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The song goes “Our State Fair is a great State Fair, don’t miss it, don’t even be late.” Minnesotans are pretty proud of our Fair, it’s twelve days of food, entertainment, food, people watching, concerts, food, shopping, and did we … Continue reading
Oh, it felt so good to be back together with a few thousand other LEGO fans!
We displayed our latest project, our first “5x” train layout. Everything built out of regular bricks, except up-sized to be five times bigger than the original models. We had lots of people stop and give us wonderful comments.
More pictures!
Each flower is about 5 inches tall. The tree is around 20 inches tall.
The original set was released in 1976. A simple crossing, with a sentry house and one of the original LEGO minfigures – before they had arms or faces. The pumper car we added, with Engineer Max and Engineer Maxine.
The original size, with our 5x version behind it.
The 5x pump car runs, but I need to upload the video to YouTube and link it from there: https://youtu.be/-Vmrd3ScImY
If you want to build your own 5x flowers, here are the directions:
So things have changed a bit since our last post…
Things have changed a LOT.
We’re all staying home, and staying apart, and wearing masks in public to protect each other. The museum is still closed, but we’ve got a way you can check up on us: We’re doing a ‘virtual open house’ this Saturday, April 25th. 1pm to 2:30pm Central time, we’ll be live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/651279429038990/
I think we’ll be able to take questions through the Facebook comments as well, so we hope to hear from you on Saturday.
The museum will also be shooting more video that day, we’ll send a link to that when it’s ready for viewing.
Are you watching LEGO Masters on FOX? We sure are, and we’re enjoying it very much. Will Arnett is a fun host and Jamie and Amy are tough but fair judges. Building something amazing with a short time limit is really challenging, and all the teams have done really great builds so far.
Would we love to be on the show? Of course! But in the mean time, we’re hanging out at the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum and building on the train layout and working on some new trains.
And, big news: Saturday, April 4th is Smithsonian Museum Day at museums across the country. You can sign up for FREE tickets at the Smithsonian Magazine website, including tickets to the TCMRM. Last year we had a wonderfully crazy busy day at the museum, and we’re quite sure April 4th will be wonderfully crazy busy as well.
Come out and see us sometime! We’d love to see you, and if you bring your LEGO train when a GMLTC club member is there we’ll let you run your train on our layout.
Has it really been almost a year since we last updated this website? We tell people we’re lousy at promoting ourselves, I guess that really is true…
But, even if we’re lousy at promoting, we’re great at building and displaying. We’re still at the Twin City Model Railroad Museum, in a great spot right by the door as people enter – so they can’t miss us! We constantly get great comments about the layout, and we love to talk to the guests and answer questions. And we’re still willing to run your guest trains – if you bring your LEGO train when a GMLTC club member is there, we’ll pull our train off the tracks so you can run yours.
Come out and see us! “Night Trains” is running for another month, through Saturday, February 29th. Every Saturday night from 6pm to 9pm.
We’re approaching our first anniversary at the Twin City Model Railroad Museum and this has turned out to be a great partnership for us. We so very much appreciate them for taking a chance on us to host our train layout. We keep hearing from both TCMRM visitors and volunteers how happy they are to have us there. We really appreciate your support, both of our club and of the museum!
Layout #5 is growing. We’re finishing up the back side of the mountain and have something special we’re working on there in anticipation of the upcoming Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.
If you haven’t visited the museum, or you haven’t been there for awhile, please come out and see us. The museum is celebrating its 85th year (WOW!) this year. They’ll also be celebrating their third anniversary at the current location soon. Night Trains are still going on through the end of February, so this is your chance to see a whole bunch of train layouts at different scales, all lit up under moonlight conditions. (J-1 has been adding a lot of lights to our train layout over the past few months to help us fit right in!)
We still love guest trains! We’re trying to staff the layout during museum hours as many Saturdays and Sundays as we can, as well as some Fridays. So as long as one of us is on site, just ask!
We look forward to seeing you!
Greetings from the GMLTC! It’s been a while since we posted, we’ve been busy building and working on our layout.
November 10th & 11th is Brick Fest Live at St. Paul RiverCenter. Club members Jesse and Roger will have models on display, along with many other brick-related fun and games.
On the train layout front, now is a great time to visit the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum! November through February they’re running their very popular Night Trains, Saturday nights from 6pm – 9pm. The room lights are turned off, blue lights simulate moonlight, and the layouts are lit. Their famous O-Scale layout looks so nice with the lights down low.
We’ve been inspired to add more lights to our layout, too.
Museum hours:
We try to have GMLTC club members there on Saturdays & Sundays, and some Fridays. Come out and visit us soon!
We’re very pleased to announce we have our LEGO train layout set up at the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum in St. Paul. We’re excited to be working with them, they have such extensive knowledge of trains and model railroading, so we’re hoping to learn a lot.
Their location is just off University Ave and Transfer Road, near the old Amtrak depot. Take I-94 to the Cretin/Vandalia exit, go north on Vandalia to University, then right one stoplight to Transfer Road. Left on Transfer Road, the museum is on the right.
If you’re into trains and/or model railroading, this is a place you need to visit!
We hope to have club members there on Saturdays and Sundays to answer questions. And if you bring your guest train while we’re there, you can run it on our layout.
A big “Thank You” to our friends at Brickmania for hosting us the last several years. You’ve pushed us to be better than we were before, and we’re looking forward to building with you again in the future.
It’s been a long time since you may have been able to see us in a public venue, and given some of the changes that may be lying ahead, it may be some time again. Here’s your chance to see us in action again.
Brickmania Toyworks is putting on a Lego Fan Expo for the holidays! We’ve been continuing to build out Train Layout #5 and have also been hard at work on other special treats. Our friends from TCLTC and TwinLUG also have a bunch of new things to share. And, of course, our friends at Brickmania have also been hard at work, putting together new sets, new displays, and a new holiday experience all about the brick!
Tickets are on sale now at http://www.brickmania.com/toyworks/
Hope to see you there!
Long overdue, but here’s a quick summary of the history of our club and what we’re all about: GMLTC History
GMLTC.ORG 