City works in progress

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

Technic's been melting my head so I've been taking a break from it this week and focusing my efforts on a virtual city build. I plan to build this with real bricks at some point later in the year, but a fair bit of bricklinking will be required before I start.

My fiancee loves all things law-related, from Suits to reading huge tomes on jurisprudence, so I figured my city will need a courthouse. This is loosely based on the courthouse on Washington St in Cork.



It's been tricky so far because there are a LOT of half stud offsets. Getting the half stud lip to go all the way around near the top (just below the SNOT plates and tiles) required a lot of carefully planned stacking of jumper plates of various sizes.

I'm returning and adding details as I go along - there will be more frilly bits around the windows at some point, they won't look that plain forever.

I realise it's an awful lot of light grey... when the roof is on there'll be some more variety - three or possibly four black sections of roof and a central sand-green dome, as well as a gold statue of Lady Justice. But it is a pity that Lego is pretty much limited to two tones of grey, and when you go for dark grey roads you have to go for light grey pavements, so then any light grey building is doomed to match the pavement.

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

Progress on the courthouse thanks to today's less appealing weather. A few tweaks needed but the general shape is there now. As yet, no interior... probably won't get around to that in the stud.io version, who knows if I'll ever get around to an interior in the real thing.

[lisaloveslego]

That's stunning Tom - can't wait to see how this progresses.

[David]

I realise it's an awful lot of light grey... when the roof is on there'll be some more variety - three or possibly four black sections of roof and a central sand-green dome, as well as a gold statue of Lady Justice. But it is a pity that Lego is pretty much limited to two tones of grey, and when you go for dark grey roads you have to go for light grey pavements, so then any light grey building is doomed to match the pavement.

This is brilliant. Would love to see how the dome is constructed, a tricky section to replicate.

With regard to the greyness, you could consider using old light grey (bought new) for the pavement. Personally I wouldn't do it but it would be an option.

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

I've smoothed out the dome a bit - with the lighting in stud.io it was hard to see that there was a noticeable step inwards just above the windows all round the dome, and I only spotted it in the rendered version. I also changed the pillars to the smooth version of round 2x2 bricks, which makes them easier and cheaper to buy, a closer match to the real courthouse and (to my surprise) I think actually better looking.


I've also made some changes to the back - not that I have a render of the original, but it originally had the protruding section going all the way down to the ground. I decided to more closely mimic the Cork courthouse and have the protruding section on the upper floor only.


Interesting idea with the old grey David, but I think it would probably just be too hard and too expensive to source the parts. Also I'd kind of feel like I'd have to change my pavements around the pub/bookshop and the Shareface building.

The dome is mostly hollow - it's got four identical sections joined by rows of 1x1 brick modified with stud on one side up as far as two plates above the windows, and then there's a roof section places on top. I'll try and get some pictures up later.

[John]

Will there be a full basement or what's the entry at the side?

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

Will there be a full basement or what's the entry at the side?

I'm not going to build an interior for the basement but since my city buildings are raised above ground level (see the quays) I've got a bit of room for details below ground level.

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

I've been building more stud.io models to keep myself occupied in social distancing times. I don't think it's worth starting a new thread for each one so I'm hijacking my courthouse thread :)

First up is a train station. It's been on my list for a long time - any Lego city will need a railway and I feel like elevated railway fits an Irish city well. I looked at loads of Irish and British stations for inspiration, trying to avoid anything in grey (sorry David :D), and finally found a design I liked in Portsmouth and Southsea Station. That being said, I still wanted a clock tower so really this doesn't resemble any real station very much.

Here's the front:

Continuing to show my love of 90s cult sci-fi/fantasy through Lego billboards, eagle-eyed Twin Peaks fans might recognise the advert for Nadine's drapery store.

And here's the platform:

The ads on the platform side are just placeholders - I'll pick up whatever advertising-suitable printed parts I can on Bricklink; stud.io's selection of printed/stickered parts is limited to almost non-existent.

I've also build a bridge, inspired by Grattan Bridge in Dublin, but with the fence colour changed to suit the availability of parts in Lego:

[John]

These seem like architectural projects ,hope they physically come about. Love the whole train station

[David]

Lovely designs Tom. Particularly like the train platform.

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

More stud.io city designs...
When the 60197 passenger train was massively reduced in Argos a couple of weeks ago I picked two up. I've never owned any Lego trains before, but MOC trains will definitely be a feature in my city so I figured I could use the parts. In the meantime, I've built them and I now see what people mean when they say that Lego trains look out of proportion at 6-wide. 8-wide trains just seem too enormous and even if they can navigate a standard R40 track curve they would look ridiculous, so I've settled on 7-wide and designed an Irish Rail MOC.

Outside of lockdown, I commute from Leixlip to Dublin city centre on a 29000-class diesel multiple unit, which seemed like a good place to start for a model. They come in two varieties: the old lime, white and navy livery and the new green and dark green livery. Since the former had already been done in Lego I set about building the latter - the colours are probably slightly easier to source anyway. Since I don't want to build massively long platforms and want it to be able to navigate tight curves, I compressed it lengthways, and decided to build only the two end units, and not the middle two carriages.

Here's the initial result. Please ignore the old 9v driving wheels - it will be built with the powered up motor from 60197, but that part apparently doesn't exist in stud.io yet.





After I'd designed this, I thought that actually it wouldn't be that much work to modify it to the old lime, white and dark blue, so I might as well, even if I only ever convert the green version to real bricks. So here's the old livery:





Rather annoyingly, I like the look of the second one a lot more, so now I think it's a lot more likely that I'll build that one in real bricks instead of the green!

[David]

These are superb Tom, probably the best trains I have seen in bricks!

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

Thanks David!

I should mention, I'm happy to share my stud.io files with lug.ie members if anyone wants them. Might stick them on bricksafe whenever I get a chance later.

[hre1d]

Tom, these trains are a work of art! I agree, I prefer to the look of your second version too!

And to echo David's comment, some of the best I've seen in bricks.

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

Tom, these trains are a work of art! I agree, I prefer to the look of your second version too!

And to echo David's comment, some of the best I've seen in bricks.

Thanks! I'm locked into the second version now - I've been bricklinking parts for the courthouse and I threw in some lime parts for the train that I spotted going cheap :)