Trained Eye

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Today’s creation probably goes a bit beyond what many of us think of when building with LEGO. Newcomer Britishbricks’ beautiful LNER Class P2 steam locomotive is almost entirely wrapped in custom vinyl, from the bespoke wheels to the smokebox, with many parts coloured or – look away purists – cut, in order to replicate the real locomotive as accurately as possible.

Whilst not to everyone’s tastes Bristishbricks’ creation shows what is possible in pursuit of perfection, and you can view an insight into how this model was made via his LNER Class P2 ‘Prince of Wales’ album on Flickr, which not only shows the finished locomotive that you see here but also the digital and pre-wrapped steps along the way.

Classic Photoshop

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We’ve often written about how for a creation to be blogged here it needs high quality images with clean backgrounds and natural light. So here’s a creation with two suns and background made of cosmic rock.

TLCB debutant Purple-Wolf has taken the photoshop* route to present his neat Classic Space ‘LL C12 Transport’ ship, and to stunning effect. Head to, er… wherever this is, via the link to his photostream above.

*Other image editing tools are available.

F-ing Fantastic

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This phenomenal Volvo F12 truck complete with a VBA box and a Dapa drawbar box trailer was found by one of our Elves on Flickr today, and we know it’s early but this is surely already a contender for the best truck of 2020.

Built by Master MOCer and truck-building legend Dennis Bosman (aka legotrucks), this spectacularly presented build perfectly replicates the real trucks that were in use with the refrigerated transport company ‘Sties’ whose livery Dennis has expertly recreated.

Dennis’ 1:13 scale replica of the 1980s truck (making it almost 150cm in length) not only looks absolutely beautiful on the outside, it includes a wealth of features too, including a tilting cab with a fully fitted interior, and highly detailed engine and chassis, and opening cargo doors.

An extensive gallery of stunning imagery showcasing the classic Volvo F12 truck is available to view by clicking here, and you can read Dennis’ interview here at The Lego Car Blog as part of the Master MOCers series by clicking these words to discover how he creates incredible models such as this one.

My Other Car’s a Land Rover

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LEGO’s cool-looking 42110 Technic Land Rover Defender set – revealed here last year – has been on sale a while now, and we think it looks pretty good. However we’re less sure about real Defender which is yet to go on sale, and seeing a prototype on the roads of the UK hasn’t helped the cause. We couldn’t afford one anyway though – despite the vast fame and riches we have accrued through this website* – so we guess it’s not aimed at us.

For those in our camp of not really knowing who the new land Rover Defender is aimed at, and maybe preferring something a little more authentic, Flickr’s Milan aka grohl might have the answer.

This marvellous looking ‘stadium truck’ complete with working suspension, four-wheel-drive, a three-speed sequential gearbox, steering, and a V8 engine has been built solely from the parts found within the 42110 Technic Land Rover Defender set, allowing you to make something with a little more off-road pedigree should the new Defender turn out to be just another posh SUV for well-healed city-dwellers.

Milan has produced video instructions for his 42110 ‘B-Model’ too, so if you own the Technic Land Rover Defender set and the real car turns out to be more ‘organic vanilla latte please’ than ‘dude, let’s abseil down this mountain’, you can turn your Defender into a stadium truck yourself.

There’s more to see of Milan’s 42110 B-Model on Flickr, where full details and the all-important link to instructions can also be found. Click the link above to take a look.

*Which you can learn about here.

Flying Dolphin

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The Lego Car Blog Elves have never met a dolphin, and thus they have little knowledge of what one looks like. The naming department of Eurocopter must only have had a loose idea too, because the clever aquatic mammals definitely don’t have rotors. Still, we suppose the barracuda doesn’t have wheels and that provided a cool car name for Plymouth.

The Eurocopter HH-65 does have a sort-of-dolphinish nose though, recreated here in superb detail by Robson M of Flickr. As well as the nose Robson has successfully replicated the Dolphin’s complex tail rotor, fitted a complete interior (with neat sliding door too), and has enhanced the accuracy with some excellent custom decals.

There’s more to see of Robson’s wonderfully realistic Eurocopter HH-65 Dolphin at his photostream – click the link above to watch it do a backflip for some fish.

You Say Tomato, I Say Yamato

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This is a Toyota Quick Delivery Hybrid, as used by Japan’s ‘Yamato’ delivery company. Plus there are some monks for some reason*.

Built by TLCB regular Ralph Savelsberg, the Quick Delivery (it does what it says on the tin we suppose!) is not our usual fodder, but it’s a most excellent build. Ralph’s trademark blend of superb techniques have allowed him to recreate the odd asymmetric Toyota brilliantly, including its sliding cab doors and a fully racked cargo area.

There’s more to see of Ralph’s Yamato-liveried Toyota Quick Delivery Hybrid on Flickr via the link above, you can hear today’s title song by clicking these words, and you can find out what that *asterisk is referring to by clicking here.

Fighting Fires in the Forest

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Australia is under siege from tragedy right now, with 100,000sq/km burned or burning, thousands of homes destroyed, and millions (yes millions) of animals cooked. Australians love a barbecue, but not like this.

The cause is a prolonged drought, with the fires worsened by high winds. Whether or not the fires are specifically down to climate change, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s dismissal of it (and the fact Australia’s CO2 emissions have been rising every year, not falling) is spectacularly out of line with literally every climate scientist on earth. Apart from a few American ones obviously.

In TLCB’s home nation we have wild fires too, with 2019 seeing the most on record, again due to drought. Although the fires were tiny compared to Australia’s, the UK is tiny by comparison, so the propensity for damage is just as high. Inspired by the Mercedes-Benz Unimog fire truck used by his local fire station in the Ashdown Forest, previous bloggee Jonathan Elliott has constructed this lovely classic Unimog 406, and he’s filled it with details, with the roller shutters and chassis two of our favourites.

Head into the woods to save a koala via Jonathan’s photostream (OK, probably not a koala in England); click the link above to make the jump.

Game of Bricks Lighting Kits | Review

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The presentation of Lego models has moved on a bit since this particular TLCB Writer started posting creations for the internet to see. Gone are the days when a white sheet and a desk lamp were all that was required to create satisfactory presentation, with high quality cameras, easy photo editing, and a host of custom accessories now available to enhance the visual impact of a model.

One way of making that impact is with custom lighting, both for MOCs and for official LEGO sets, and newcomers Game of Bricks have quickly established a vast range of LED lighting kits to service both official sets and home-built creations. We handed three boxes of their products over to our readers to let you know what they’re like. Over to them!

Light kit for Ford Mustang 10265 | Review by Andrea Lattanzio | Norton74

I must admit I’m not so much into lighting LEGO sets or MOCs, but when TLCB offered me this chance I was curious to test out one of the lighting sets from the Game of Bricks company. I requested the 10265 Creator Ford Mustang kit because it’s one of the few official sets I own and because it’s probably one of my favourite LEGO sets ever. Within a few days I received the pack with the lighting kit and soon I got to work fitted it on the Pony;

    1. Pack.  The Game of Bricks lighting kit comes in a very elegant black box. You probably won’t throw it away after installing the kit, as you can use it to store the smallest LEGO parts from your collection. Inside the black box another surprise, a plastic container (transparent) in which you’ll find the lighting kit neatly stored inside three little bags, a very well-finished pack.
    1. Building process. The Game of Bricks lighting kit for the 10265 set give you two kinds of kit, the ‘standard’ and the ‘advanced”’ I started with the standard version, fitting it to my Mustang set in about half an hour, and something more for the ‘advanced’ version. To install the kit there are video instructions to follow, which consist of a step-by-step video manual. It’s quite easy follow the steps although you do have to stop the video many times because it’s quite fast. To install the entire kit you have to disassemble few parts of the car as well as change a few parts for the new ones which have the Game of Bricks LEDs installed. It surprised me that the kit is all-in-one, the single lights are linked via the same wires, so you have to hide many wires through the bricks. Although the threads are very thin, it is not easy to hide them all completely within the bricks of the set, so in the end some pieces of cable will still be visible. You have to be very precise and patient, but you can do it and it is fun, and the ‘advanced’ kit does ask you to take apart more parts of the car than the ‘standard’ one. 
    1. Instructions. As above, the instructions are basically two step-by-step video manuals, one each for the ‘standard’ and ‘advanced’ versions. The steps are easy to follow and you can stop the video when necessary.
    1. Final result. Even if I personally prefer the 10265 Ford Mustang set as LEGO made it, the Game of Bricks lights are quite fascinating, especially for my kids and wife. I’m sure about this because both my kids and wife said ‘WOW!’ when I shown them the shining Mustang set at night!

Personally, I prefer the ‘standard’ version of LEGO’s 10265 set, both with and without the Game of Bricks kit. However there are two shades of light, warm and bluish and honestly I don’t know why, as I would have preferred everything with the warmer hue. Overall though it’s a good kit and if you are a lighting fan you must get your Game of Bricks set; you won’t be disappointed.

Town Street Lighting Kit (plus a few extras!) | Review by Anonymous via TLCB on Facebook

I bagged myself some Game of Bricks goodies via The Lego Car Blog’s Facebook page, not having heard of the brand before but intrigued to see what they had on offer. Plus who turns down free Lego stuff?!

I requested the Game of Bricks Street Lighting kit, as I don’t own many new Technic sets and I prefer to keep them original. However I do build LEGO City and the working street lights looked like they would make a cool addition to modular buildings.

A small black box arrived a few days later with ‘Game of Bricks’ embossed on the top. It’s pretty high quality packaging and to my surprise it contained not just the street lights I had requested to review, but light sabres and multiple ‘daisy chained’ 1×4 lighting bricks, each with a row of LEDs hidden inside them. Continue reading →

Ford Vs Ferrari

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2019’s excellent and surprisingly moving film about the development of the Ford GT40 and the amazing men behind it was a joy to watch last year. Whilst the film did gloss over the fact that car isn’t really American at all, it did pay tribute to the unsung hero of its creation; Englishman Ken Miles, who was tragically killed during testing just a few short months after winning Le Mans.

The GT40 would go on to win the event multiple times and achieved success in numerous endurance races around the world during the 1960s. Built by previous bloggee James Tillson, this particular GT40 finished in second place at the 1967 12 Hours of Sebring, and has been recreated superbly in both digital and Technic-brick forms.

James’ GT40 features all-wheel independent suspension, a working V8 engine hooked up to a four-speed gearbox, functioning steering, and an opening clamshell front and rear. There’s more to see of James’ build in both digital and real-brick forms on Flickr, plus you can join the discussion at the Eurobricks forum by clicking these words, where there are also instructions available.

 

My Other Car’s a Mustang

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LEGO’s awesome new 10265 Creator Ford Mustang set is filled with lovely blue and white bricks suitable for all sorts of cool builds. From Firas Abu-Jaber’s 2020 Mustang GT500 to Nathanael Kuipers’ Ford F-100 pick-up truck, the classic Mustang set can be reconfigured into an infinite number of B-Models, such is the joy of LEGO.

Keeping the Ford link, previous bloggee Serge S has taken his 10265 set and turned it into something rather more exotic. This is his superb DeTomaso Pantera GT5, a car which – like the Mustang – used a Ford V8, but which wrapped it in a stunning Italian body.

Serge is no stranger to building brilliant B-Models, his 10252 Volkswagen Beetle alternative appearing here last year, and his latest is every bit as good. Using only the pieces available within the 10265 set, Serge’s Pantera is accurate enough that you’d never know the design was parts-constrained, and it includes an opening hood, opening doors, and a detailed interior too.

There’s more to see of Serge’s amazing alternate at his Flickr photostream, where a link to instructions can also be found if you fancy rebuilding your 10265 Mustang into a DeTomaso Pantera GT5 yourself. Take a look by clicking here.

Classic Space Redux

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A few Elves got into the stationary cupboard over the weekend and between them ate four entire glue sticks. The result was some very sticky Elf droppings, and also some fairly trippy Elves, which may explain today’s somewhat spaced-out theme.

These two wonderful Neo-Classic Space builds were built for The Brothers Brick (wut!?), each rebooting LEGO’s ancient ‘Classic Space’ line with the latest parts and a whole lot more detail than the original sets achieved back in the early ’80s.

The first (above) comes from space-building legend Alec Hole, who has taken inspiration from the classic 6970 Beta Command Base set from 1980, with its launch pad, control room, and a funky little monorail thing that moved between the two. Alec’s version uses the same recipe but knocks it up a notch with some incredible attention to detail and enough ‘greebling’ for a model five times its size. We love it, and there’s more to see at Alec’s photostream by clicking here.

Today’s second Neo-Classic Space build (below) forgoes the usual rocket-propulsion system for good old fashioned rotors, creating a spacey helicopter that bears a strong resemblance to any one of a number of irritating drones. With Classic Space’s vintage colour scheme, a trans-yellow cockpit, and a smiling Classic Spaceman at the controls, Tim Goddard’s ‘Dragonfly‘ is much more our bag than annoying people in the park with a remote control helicopter (sorry drone owners). Head to Tim’s photostream via link above to see more, whilst we figure out how to remove some insanely sticky Elf droppings.

Bore-mula One

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Will the 2020 Formula 1 season be less dull than the last few that have proceeded it? We think it’s about as likely as Lewis Hamilton making it a year without using ‘#blessed’, but we can dream.

We have to admit that Formula 1 is – like quantum mechanics – mightily impressive, but like the aforementioned physical theory, impressiveness does not necessarily equal entertainment. Until Formula 1 relaxes the rules a bit and stops awarding Grand Prix’s to car parks in the desert with no grass roots motorsport whatsoever, we suspect its impressiveness will continue to go unnoticed by many.

Which is a shame, because the engineering behind the current cars is pretty spectacular. The best of the bunch is of course team Mercedes-AMG, and their ridiculously-named ‘Mercedes-AMG F1 W10 EQ Power+’. Which is a moniker that sort of sums the whole sport up really.

Anyway, this neat replica of Mercedes-AMG’s 2019 title-winning Formula 1 car comes from previous bloggee Noah L, who has recreated it beautifully in Lego form. There’s more to see at Noah’s photostream where a link to instructions can also be found; take a look via the link above, whilst we run an office sweepstake on how long it is before Lewis uses #blessed to caption a picture of him in his boxers.

‘Peacemaker’

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Is there a more ironically named aircraft than this? The Corvair B-36 ‘Peacemaker’ was introduced in 1948 as an intercontinental strategic nuclear bomber, originally conceived to bomb Germany from the U.S should Britain fall during the Second World War.

With the largest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built (a truly enormous 230ft), the B-36 could travel for 10,000 miles carrying a nearly 40,000kg payload and is still the largest mass-produced piston engined aircraft in history, a title it will likely always hold.

Those piston engines were often not sufficient however, and four turbojets were later added to help the giant bomber get airborne. They didn’t help enough though, and the arrival of the jet age meant the Peacemaker was phased out just ten years after its introduction, replaced by the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress with all bar five of the nearly four-hundred aircraft built scrapped.

This amazing recreation of the short-lived yet still slightly terrifying nuclear-carrying monstrosity is the work of previous bloggee BigPlanes, whose magnificent Boeing 747 Air Force One appeared here last week. BigPlanes’ astonishing B-36D measures 6ft across, includes a complete mini-figure scale cockpit, and features functioning bomb bays, and there’s loads more to see at Big’s photostream via the link above.

One Man Went To Hoe

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This slice of yellow brilliance was discovered by one our Elves on Flickr today, and – whilst we know it’s early in the year – for a model of this size this is going to take some beating!

Damian Z aka Thietmaier of Flickr is the builder behind this utterly brilliant Caterpillar 432E backhoe, which not only looks about a billion times bigger than it really is, it kinda functions too.

A huge variety of ingenious building techniques have been deployed to enable the Caterpillar’s buckets to be as positionable as those fitted to the real thing, and you can see all of the images at Damian’s Caterpillar 432E album by clicking here whilst we congratulate ourselves on making it the entire way through a post about hoeing without mentioning your Mom.

Damn.

Electric Egg

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Today’s title may sound like something your Mom uses on the bus whilst reading Mills & Boon books, but it is in fact a car so ahead of its time they only made one.

Designed by French engineer Paul Arzens in 1942, the ‘L’Oeuf Electrique‘ (electric egg) was an incredible looking electric two seater with a range of 100km at 70km/h. That’s comparable with today’s electric city cars. In 1942! Sadly it never got made, but fast forward to 2020 at in many parts of the world it would do very well indeed. Just not in our home nation because it’s not a generically bland SUV. Sigh.

Found on, er… The Brothers Brick (TLCB Elves won’t look us in the eye at the moment), TLCB debutant aido k is the builder behind this marvellous Lego recreation of L’Oeuf and there’s more to see of Yesterday’s City Car of Tomorrow at his photostream via the link.