Brickley's
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These 2 bridges were ultra quick builds for M>ltc’s last layout.

	The first is a sandstone road bridge, to provide a link for the country people to get to town. It is a simple arch bridge, with 2 traffic lanes, and footpaths on either side. It is very simple in construction, but surprisingly sturdy.
	The second is a short trestle bridge, to carry the high level train line. The construction is fairly simple, except for the curves required at each end. They initially posed some problems, but they were solved with the help of Teunis, our artistic director.

A third bridge was also constructed to carry the main lines across the river, but that was a much larger project, and will be documented fully in a subsequent article.

Last weekend, M>ltc displayed our current layout (called “Mount Freedom”) at the Langwarrin school. The layout is 7×3 modules (each module is 3 32×32 baseplates square). It is not our largest to date, but it is probably the largest we will show for a while, because the decision has been made to downsize our main layout. We are currently looking at 4×2 or even 3×2 modules for our main layout, with the possibility of having a 2nd layout that can be attached if desired. We would also like to provide a play table for kids, with a simple loop using the new RC trains. Also possible is including a separate space or town layout without any trains for non-train shows.

The main reason for this is the cost (in time and money) involved in transporting such large layouts. But also factoring into it is the fact that many local train shows are limited in space, and are more used to long thin layouts as are common among scale modelers. This new format will solve both those problems.

Anyway, here are some pics I took of the layout (including 3 BRE bridges which I will post about soon), and here are some pics I took of other exhibits at the show. Of particular note are these Z scale layouts, which are designed to look like larger home layouts. Very nice indeed.

Since the Google ads (those pesky little ads that appear various places on this site, not least of which is over on the right there) have proved massively lucrative, I’ve been able to take over the world and live in luxury for the rest of my life!

Well OK, that’s not entirely true, but they are now generating enough income for me to start paying for my hosting here, which up to now was generously provided free by Northstar. So as of this month, I’ve finally joined the capitalist dot com rat-race. Or the capitalist dot info rat-race anyway.

Thanks Google!

It has come to my notice that people have been using a loop-hole to retrieve all the records in my database with one search. Besides putting an unnecessary burden on my host’s database server (which is currently being graciously provided for free), it is not what I intended my database to be used for.

So unfortunately I have taken the decision to limit instruction searches. From now on, you must enter a number between 3 and 7 digits long, and no matter what number you enter, the results list will be limited to 25 records. This should not be a big problem for people doing what I originally intended – searching for the instructions to a particular set.

I wish it hadn’t come to this, but I should have guessed there’s always someone willing to exploit loop-holes and stuff things up for everyone else.

My instructions cross-reference page can be found here.

Another update to my LEGO instructions cross-reference, find them here. Highlights include:

Star Wars: Vader’s TIE Advanced
Technic: Fire Truck (2 models, 5 books!)

And a few other goodies 😉

This also marks the first update where instructions have been removed from LEGO.com. Deleted instructions include some mini exo-force, racers, and creator sets that I think were special promotions only.

Added: 31
Updated: 1
Deleted: 13