Category Archives: Event

Bricks in Motion Picture Special

Lego Bricks in Motion

One of The Lego Car Blog’s very favourite builders has taken the brave – and often envied – step into the world of professional Lego model making. Certified LEGO Professionals Bright Bricks can now count the ridiculously talented Nick Barrett amongst their building staff. Nick joined the Bright Bricks team bringing a wealth of vehicular knowledge, which they’ve put to excellent use in their latest commissioned project, ‘Bricks in Motion’.

Bricks in Motion is taking place at the Milestones Museum in Hampshire, UK until the end of April 2015, featuring many creations by Nick, as well as few other builders including regular bloggee Ralph Savelsberg.

Lego Ambulance

Nick’s creations include working vehicles commonly seen in the UK, such as this Mercedes ambulance (above), and JCB (below)…

Lego JCB

 …as well as themed creations from around the world, like these brilliant Lego taxis.

Lego Taxis

There are also a few nods to some of the most important vehicles of history, including famous ships and trains, such as the widely recognised pioneer of steam travel, Stephenson’s Rocket.

Lego Stephenson's Rocket

There’s lots more to see at Nick’s MOCpages account and you can see what’s on at the Bricks in Motion exhibition – including their children’s building activities and Mindstorms robotic workshops – via the link in the text above.

If you think that becoming a professional Lego model maker might be for you, then you can read our interviews with some of those who have gone pro by clicking this link to our Interviews page.

History Repeating

One of the best ideas of last year is back. It’s the ‘Fifteen Piece Vehicle Challenge’ on MOCpages. That’s right. Fifteen. One-Five. It’s an amazing test of creativity and pure, simple fun. Just ask Tom Remy, last year’s winner with this:

Air Balloon

A Beautiful Way to Travel, so long as you don’t mind where you’re going…

If you think you can match that, head on over to Sam the First’s group on MOCpages and get building. Three weeks to combine fifteen pieces of Lego should be plenty of time, and even the Elves can scrape together the necessary plastic. It’s informal, it’s fun, it’s open to everybody, and it’s even well organized. Can you tell that we like it? Get over there!

Back to the Future (For the Third Time)

CS III 01

Here at The Lego Car Blog our attitude to sci-fi is like our attitude to art: we don’t much about it but we know what we like. We’ve done quite well recently, having blogged both the first and second place winners in the third ever Classic Space Pocket Money Contest, well before the results were announced. The third place build was a spacey golf course in LDD, which didn’t really meet our submission guidelines, so we’ve an excuse for missing that one.

The Elves’ favourite was Locutus 666’s Rapid Reconnaissance Rover, an impressively large machine built from less than 100 pieces. Equipped with two cockpits and big wheels for high-speed rolling across the office floor, this vehicle kept our diminutive workforce entertained for a long time. Then they discovered that it’s a modular build, which can be quickly swapped into various configurations. That’s when the fighting started…

Regardless of this, we’re feeling a bit more confident about our sci-fi expertise, especially when things have wheels on. We’ll be watching this year’s Febrovery Flickr festival with interest.

CS-III-02

Milky Way

Because classic spacemen still need calcium…

1418833460m_DISPLAY

The very wonderful Classic Space Pocket Money Contest is running for a third year on MOCPages. We’re very excited by this, and not just because it gives us an excuse to build something elf-sized and fire it into space…

All you have to do is come up with a 100-piece (or less) set in any of the classic space colour schemes and build alternates using the same pieces. It’s a fun challenge and there’s even prizes! Although you’ll be going some to beat Stephan N‘s entry above, which is designed to supply to our smiling vintage friends plenty of the white stuff (no, not THAT white stuff.) Time to dust off the (old) grey and blue…

The Classic Space Pocket Money Contest is open for entries until January 13th.

Brickfair NJ 2014 – Vehicle Roundup

Brickfair NJ

Here at TLCB we rarely get to LEGO Events. This is mostly because the Elves have a habit of sneaking into our bags and that doesn’t tend to end well in public spaces. Luckily for us though we have some lovely people amongst our readership who can attend on our behalf. One such reader is previous bloggee Chris Elliott, who recently attended (and displayed at) Brickfair 2014. Over to Chris to take us through what was there…

Hi! I’m Chris, and I’m honored to be back again guest-blogging for TLCB! Today I’m writing a recap of Brickfair New Jersey 2014 from the perspective of a car guy. Brickfair NJ is a relatively large event, and in 2014 there were several really good vehicle displays to be enjoyed by the car connoisseur. First, I should probably disclose that I was there displaying as well!  If you’re interested, you can find me on Flickr for more of my work with minifig-scale cars.

ChrisElliottArt's Car Display

ChrisElliottArt’s (hey, that’s me!) car display

We’ll start start things off in one of the most popular scales at Lego Shows, with I Lug NY‘s superb mini-figure Town display. This featured a whole host of realistic city scenes accompanied by an assortment of top Town vehicles. In no particular order…

Emergency Response Team

Emergency Response Team responding to a fire at the Safety Inc. building

Prison Transport

Prison Transport transporting, I assume, prisoners (though I’ve been wrong before)

Squad Cars

A pair of squad cars

Avenue Full of Vehicles

Avenue full of vehicles, and a few trains too

There were a couple of real gems hiding in this display (I’m sure you don’t need me to identify them for you but I will anyway, because that’s my job!). Here are a few highlights;

Hummer

Minifig-scale Hummer H1

But of course, a DeLorean

DeLorean DMC-12, with a few modifications…

And now for some of the bigger creations. Continue reading

LUGPol Lego Truck Trial, Warsaw 2013

Lego Truck Trial

We’ve not blogged a Lego event for a while, so today we put that right by linking you to the awesome Truck Trial movement, pioneered by the Lego Users Group in Poland. LUGPol recently hosted their first round of the 2013 Championship in Warsaw.

Truck Trial is a real life event in which beautifully modified trucks attempt to climb, traverse and descend around a fiendishly difficult off-road course. Like Motorbike Trials, the aim is to complete the course in the quickest time. Penalties are given for course infringements such as missing gates or getting stuck.

Lego Truck Trial follows these rules, and adds in a few brick-related ones too. These include each truck requiring a complete cabin, on-board power supply through standard AA batteries, a working piston engine, and no more than two LEGO motors for drive.

The courses in Lego Truck Trial may be considerably smaller than those used in the real events, but they are no less difficult. This leads to some epic driving skills and, when these fail, some hugely destructive crashes!

Want to join in?

  • Read the full Lego Truck Trail rules* here.
  •  Watch Lego Trial Trucks in action! To see past LTT Championship videos simply type ‘Lego Truck Trial’ into YouTube.
  • Check out the full gallery from LUGPol’s Warsaw 2013 event via ManiekManiek on Brickshelf.

*These may vary depending on the host country.

Lego Truck Trial, Warsaw 2013

Mini-Land. But Better.

Amazing Lego Town

Henrik Hoexbroe’s amazing ‘ Kingstown, USA, 1959’

Today we’re pleased to bring you a MOC Special. One of our favourite Town builders, whose creations we’ve featured a few times here before, has pulled together all of his MOCs into one incredible Town-style layout. Set in 1959, Henrik Hoexbroe’s masterpiece includes some simply beautiful small-scale Americana, including Checker Taxis, Greyhound Buses, finned Cadillacs and countless other classic vehicles. Not only that, he’s set in them all in a living world of plastic, complete with diners, cinema, parks, a used car lot… there is is literally too much for us to pick out here.

The whole set-up was recently displayed at the HispaLUG Expo 2012 in Barcelona, and you can see the full gallery of pictures showing the complete scene in detail by visiting Henrik’s MOCpage at the link above. See how many previous blog posts you can find! Congratulations Henrik, from all at The Lego Car Blog!

Incredible Lego Town

See the full gallery of fantastic photographs at the link in the text.