Air Superiority

Every big city needs an aerial unit in their police department.  Bricksburgh isn't THAT big, but given Lego's enthusiasm for creating police sets our citizen:cop ratio is pretty high!  How do the police keep Bricksburgh citizens safe?  With their "eye in the sky" police helicopter, of course.  Last year we showed you some of the design in our post called:  "Rule the Air" and in the video below.

This year... we're showing you how to BUILD it.   Click on through!

Make a Simple 4x4... Easily!

We're still trying to get our feet under us-- it's just a super busy time of year around here.  Three new videos have been shot or at least partially recorded and we'll be posting those as they are finished.  The first one went up today and features a 4x4 that pretty much anyone can make using spare parts.

There are no special pieces required (though we are showing it with some special axles) and it using very common pieces. 

Read on to find out what is coming next.

Skate / Bike Shop Construction

Sold as part of Lego set# 7641, the Bike Shop was originally built far from the beach.  We've since expanded it and relocated it on the new tables into some prime beachfront property, as you can see in our earlier post "Boardwalk Changes".

Ah, but that is now... this is THEN.   When the Bike Shop was first built, it went up very slowly as Tyler posed the vignettes of the construction site.  Click on through to see the details and the special equipment we built to get the job done.

Fire Truck Wash Day

Wandered downstairs one day this Summer and looked around Bricksburgh to see what kind of setups Tyler had made.  I ran across this nice vignette of the firefighters washing one of the engines, so I got out our light (aka "Mr. Sun") and snapped a few pictures.

 My goal with the light was to recreate the sensation of a bright-- nearly harsh-- dazzling sunny Summer day.  Not sure what these guys would be washing a truck with their helmets still on...  but check out the rest of the pictures!

Onward & Upward

Summer is officially over.  Sorry.   We're all getting back to normal and settling in for a new school year.  The plan is for Tyler to start taking over more blogging duties but we're still working out how to find the time for that to happen.  In the meantime, I'll still be here-- and we'll continue to upload to YouTube as time and projects permit.

Since we're getting our blogging feet back under us after a nice long Summer, I thought we'd post a few pictures sort of along those lines.

Storm Trooper Vacation

Summer vacation is almost over here (in some places it already is!).  Kids will be heading back to school and Bricksburgh will take a backseat to homework and activities-- but we'll still be posting, don't worry.

As we ponder the return to "normal" we consider what would happen....  if Storm Troopers wanted a day of vacation at the beach?  We'll make a movie of that someday, but in the meantime....  what if?

Boardwalk Changes

The city continues to get further refined and built back up.  We've recently done some work in the boardwalk area-- which you may have seen in our video updates-- including a rather significant change to the way tourists get snacks.

Read on to see what we've changed and to get a closer look at some of our other beachfront improvements.

Shark Week

I don't really have a story to go with this picture...  but I keep seeing these funny Discovery Channel commercials promoting "Shark Wee" (which I assume must be very soon).  I ran across this fellow in town when we were shooting the race track video.

I guess it's a bad day to be scuba diving near Tyler Beach.

We're all back from our various trips AND our last house guests left this morning, so we'll get back in the Lego groove later this week.  In the meantime, there's no shortage of stuff you can catch up on at the links below.  

Swim safe!

Check out the videos on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@NZCUTR. 

 You can also follow up us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/brixburgh/.

Grand Prix of Bricksburgh

Growing up I used to watch Formula 1 races every chance I got.  Senna, Prost, Mansell...  those were the big names of the day.  I also had a rudimentary simulator on the computer that featured all of the race tracks on the F1 schedule.  My favorite-- by far--  was Monaco.  Something about the tightness of the circuit combined with the dense scenery to heighten the virtual sensation of speed.  Naturally, I would act out those races in my Legotown too (this was about 1986).  I'd transform all the sedans in town into "stock cars" and use the police car as a pace car.  A couple times I even stripped them down to chassis pieces with roof slope noses to look like F1 race cars!  Eventually Lego filled that void and began making ACTUAL race track/related sets.  Of all those, one is CLEARLY the best.... and we have two of them.

What to do....? what to do...?    Let me tell you.

Crash Test

Tyler is off this week, but we'll be posting a complete video tour and accompanying blog post that we prepared before he left.  It'll be ready in a couple days.  In the meantime, here's a crash test animation that Tyler made at the Victory Raceway Complex shortly before we shot the video tour.

He did this test animation of a crash on the front straight.   As this was only a test, we haven't added any sound or done anything in the way of backdrop or lighting...  Still, it gives you an idea of some of the possibilities.   I was going to just keep it to ourselves but since uploads to YouTube are free (yay!) I figured there was no harm in sharing it.