Brickworld 2018 is now in the books, and things are starting to return to normal again here at BMR. Once again I made the trip to Chicago to attend, representing both my club, PennLUG, and Brick Model Railroader. Brickworld is a premier LEGO® fan event taking place at the Renaissance Hotel & Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL and is one of the largest LEGO fan events in North America. It draws some of the best builders in the country, and even a few from over seas. It is also typically the largest gathering of LEGO train fans, and train clubs in the US. If you love LEGO trains, you’ll be in good company at Brickworld.
As usual there was so much to see, it was almost impossible to see everything, and running the PennLUG layout kept me pretty busy, so I did not get around nearly as much as I wanted to photograph models and layouts. There were a few great moments and finds that I want to highlight though.
Train Olympics
At BrickFair last year, Andy Mollmann and Nick O’Donell from OKILUG hosted the very first Train Olympics. For Brickworld this year, Andy and Nick brought the fun to Chicago and it was seriously good fun. The Train Olympics consisted of three events this time, and one exhibition event. The first was the Train Pull, a test of how much weight each locomotive could pull. The winner of the pull was Nick O’Donnel with his Union Pacific diesel. The second event, the Train Tug-O-War pitted locomotives against each other in a classic tug of war battle. Once again Nick and his UP engine was the winner, though my Norfolk & Western Y6b steam locomotive put in a valiant second place effort for both events. Unfortunately I was bested buy the superior weight the driving wheels of Nicks UP locomotive.
By far though, the most exciting event was the Demolition Derby. The event consisted of two locomotives facing off on a single track, each speeding toward each other, and meeting in a glorious crash. But this was no contest of durability. Instead, there was a much more entertaining goal. The winner of the event would be the locomotive with the most spectacular crash voted on by the crowd. It was truly a symphony of destruction, but it was all in good fun. And besides a few minor scuffs, all entries lived to see another day. The winner of the derby was my own Neighbor Hood Trolley, a model I built and modified from original instructions created by John Neal. The trolley had a not so nice day in the Neighborhood as it was repeatedly crashed and abused. But it took it in good stride and kept coming back for more. It is a good little trolley.
After the event, a few of us stuck around for a little exaction. One of the events under consideration for next year is some type of train jumping event. So to test some ideas, we set up a jump and and the resilient little trolley took flight.
You can see some highlights from the demo derby in the video bellow.
New Product from BrickStuff, Lighted Billboards
One of the coolest new products I found at the event was a new series of lighted billboards from BrickStuff.
https://www.brickstuff.com/store/c17/Billboards.html
These have been custom-designed to build on some of your favorite LEGO® themes, and they’re sure to add excitement to your city. Each billboard is the same size as an 8×16 LEGO® tile, so you can use the included sticky squares to mount it just about anywhere. The boards can offer several different lighting sequences to choose from. Each kit includes one billboard with 7-wire connecting cable, one power supply/lighting animation driver, and one strip of sticky squares. The power supply can operate on either four AAA batteries (not included), or a connecting cable is also included that works with the standard Brickstuff power supplies. You can either use batteries to power the billboard or connect it to the rest of your Brickstuff lights to power everything centrally.
I had to pick up the Metro Liner billboard and I’m really impressed. These will be a great addition to any builders city scape.
BrickTracks launches its Kickstarter for R104 Turnouts
Scott Hoffmeyer of BrickTracks was in attendance this year. He brought along the most recent sample of BrickTracks’ new R56 curve, with should be shipping soon. BrickTracks also announced their new Kickstarter Campaign for producing R104 turnouts.
PennLUG has been using a 3D printed prototypes of the R104 switches for over a year and we love them. The quality of the design is as good as you would find from LEGO themselves. We have run numerous trains through them at some insane speeds and they have worked flawlessly.
Scott has done his home work and come up with a real winner. The quality of the curves produced so far by BrickTracks has been excellent, and there is no reason not to expect the same from these new R104 switches.
Seriously, go support this project now. This is worth you’re investment.
Conclusion
This year was another fun and exhausting event. It was great to catch up with old friends, and make some new ones. Great models were on display, and lots of train running was squeezed into a short few days. I’m seriously looking forward to next year. Already there is talk between a few of us in PennLUG about next year’s plans. Brick Model Railroader will also be there again, and we hope to play a much bigger role in the train side of the event.
Until then though, enjoy some photos and video from this years event.
Brickworld 2018 Flickr Gallery
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Looks like it was a great show! Someday, I’ll make it to one. Thanks for posting all the pictures and videos. One question – do you guys glue your trucks? I ran some BMR cars recently and had trouble with several self-destructing just after some light usage.