Benny's LEGO City Update #5 - Suburban Train Station

Video Link: Benny's LEGO City Update #5 - Suburban Train Station

City progress is good progress, especially when it involves anything in the trains department. One of my first completely custom built from scratch projects is this suburban train station, the first of 3 going into my city and the smallest.

This is modeled after a typical train station you would find in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. As a kid I used to love just hanging out at a station fence with my Grandpa and watch the trains arrive and the passengers head off to whatever adventure awaited. I was always jealous and wanted to go on a train just for the ride.

When I was older and before I had a car of my own I used to walk to the local station and wait for the train to take me to the football games. Many times after the game ended, with a rush of patrons to catch the first train, I had to stand in the rain because there was often minimal undercover areas and i usually didn't bring my umbrella. I have built this station reminisce of those times with almost no shelter from the elements.

Something I've noticed over the years is the growing popularity and use of of abstract architecture when building or renovating the real world stations. I've contributed my own azure and dark green design theme when it comes to this, and some of the abstract work is very obvious in the pillars of the foot bridge.

The station platforms are far enough apart (10 studs) to allow my widest trains to pass through, mainly sure to wheel cranks and piston rods on the steam trains.

A lot of the ballasting details still need to be finished but they are definitely on the way... any minute now... I swear!

A view across the platforms with the 
ever important vending machines.

Abstract bridge architecture. Hopefully it holds up.

Automated ticket machines, now accepting tap and go!

Please stand behind the yellow line until
the train has come to a complete stop.

While my train station system is 33.3% completed, with the next one being a bit bigger and then the main station planned to be an absolute behemoth I still have my work ahead of me.

Benny's LEGO City Update #4 - Beach & Bay Walls

Video Link: Benny's LEGO City Update #4 - Beach & Bay Walls

Hi all, this time around for my City Update video I'm trying out a bit of a VLOG style as suggested by some subscribers.

I've completed the largest stretch of bay wall, and probably the most interesting, if you could call it that at all for a bunch of grey bricks...

Some of the less boring sections are the water and sewer maintenance access area and the larger cylindrical sewer pipes. I based them off a similar build technique using arches and rounded bricks that I saw demonstrated somewhere sometime but had nothing to do with sewers or pipes. It works well for this purpose.

My next few updates will show some of my custom buildings on the suburban side of town.

Benny's LEGO City Update #3 - Modular Buildings Area

Video Link: Benny's LEGO City Update #3 - Modular Buildings Area

I really love the official Creator Expert designed Modular Building line. I always had a space reserved for the current and some future sets in my City layout. Most of these buildings lend themselves well to replication or expansion. So I will be either making them taller by adding floors or making them wider, or BOTH! In this first batch which makes up one block in the City, I have included the following sets, all modified to some degree:

• 10224 Town Hall
• 10211 Grand Emporium
• 10218 Pet Shop
• 10246 Detective's Office
• 10251 Brick Bank
• 10255 Assembly Square

I'm going to be making individual videos for each of the customized buildings, giving my quick thoughts and detailing any expansions, additions or changes I've made as well as going through any interesting design or build techniques I found.

Benny's LEGO City Update #2 - Train Track & Ballast

Video Link: Benny's LEGO City Update #2 - Train Track & Ballast

G'day, I want to start this post with a bit of a story.

When I was a child my Opa has several HO scale train layouts. My cousin an I would spend hours and hours making up trains and controlling them around. My Opa was a very talented man and would hand make and paint all the scenery, mountain landscapes, roads and he was especially good at waterfalls and rivers. I always loved my own LEGO train sets as a kid and when I started planning a LEGO city I knew that trains would play a very large roll in it. Here's hoping I have inherited some of Opa's talent and can do justice with my own layout.

The longest stretch of track covers the entire length of the table.

Full curve in place to help line up the ballast.

Plate outline of one of the switch tracks.

Switch tracks were the most complicated to get the under details lined up.
This is where 2 switches almost touch.

Unfinished train yard. The colored plates have no significance,
they were just cheap to buy in bulk and made good filler.

Finishing up the train yard... bags of parts and tracks everywhere... organized chaos.

Extra studs for detail will be added to the inside of the curves.

Quite a while ago I was trying out a few designs for the train track look. A popular method is using 1x4 black or brown tiles alternating every other stud, which I think looks amazing. However I decided to go with 2x4 plates in the middle and 1x2 plates on the outside, both in reddish brown, not just to be different but to save me a LOT of money. With so much track on the table it starts to add up fast. The tracks are placed on a double layer of built up grey plates with further layers of smaller detail to be added after the tracks are in. I made some final prototypes before going ahead to be sure I'd be happy with the design.

Straight section prototype.

Curved prototype was very time consuming...

And just some number crunching, this layout is made up of:

• 433 Straight Tracks
• 93 Curved Tracks
• 15 Switch Tracks (8 Right, 7 Left)
• Over 1500 redish brown 2x4 plates and over 3000 1x2 plates to make up the main sleepers
• Around 600 light grey modified plates + 1200 cheese slopes for station sleepers
• Over TEN THOUSAND various grey plates making up the ballast and details
• So far...

Thanks guys be sure to look at the YouTube Video for a complete dynamic run through of the finished layout. Next up I will be adding in some further details and getting some trains running.

Benny's LEGO City Update #1 - Baseplates

Video Link: Benny's LEGO City Update #1 - Baseplates

G'day all. After a bit of a break due to the birth of my beautiful baby girl, the first progress post for my custom LEGO City is here.

Since I am elevating a majority of the City off the table top height (sea level) I chose to go with a wooden MDF built rise rather than spend an absurd amount of money on LEGO that would never be seen. So with the help of my bro in law Shane, we activated expert master carpenter mode and got into it.

We started straight in this corner and hoped it would all line up at the end as well.

The size of the MDF sheets definitely meant I needed a hand.

    

Working our way around the table.

Plenty of room for subway train lines perhaps?

Just over half way through the elevation process We ran out of stumps. It's the same with LEGO parts, always underestimating how fast they get used up. Back to Bunnings for extra timber, and a cheeky Sausage Sizzle never hurts.

Over 100 of these stumps were used.

And then finally some LEGO on the table in the places it's meant to be. Over the past week I used my design on BlueBrick on the TV to lay out all the baseplates.

Time to unpack and spread all this!

I tried my best to have the different colored baseplate zones make sense and represent real world things:

• Blue = water or ocean
• Green or Bright Green = grass, paddock or unturned land
• Tan or Brown = sand or dirt
• Light Grey = concrete
• Dark Grey = concrete or tar

In some cases I know there will be other parts covering the baseplate, such as footpath tiling out the front of buildings or sand on the beach.

Have a look at my Video on YouTube to see the completed baseplate layout.

Thanks for checking out my first City Update. Next week I'll start working on what I've been looking forward to for a long, long, time. Train tracks!