Bionicle Steam Engine

Name of Model: Bionicle Steam Engine

Created by: LMOTD blogger/international man of mystery Dan

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/sets/72157624353134893/

Details: Here's something I built. It's actually my first true Bionicle creation. I had gotten in the habit of buying used Bionicle sets for the Technic bits and the occasional part that wound up having broader usefulness. What started as a curiosity as to what could be done with these parts turned into inspiration when I saw the large curved panels that started showing up in vehicles in the 2009 line. They looked like they'd make great steam engine boilers in a few different sizes! Before long, I was combining Bionicle parts with some wheels from an Emerald Night set to create this unusual steam engine. It's not terribly practical - you generally want your engine to be heavy to increase traction, and this is extremely light - but it is drivable. The biggest lesson learned here is that building with Bionicle parts is way more fun than it looks. It's actually pretty thrilling when you see those "weird" and "useless" parts actually line up in a meaningful way. This model will be on display at Brickfair 2010, which is open to the public on August 7th & 8th, 2010 from 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM.

Thomas Sculpture (Day Out With Thomas event)

Name of Model: Thomas the Tank Engine

Created by master builders for the LEGO Company and Day Out With Thomas events

Dates at: http://parents.lego.com/en-US/news/thomas.aspx

Details: Sorry for the problems yesterday - that post still isn't fully up because of some technical difficulties on my end. In the interest of keeping things moving, here's a fresh model for today. For a few years now, American train destinations have been using "Day Out With Thomas" events to get kids interested in trains. Trains aren't widely used in the US, but Thomas is still a widely popular character here (with kids, anyway - there aren't as many of us adult Thomas fans out there). This year, LEGO is promoting their DUPLO Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends sets by providing DUPLO play areas and a giant sculpture of Thomas made out of regular-sized LEGO bricks. Not much info is available beyond that - I only realized LEGO was involved when some photos started showing up on flickr earlier this week (click on the photo above for more photos from that set). Sorry for the late announcement, but if you or some kids you know want to check this out, click here for the tour dates listed on LEGO's site. I'm assuming that the dates LEGO mentions are the only ones with LEGO involved - there might be other Day Out With Thomas events without this sculpture.

Clever Techniques in a Locomotive

Name of Model: BR52 Rev 02 of a German 1940s Steam Engine

Created by: sullis3

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=314380

Details: This spectacular locomotive makes use of some unusual techniques to get incredibly round details. I'm not entirely sure how the internals of this work, but the outsides of the rounded portion are done with a large amount of those fairly new 1x1 "cheese" slopes. Take another look at the tender, too - a good portion of that is built sideways too. The smaller details look very good. My favorite has to be the use of special Technic components to hold up the headlights. I'm pretty sure that some of the wheels here are third-party wheels made for hobbyists, but from what I understand, train builders don't consider this to be "cheating" because it allows for more accurate scale models. In any case, this is an excellent model, and I have to figure out how the rounded part was done.

Alonso de Chaves - A New Approach to Building Giant Boats

Name of Model: Alonso de Chaves

Created by: joaquin

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=310799

Details: If you're familiar with any of the official boat sets, you probably already know that they're not really to scale - most boats are much larger than that. Of course, building a fantastic ship out of LEGO® parts can be pretty difficult and expensive because of the sheer size of these things. Today's model uses a novel approach to get around this: only building half of a ship - and then using the open cross-section as a way to show off complete interiors. Rather than focus on building a huge exterior, joaquin did tons of details in the middle of the ship. I don't know if the engine room or workers' quarters are actually based on the life-size Spanish sea vessel or not, but they look pretty good. The rescue vessel that this ship was apparently based on was named for 16th century navigator/cosmographer Alonso de Chaves - but surprisingly, it's hard to find a good link to compare with.

Burlington Northern GP9

Name of Model: Burlington Northern GP9

Created by: Matt Hamann

Found at: http://news.lugnet.com/trains/?n=30048

Details: This train engine is excellent. There are quite a few great features here - while normally the studs-not-on-top sections might steal the show, the rails surrounding the engine actually turn out to be far more impressive. Sure, it looks simple enough once you recognize those silly Life-on-Mars theme arms, but then there's that angle where the railing moves up - how did he do that? Well, look closely - there is a pair of black minifig hands in there. Oh, and for all you train fans out there, this is a 5-wide cab, so there must be some offset stuff hiding in there somewhere. If only there were more pictures...