Wednesday 5 March 2014

The Haunted Mansion

I got the Haunted House 10228 set from a German seller on Bricklink as soon as it came out in 2012 as it wasn't available in Australian stores. The set eventually became available in Kmart and is now heavily reduced down from the AUS RRP to $169. This is a bargain price for all of the parts and so I decided to make a more substantial mansion using 3 of the sets. it will be built along the lines of the existing set, but much wider and deeper than the current set.
The Haunted Mansion will site on 3x2 32x32 base plates which is  a standard I use because it can still be carried by one person when on a timber base.
I will build a broken down fence around the outside and give the garden an overgrown look with lots of snakes and frogs hidden in it.

The 3 sets and the 6 32x32 base plates ready to go.

Here are the 3 sets removed from the boxes.


Here is the finished sorted parts. I have done a rough sort with plates,bricks,slopes and other parts sorted by type.

I started with the front porch to give me an idea of scale.

Then I laid out the base for the walls.

I am adding a floor, but no interior at the moment.

Next step is adding the windows and getting them in the right place.

The front wall taking shape.
First floor completed.

All of the windows made up in an assembly line.

2nd floor begins.

Half of the 2nd floor complete.

2nd floor completed.

Adding the detail ready to add the roof and 3x 3rd floor rooms.

The back is a little bland, but the set has not much detail on the back.
The first row of the roof has been added.

Attic  rooms added and slopes.



Attic slopes all added.

The roof for the 3rd floor towers completed.

All of the 3rd floor completed from the front.

From the side with chimney stack.

From the rear.
Completed from front with garden

Completed front left angle view

Completed rear view

Completed side view

Front close up with figs

Haunted Mansion V Haunted House

Left over parts going back into the collection

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Ogre tank

I was doing a search for Lego tanks back in 2009 and I found this design online. I copied it because it was so well engineered and there was no point in trying to re-invent the wheel ;0)
The Ogre design also had Mindstorms functions that enabled it to find it's way around and attack certain targets, but I went for a more simple remote controlled version. (I have since removed the Mindstorms transmitter)
The Zamor sphere launcher on the front draws ammunition via a gravity feed from the storage cage on top. It can hold about 100 Zamor spheres and can empty out in under 10 seconds.
The hardest thing is going around and collecting all of the Zamor spheres off the floor once you are done!






Here is a short video of it moving around.




Here is a short video of me unloading some of the spheres!

Monday 3 March 2014

Train track ballasting

I decided to ballast up some sections of 9v track including straights, curves and points. I really like the look of ballasted track and decided that I would find a standard and stick to it over all of my layouts.
I generally plan my layouts so that the track runs around the outside to make it easy to see the rolling stock and this means that I can set the edge of the track at 4 studs from the edge of the base plate. Having a standard means that I am not constantly pulling up track and having to re-ballast it which is time consuming, and time better spent building the layout!
I searched the web for different ways, and also looked to see if I should use 1 or 2 plates under the track.
I decided on 2 plates as it raises it up a bit higher and looks much nicer. I found an article on Eurobricks that show a nice standard of dark bley plates with light bley plates on top and then the track sitting on top of that.










I also chose to lay reddish brown sleepers across the tracks with a single space in between.

Time to start blogging again

I started this blog about a year after  I got back into the Lego hobby. I started posting a lot of my pictures to Flickr and so stopped doing any blogging at all as I spent more time uploading and commenting on pictures.
I was going to start a new blog to talk about my Lego sorting but decided instead to just continue where I left off more than 4 years ago. I guess the hobby got the better of me and I spent more time building, and no time thinking about blogging ;0)