Brickley's
Words

I have spent the last week doing lots of building for our train club layout. We have a show in about a month, and need to have it basically finished by then, but of course it will evolve over time. And after feasting my eyes on the new layout, even in it’s unfinished state, it got me wondering how the club got to the point we are at, displaying these amazing layouts every year for so many people to enjoy.

So how does one make a train layout like those amazing ones you see at train shows? The short answer: people.
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From this Lugnet post:

Now is our chance to take action and help influance a decision within LEGO before a point of no return is reached. In order to do that a web site has been created for the purpose of saving the 9v electric train line.

Access to the site is free. At the moment the format of the site is somewhat fluid but we want to get discussion started as soon as possible. In particular we need a Logo. If you have any ideas please submit them so we can pick one as soon as possible.

You will also see that we need to add content to the site. That is something we can all help with. Just get an account and you will have access to forums and the ability to add site content by clicking on the “Contribute” link in the main menu.

We may experiance a few bumps in the road in the next week or so but we feel it is important that we start developing our case and strategies for saving 9v trains.

http://save.9vtrains.com/

-Eric Kingsley
LEGO Ambassador

Visit the Save 9 Volt Trains website.

I have now installed and activated the Akismet anti-spam plugin for the blog, which seems to be catching all the spam quite nicely, so I’ve decided to switch off the comment moderation.

This means your comments will now show up immediately! Yay! Unless Akismet thinks it looks like spam, in which case you should shoot me an email ASAP so I can manually approve it, as old spam is only kept for 15 days.

The LEGO instruction cross-reference has been updated. This was mostly to test my update procedure, I didn’t expect so many new instructions! Added sets include 10143 Death Star, and the new Batman sets; 7779-7782. You can access the instructions page via the link in the left side-bar.

Enjoy!

Added: 520
Updated: 0
Deleted: 0

Well, after finding out that LEGO actually make available many instructions on their website in PDF format, I decided to cross-reference them to Peeron set numbers. The initial page is very basic, you can just enter the set number to search for, and if it’s available all instruction downloads available for it will be listed.

Some sets have several sheets or books, and there are many duplicates on the site. Just pick the one that looks the best. The page usually lists a desciption where there are multiple books/sheets, and also notes anything significant about the download. It also shows whether the PDF is just a scanned copy of the paper instructions, and if not, whether it has “inifinite” resolution for the instructions. It also specifies whether or not there is a warning on the instructions.

This data was collated by hand, so there are probably mistakes. Especially the warning field – I didn’t check exhaustively through all the instructions, just noted it where I happened to see it. Also there are about 70 available that I couldn’t reconcile to a Peeron set number, currently there’s no way to view these, but I will fix that ASAP. Please report any problems you find to instructions@br-eng.info.

[Edit: You can now view all the un-referenced instructions by clicking the link below the search box]

Also be aware that the files LEGO makes available on their site may change without notice – please report any dead links you find to instructions@br-eng.info. I will scan the LEGO site occasionally for updates.

Anyway, I hope someone finds this useful.