21344 Orient Express is arguably the best train since the revered 10194 Emerald Night. However, many have expressed disappointment that LEGO has not provided instructions to motorise it.
Brickset member Alex D, aka Train_of_Thought_Creations, has therefore come up with a solution that squeezes a Technic motor in the loco and a Powered Up hub in the tender.
Here are his step-by-step instructions showing how to do so and what pieces you'll need:
All aboard! This is your conductor speaking. Today I’ll be guiding you on the journey to getting your Sapphire Star locomotive up and running!
Before our departure, please be informed that all passengers should read this entire guide from beginning to end before attempting to motorise their locomotive. Some steps will be easier to follow correctly if you know what’s coming ahead down the track. That being said, we are now ready for departure...
Note: The article has been updated following problems reported concerning clicking gears.
Last year I wrote about running Pybricks on Powered Up hubs, in particular the 4-port grey Technic hub which is a powerful device but essentially useless without it.
In this article I show the method I use to modify them so that they can be powered from an external 5v USB power supply. It is not suitable for all applications, especially if your model moves, but for Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs) and other static models it negates the need to use batteries, which is particularly useful if you're planning to run them for a whole weekend at a public show.
I will also explain how to install Pybricks on the hub and use a simple program that runs motors at a constant speed, which is often all that's needed for the majority of GBC modules.
Please be warned, this article contains explicit photographs of LEGO pieces being mutilated.
I’m not very good at keeping promises, am I? About two years ago, I started a series of articles about Modular Buildings here on Brickset. And I say started because… I only did one. Anyway, hope you are well and that you will enjoy this second instalment in the series. This time I won’t make any promises on future articles for my own sake!
In the first article I discussed a few concepts that I often use to determine the composition of a building. Instead of doing an in-depth analysis of a specific topic again, I thought I’d do a full overview of the process of designing a modular from start to finish. The model that I will be talking you through about is the “Florentine Palazzo”, my twelfth custom modular building. You can download instructions for it for free at Rebrickable.
Classic Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP Galaxy Explorer. Its 43-year mission: to explore strange new moulds. To delight new AFOLs and old generations. To boldly go where no LEGO Space set has gone before!
Like Star Trek, LEGO Classic Space has fans of every possible variation of the theme from die-hard purists wedded to its earliest incarnation through to those who embrace its most modern variations.
As you might expect of a member of LEGO’s design team, Mike Psiaki, designer of 10497 Galaxy Explorer, veers towards the latter. Fortunately for oldies like me who had 497 Galaxy Explorer back in the day, his modernising impulses were reined in when it came to the new Galaxy Explorer. Its up-to-date SNOT building techniques and sleek lines are cleverly combined with enough exposed studwork and nods to the design language of the late ‘70s to keep a fuddy-duddy like me grinning like a Classic Spaceman... or almost.
I've been building Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs) for around five years now and enjoy displaying them at public events. It has been frustrating, therefore, that I have not been able to do so over the last 18 months or so.
It was particularly frustrating because 45678 SPIKE Prime, the new LEGO Education robotics platform, was released last January and I had planned to build and display a number of modules incorporating it during 2020.
Thankfully, public displays have now recommenced in the UK, and I exhibited at three of them during August, which finally gave me a chance to test out my SPIKE-powered modules over a long period of time.
I posted a video of one of them in the Worldwide GBC Facebook group last week which gathered requests for more photos and information, so I thought I'd write about here because it might also be of interest to a wider audience.
If you were unable to secure a space probe on Wednesday and you wish to build one using your own parts you can now do so thanks to imgur user nagironex1337 who has posted scans of the instructions on the image sharing platform.
I've downloaded them, spilt the pages and created a PDF to make them easier to download and digest.
Apart from the plaque, which somewhat surprisingly is printed rather than a sticker, the other 235 parts are fairly common and easy to come by. There's a photo of the plaque in the PDF should you wish to print one.
Whether we’re Ninjago fans or not, when we saw the Ninjago City Gardens, we nodded and told to ourselves, “yeah, that’s a cool set!” and after seeing all 3 official sets combined with all the diversity and details packed in 4 base plates, I decided that I wanted to expand on it using parts from my collection.
As I built & studied the official sets and looked at other Ninjago MOCs, I learned a few things that make Ninjago sets look the way they do. Even though it is modular in essence, the overall style sets itself apart from the modular buildings, Harry Potter and other themes.
Here are some tips and guides to help creators design and build MOCs that can connect and expand on the Ninjago modular sets. They are in no particular order and designers can choose to apply all or some of them as they see fit.
LachlanStott has contributed this article about building the full Hogwarts crest on a budget:
When I first saw 31201 Harry Potter Hogwarts Crests and the standard builds, I, like many other people, was less than impressed. I'm a Ravenclaw myself, but had little interest in building the Ravenclaw crest that 31201 had to offer.
I was, however, very tempted by the full Hogwarts Crest build, but baulked at the idea of having to buy four full sets.
I did a lot of research, and couldn't find anyone online that had worked out whether it could actually be built with just three sets, plus nine additional technic bases. All the reviews kept talking about how many hundreds/thousands of spare plates were in each pack, so I thought I would just give it a go.
Today's article focussing on building techniques has been contributed by Vorkosigan:
There has been a lot of debate as to the intended appeal of the LEGO Super Mario sets. The game element is not really competitive, but they are also not aimed at those AFOLs looking for display models. I believe the intended purpose of the sets is fuel for imaginative role-playing of Mario's adventures.
The interactive features enhance storytelling, it is not just about racking up the highest score. In other words, playability is more directly the point than many LEGO sets. Playability is often scoffed at by adult fans who are more interested in the process of building, and the final appearance of the set.
But I believe this focus on playability creates a unique inspiration for different kinds of MOCs where interactive functions are the heart of builds. In this article I will describe my experience adding interactivity to LEGO Mario MOCs and the details of two specific mechanisms.
In the first building tutorial of the year, Pau Padrós discusses differences in the way the official modular buildings are composed and how he applies the techniques to his own models:
Modular buildings are one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year. This kind of depiction of a slice of town originally created by Jamie Berard is an incredibly versatile format for MOCcers to build upon. With sixteen official models, it’s unsurprising that fans have, over time, created custom designs.
With eleven custom modular under my belt, in a series of articles, I will try to uncover some secrets of how to make an amazing custom modular building. Hold on for the ride!
The back pages of 10281 Bonsai Tree's instructions encourage experimentation to come up with your own foliage variations.
As I mentioned in the set review the ends of the branches holding the foliage can be detached which makes it easy to replace the leaves with your own designs.
So, here are nine I made today, including a goat tree. Some are more attractive and successful than others!
Dan Ko, winner of our recent polybag competition, has written an awesome article for us:
Hey guys! My name is Danny and I'm pretty much a normal AFOL (if there's such thing).
First I want to apologise in advance for my English, as it's not my native language and I learned it the hard way...watching Cartoon Network. Now seriously, I had English classes, it's not that bad :)
Recently, I've started to build speeders (or speeder bikes, or whatever you want to call them), and it seems that a lot of people are interested in the whole building process. This is why I decided to write something about my own process and the different types of inspiration that I have for every build and I hope that it will inspire you too.
As a lover and designer of micro-scale MOCs, I often receive messages asking something like, “What are the best LEGO pieces to stock up on for micro-scale builds?” Since I mostly design digitally using Bricklink Stud.io, I have the advantage of nearly the entire LEGO brick catalogue at my fingertips.
Nevertheless, I have still found it useful to create and consult a file that contains the pieces useful when designing my MOCs. If you enjoy digital building, you can actually download this file here from the Bricklink Gallery for your future reference.
However, if you prefer building solely with physical bricks and you are looking to stock up on pieces for your own micro-scale creations, this article will cover my top recommendations!
Hey guys and girls, Tiago here ready to take you on a trip down memory lane! Or at least for me, all of these builds take me back to playing games in my childhood!
A different kind of tips from the usual stuff but I do hope you enjoy them nonetheless!
I really hope you all enjoyed these articles over the past few months, but unfortunately this is the last one! I need to focus my time on other projects and I no longer do daily builds which in turn, makes weekly articles impossible to write.
LEGO bricks tend to be pretty square. Nature…not so much. This reality coupled with the challenges of building at micro-scale can make designing landscapes challenging.
In this article, I will describe some basic tips I have discovered while building my own micro-scale MOCs.
Hello everyone, Tiago again with some more builds!
Today we're going back to City essentials that you can build in a few minutes!
Out of all the builds I've been doing since the beginning of the year this article features one of my favourite ones, I'll let you guys guess what it is!
