About Brixton Valley

Brixton Valley is LEGO city layout which has been my pride and joy since 2012. During a period of my life in which I found myself in quite a difficult situation, I turned to my childhood and begun setting up my old LEGO sets for the first time in 10 long years. This brought about the end of my 'Dark Age' and little did I know, begun the slippery slope into AFOLism.

In early 2013, I began to become curious about new LEGO sets I could add to my simple city. I quickly discovered the amazing and at first overwhelming online presence of the LEGO community. I was astounded by incredible city layouts on YouTube, LEGO had made many changes over the past decade and the amount of detail that is now possible is fantastic. Some of the videos I first saw included Parrafilmsguy's LEGO City and jonpluc's LEGO City 2012. These layouts absolutely blew my mind, the details in the cities were absolutely amazing and showed me how far the classic toy had come in ten years.

The more I saw, the more I wanted. Once I realised that the majority of buildings in each of the afore mentioned layouts were actually sets, it was just a matter of saving up the money and discovering Bricklink and Brixton Valley truly began to take off.  The layout made its move from under a tarpoline under the garage to a custom built bench under the house. The sandstone foundations of the house insulate the room perfectly and no sunlight shines directly onto any brick, something I learned a little too late for a lot of my old classic 90s sets.

I set about collecting every modular building still available, starting with the Pet Shop, 10218. This was an extremely surreal experience, I used to build on the family holiday each Christmas, as the sets were too expensive for my folks to buy at home, we used to get them tax free from Norfolk Island every year. I would get the catalogue each year around July and pour over it for the next six months, dreaming of the sets I wanted. So to build a set at home was very strange, especially something so massive!!

Eventually I collected all the current modulars for sale up to and including the newly released Palace Cinema, 10232. But there was something missing. As I was frequently lurking on Eurobricks forum I notcied a particular thread about Bricklinking the Cafe Corner, 10182. Knowing that the new sealed sets of 10182 were selling well in excess of $500 or more, this seemed a much more achievable goal. And so it begun. Green Grocer, 10185, and eventually Market Street, 10190 were to follow and I had a complete set, even if some of the bricks were substitutions to keep costs down.

And then the discovery of LDD forged my way into MODs and MOCs. Being able to build a whole modular building digitally and then upload the bricks required to a 'wanted list' on Bricklink, absolute genius. Whoever in TLG came up with releasing LDD to the public deserves a share in their profits!

Anyway, that's the story of Brixton Valley. From humble beginnings under the garage to the now bustling little city under the house, surrounded in Sydney sandstone. For over 3 years now this has been one of my favourite past times, and although my life is in a very different place from 3 years ago, I still love not much more than going down to tinker with the bricks.

Please check back here regularly to see the city updates and the MODs and MOCs I create, I aspire to be an inspiration to people the same way parrafilmsguy and jonpluc were to me back in 2012. Of course for full updates, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on flickr!!

Happy Building!!!!