Hogwarts Express temporary layout

[Brutus]

Here are a couple pics of our Lego layout so far. For more, you can click on the button at the bottom and go to my website.

[thor]

Nice one Jim! I have a fortune in Lego Technic and wanted to go the Lego train route too but whilst I was still dithering my son solved the enigma by giving me Lionel for Christmas!

So after a lot of further thought I decide to go with 027 because I can add Lego to it by gluing a baseplate to some track and maybe we'll make our own operating acessories and such.

That was the original plan, to get our little girl interested in the play potential as I was with Hornby/Meccano which were made to interface with each other. She's a bright little girl with a decided mechanical bias and we already use her Lego Duplo to make station buildings and such. I like Lego tremendously, especially the mechanical aspect but I was disappointed by their approach to trains, surprised it wasn't better though a lot of toymakers - like Playmobil - have lost their shirts to model rail systems in the past.

Nice pictures, it looks much better than the catalog which doesnt really convey the impression as well.

[darianj]

Nice pics. You've inspired me to pull out some of my Lego sets.

[Brutus]

thor - check out bricklink.com too. You can buy oddball pieces and old sets etc from other lego folks. Usually it is wise to try and find a lot of pieces you need from the same supplier, so that you have combine shipping costs. I only buy from folks in the USA too. Most of the lego sets we have were hand-me-downs from my nephew and were missing pieces. We replaced all the missing pieces, but I'd bet it cost us about $40 to $50 total to replace about 50 pieces, since many were oddball parts like a purple turban or a white wand etc, so we didn't get to combine shipping on most of them. I also have bought some discontinued sets from stores on bricklink for a fraction of what they are being sold for on ebay!

I don't really like the turnouts for lego, although I can understand that they really wanted to limit the number of track piece types (straight, curve, crossover, turnout - that's about it!) so it would be easier for kids.

[pjprevitejr]

I've been an avid fan of the Lego 9V Train system for many years now and, over that time, had built a substantial layout incorporating road base plates and Lego City kits as well as trackside structures..  The problem I was having was the fact that there wasn't enough variety in engines and rolling stock to suit me and, although the Lego Train models were cleverly designed, it was a challenge to come up with uncoupling the cars or remotely operating the switches. 

This past year, I inherited some postwar Lionel trains and track and began dabbling in O-scale.  Much to my amusement, I discovered that the scale of Lego trains, buildings and (to an ever-so-slightly-less degree) Minifigs looked really good next to Lionel and other brand trains & track (especially the awesome Lionel prefab roadbed FasTrack line).  Just for kicks I started putting together some dioramas using the Lionel train stuff in conjunction with the Lego everything else and... well, I was hooked!  I found that by making some slight alterations, I could adapt all of my Lego trackside structures to work smoothly with vast variety of O scale egines, rolling stock including remote controled items and FasTrack.  I'm now building a good sized layout by combining the creative variety that one can obtain with Lego bricks and elements in buildings, scenery, etc. with the endless options that Lionel, MTH, Atlas, Weaver, K-Line offer.  I'm psyched! I've already invited over a few model railroading friends and they are gobsmacked by how nice the layout is strting to look.

I'd love to hear from others that may also have discovered the many adventages of a hybrid Lionel/Lego layout.

Peter Previte

[e-mail] 

[Jumijo]

Below is a link to the New England Lego User's Group. They had an impressive layout at a show here in MA 2 weeks ago. There are photos of that layout on their site:

NELUG Web Site

Jim

[dougdagrump]

Jim, One of the Lego Clubs is at the museum again this year for the Christmas season. This year they have two layouts instead of one big one. One of them is based on Thomas & Friends, I'll get some photos and post them however it won't be til next week at the earliest. This year I was late to sign-up for Christmas On The Prado and the lines were all reserved, we run this fri. & sat. from 11am til 10pm.

[Brutus]

Cool!  All my legos are in tubs in the basement in favor of the Halloween layout right now.  I'm thinking of selling all those Harry Potter sets on ebay one of these days - some of the parts are worth some real money and I could turn that into more O gauge trains.  But, then the kids start in about wanting to keep them, so they win.  I got an email offering free shipping from Lego if you spend $99 online (I think) but no Lego plans right now.