LEGO City construction has begun

After a few false starts putting together my LEGO railroad, I'm finally making progress. My first few starts failed because I kept short circuiting the track and trying to do complex stuff such as running 2 engines at the same time on different loops with 1 controller. I went ahead and ordered a second controller off eBay (still waiting for it) for < $10 shipped (new ones are over $40) so that I could have 2 independent tracks. One track being similar to an elevated (L) train in a city such as Chicago and the other being a freight train. To complicate matters, I wanted to have the freight train track cross my road sections as much as possible at right angles.

So while I still have a lot of work to do (I want to make the upper track go through a building and have to build some stations as well as more buildings and vehicles), I am making progress. I know that I'm crazy as I'm spending lots of time playing with a child's toy.

Here are some pictures of my mess:

I started a LEGO frenzy!

In a post last month, I mentioned that I believed that LEGO was in violation of the Star of Life trademark for their rescue series. I contacted LEGO to inquire about it as it is important to me that this trademark be used for true emergency medical related uses and that when someone sees this mark, they don't just write it off, but can rely on its meaning. LEGO responded that the trademark was from a government agency and as such, it didn't have "copyright protection", according to their legal department. (Trademark and copyright protection are different.) They said, "As long as LEGO Systems Inc. makes an exact replica of the vehicle on which it usually appears, we would not be violating their rights. Therefore the depiction of the Star of Life logo is not in violation of any trademark infringement."

OK, fine, I didn't quite believe what they had to say as LEGO was using the trademark on replica buildings as well as replica vehicles. I figured they just thought I was a wacko and basically ignored me. In an interesting twist, I received a followup email from LEGO today indicating that their designers in Denmark weren't aware of the trademark registration (which was kind of my point, it may have already been diluted too much that people don't know its proper use) and they'll research it further. They also said that they'll discontinue using it if they find they are in violation. Hmmm...I think this means stock up on this year's rescue sets as they could be gone before you know it, similar to LEGO using a red cross years ago for the rescue series; I'd put money on it that the American/International Red Cross objected to its use. (From what I understand the Red Cross objected to the Boy Scouts using the red cross on a skill award and it was changed to a green cross.)

I'm lazy

Yes, I'll be the first to admit I'm lazy. No, not the kind of lazy where I'd sit around drinking beer and watching football. I'm talking about finding the easy way to do something. In this case, I was looking to build a table to hold my new Lego trains. I designed 2 tables, each being 3.5' x 7' with legs and wheels. After going to Home Depot and pricing out the materials, I determined the price would be about $200 and require at least a day or two of building it. Somehow I got the brilliant idea to look at a ping pong (for those that want me to be accurate, table tennis) table. A regulation table is 9' x 5' and most of the ones consumers get fold up and have wheels. While not he exact size, this was an excellent solution. I asked one of my neighbors with a pickup truck if he'd help me pick it up and then I put it together when I got home. It is going to work out well and required a minimal amount of effort on my part.

Value of Lego bricks

In my searching, I found out that new Legos cost $6.99 per 1/4 pound at Legoland which is $27.96 per pound which seems very high, almost the price of gold :-). On eBay, I've found many lots of bulk Lego bricks from various sets. Using the $28 per pound price, I started comparing bulk lots on a per pound basis (including shipping) and only bid up to about $4.50 per pound. I've seen some auctions go to several hundred dollars for less than 20 pounds of Lego bricks. These aren't new bricks and come from random lots. The pictures on the auctions don't really tell you what you're getting, so I'm really confused as to why people keep driving up the price. For now, I've purchase a total of 21 pounds of Legos (in addition to the 10 or so pounds I bought a few weeks ago). Hopefully this will let me build what I want.