Brick Town Talk

I'm planning on covering some group layouts later this week as the minifig-scaled model, but today I'm mentioning another model (since I've already written about it elsewhere). As a big fan of the Café Corner kit and original models made to work with it, I've long been a fan of the blog Brick Town Talk, which features news and models related to these incredibly detailed town models. Brick Town Talk has a different format from this site - here, I focus on models and builders and a general tone, but Brick Town Talk just documents all the great things going on in that one theme with a quick link or two, not usually going into commentary. The idea is to show other hobbyists (primarily adults) what ideas are being used elsewhere in the world. Considering how busy I've been lately, it might surprise you to hear that I've recently joined the Brick Town Talk team and started posting there. However, that format - one with no rules on variety or content, and with considerably less links and commentary within posts - takes much less time to post in. Since I have most of my recent LEGO news and creations set up to load automatically in Google Reader, it's not too hard to find models. It takes only a minute or two to provide that one link that Brick Town Talk requires, but it can takes about 15 minutes to an hour for each post here (since for LMOTD, I have to skim through photos for objectionable content, track down details about who built it and where he/she posts his/her models, write commentary, queue it up for a time when we haven't seen many other things like it recently, keep track of holidays, resize photos, moderate comments...) Earlier today, I wrote (in addition to a post for tomorrow for LMOTD) about an old-fashioned building facade for Brick Town Talk. That post still has a bit of commentary a la LMOTD, but most posts there don't. Think of this one as a bonus model-of-the-day. I probably won't cross-post to both sites very often, since that niche should only show up here once every month or so with my current posting schedule (and of course, it's now my only outlet for excellent town models with disturbing things happening inside). It is likely that I'll (when the work isn't duplicated) post about models here and then copy the commentary to the other site - with scheduled post publishing here and no schedule on BTT, it's possible things might show up there before they appear here (which was also the situation before). While BTT is aimed primarily for adults, I do think it's fairly kid-friendly - and it's certainly a great way of finding new town ideas to try, regardless of how many parts you have or how old you are. If you're interested in the hobby and town buildings at all, it's essential viewing. They have an RSS feed and two posts per week (on average - there are no rules for how often to post there). Be warned that occasionally something uncouth might come up, but it is a great blog and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in detailed town models.