaah I love the lawn mower bit! Great job!

[XimenaPaulina]

WOW, this is such an amazing town layout, brilliant job ob this Jonas! I really love the combination of official sets and your own creations.