The Buildings
The list of town structures to complete our Lego town is complete and we are
ready to get started on the fun job of building. Read about how (in the absence of layered instructions) we'll recreate some fabulous Lego buildings based on ideas from the era.
The White and Trans Apartments
Our first build - a very exciting day after a long period of research. We decided our first build would be one a 'suggested' build without layered instructions as detailed in the flyer included in the Town Plan set.
The Hotel
We completed our first build last week and next we thought we'd try something larger and more complex: the hotel. This building appears on the baseboard cover and the flyer in the Town Plan set but, despite hours of searching online, we could not find a rear view of the building...
The Tiny House
What is becoming clear is an impending shortage of particular Lego pieces. Like reliving our childhood Lego days, we can see our grand vision for a large building project being thwarted by a lack of bricks. But what is available to us in 2016?
The Tiny House with the curved roof
Still awaiting our top-up supplies from BrickLink we'll keep on track with further small builds. This time it's the 2 small buildings which we dubbed: The Tiny House with the curved roof.
The Cafe
Yay! Our Bricklink orders have arrived and we are fully stocked with bricks and pieces, ready to complete our buildings. Next build: The Cafe. Built in a similar way to the Tiny House with the curved roof, this build has 3 structures, a roof level with a neat little "cafe" brick on each side.
The Kiosk
We've built five buildings as detailed on the flyer included in the Town Plan collection. Now we're constructing the final building from the flyer (with the exception of the ESSO Filling Station which we've categorised as a stand-alone set), The Kiosk.
The Church
Having completed the list of the flyer-inspired buildings we'll now turned our attention to replicating the stand-alone sets released in 1958 to accompany the complete Town Plan set. The first is The Church, set #309.
The Small Store
We found a little instruction set online for something called a "Small Store". A small building that was an add-on set (#210-2), dated somewhere around 1957-58. We'll to use our 'POST' brick instead of the 'KIOSK' brick.
The ESSO Filling Station
Having the layered instruction for the sets, while useful, still left us scratching our heads at times during certain builds (e.g. The Church). The ESSO Filling Station build will utilise skills we learnt with the cafe and the tiny house - the curved plates and the older-style bricks make lining up the roof line difficult.
The Fire Station
Our little Lego town is coming along nicely. We have an apartment building, a hotel, some houses, a cafe, a kiosk, a church and a petrol station. What else does every good town need? A fire station! And this one comes with it's own fire truck.
The VW Dealer
You may have noticed up to this point all the buildings have been red, white and transparent, but the Town Plan set also includes blue as the fourth brick colour. The VW Dealer may turn out to be a unique build. Not only as it was the first time we'll build with blue from the collection; but also because it has a very special "display window" to feature the latest in VW motoring excellence.
The VW Garage
Not to be confused with the VW Dealer building, the VW Garage, is a similar structure to the Fire Station, but will be made with blue bricks instead of red. We used our 'TAXI' brick to complete the build. Included in the set were two street signs and two VW Beetles.
The Garage
Around the time we were completing the VW Garage, we stumbled upon some artwork for Lego. Not sure if it was a box cover or just a promotional flyer, we discovered the garage at the front of the flyer was released as a stand-alone set (#236) in 1957.