This page will be full of information and pictures of my modifications of official LEGO sets! The MODs here are listed in chronological order, that is, the order in which I made them.

It's still under construction right now, but feel free to check out my flickr photostream or YouTube channel, links to the right!

So, at this point in Brixton Valley's history, a brand new Town Hall (10224) was founded and the mayor decided to repurpose the old Town Hall.

So that is the original building, which is very impressive as it is and I was in two minds as to whether or not to adapt it. But the idea of Brixton Valley having two Town Halls just didn't sit right with me, so I went ahead and repurposed the building into a public library.

So, as you can see, it's a pretty large building, obviously modularised and two levels which all have interiors as well. As usual, I have tried to stay as close to the original set as possible; in doing so, I have kept the clock tower facade over the front door, as well as the fountaion and garden and of course the window design for the bottom stories.

On to the things I added, the stone work on the side of the building was something I felt the building needed, just to give it that old school look. And of course the lettering, 'PUBLIC LIBRARY' across the front of the building.

So the lettering is done the same as the 'Pets' lettering in the Pet Shop, 10218, modular building. So nothing ground breaking there, while this technique is very brick heavy but I love the look of it.

I spent a lot more time on the interior on the ground floor than any of the other floors, and in fact for the top floor, it is very minimal and even childish, but we'll get to that later. The bookcases I did spend a bit of time on to get the look right, i wanted them to look old but also practical. So the books are actually made up of 2 x 2 plates and tiles, I took great pleasure in finding as many different colours as possible when I was ordering the pieces on Bricklink.

And this is what most of those plates went in to! The main book case in the main section of the library is the focal point of the interior.

You may notice that the floor is untiled too, this is something which I originally planned on doing but at the time of collecting the bricks for the extension, I was short on money and just wanted to get it done. This may be something I look to rectify in future, but we will see.

So my interior design was beginning to faulter by this point, but I knew I had to include the green lamps somewhere in the interior. These lamps are the one thing almost every library around the world has (aside from books, I guess!!!) and I didn't want Brixton Valley's to be any different. So with them in, on top of the tan study desks, things seemed complete.

The middle floor, being the more 'serious' part of the library, also has the smaller book cases which house the serious books; things like law books and the like find their homes on thi floor.

As mentioned, by the time I got to the top floor interior, I was pretty much done and just wanted to get the thing built. So the multimdeia section is about the only bit worth showing you. The rest is made up of furniture I made from bits and pieces I had in the collection, including an ugly rug, the story was that it was donated to the library by a long time member and they had no choice but to put it somewhere.

So that's the run down on this repurposing, something that is happening more and more in the world these days, as buildings become listed for heritage reasons, we have to add a new touch to the insides. Plus, I like the idea of having a library in town, despite the book becoming a thing of the past.

YouTube tour

flickr album

There has been 2 incarnations of this MOD, the first was just a modularised and 'completed' version of the original art deco Cinema in the Town Plan, 10184, set. This cinema is probably my absolute favourite building from any set LEGO has ever made.

I really enjoyed modifying this set and was very happy with this version, including the custom The Simposons Movie, Avengers and Pirates of the Caribbean movie posters.

Much of the interior I kept as I really liked the original ideas in the interior. The popcorn and candy stand was simple but very clever and the cinema itself was very well done too, so much so that I duplicated it to make the bottom floor house twin cinemas.

Cinema 1 holds five minifigs and Cinema 2 holds six. The popcorn and candy stand has been modified, only slightly. The candy on the left is meant to be a pick-and-mix area, somewhat inspired from the original popcorn stand.

My favourite modification to this building although, was the lights on the ceiling of the entrance. This took a long time to figure out how to fit it in and what pieces to use, but once I figured it out, I was super happy with the result.

But this was not enough for me, I still felt it could be better, more complete...

I added a second story and of course that required an extra facade, which I tried to keep to the original art deco style that was seen throughout Town Plan, 10184.

With all of this extra room, the interior almost made itself. Once again keeping to the original set, I made the top floor a large IMAX style screen, housing no less than 20 minifigs!!

As well as the seating, I included a classic brick built projector and a projection room at the back of Cinema 3.

Also upstairs, a bar with a second popcorn stand.

I have since made some air conditioning for the roof which you can see on the tour video, (link below).

So all in all, this was an extremely enjoyable MOD build. I love the style of the original set and enjoyed adding to the set keeping myself restricted to the same guidlines within the set. I have seen some other MODs of this set but mine is my favourite (even if I do say so!), some of the others are fantastic but tend to come away from the look of the original set a little bit too much for my liking. Anyway, I'll let you all be the judge, please like and comment on flickr and YouTube!

YouTube tour

flickr album

So as you can see I have made another modular modification to the pizzeria and the bike shop, from the City Corner, 7641/60031, in fact I have combined the two into one 16 x 32 building. Once again, I have tried to stay true to the original set; the bottom floor exterior of both the pizzeria and the bike shop in the set are reletively plain, so this was pretty easy to expand. I arranged it so the stickered white pillar was for Shop 1, being the bike shop and the grey stickered pillar was for shop 2, being the pizeria. Then the roof is rotated by 90 degrees so it slopes down either side of the building, as opposed to the original design which is sloped towards the street.

So the original set was nice, but I kept finding it annoying to have house them next to each other, as they looked out of place already being numbered and spread throughout the city separately, so combining them seemed logical. Also, I have Pizza To Go, 6350 and Cycle Fix-It Shop, 6699, so to have these two other 'remakes' of those sets floating around the city seemed a little unrealistic.

So, on to the interior; the bottom floor is the bike shop and the passage way that leads up the stairs to the pizzeria, no one wants to lug their bikes up a flight of stairs for repairs!! *cough cough*

Nothing overly fancy, just enough so we know what's happening inside the shop. All of the interior shop features from the set are included in the MOD and I stole the design for the vice from an awesome LEGO set.

So, once again, feeling like my town already has a pizzeria, I wanted this one to be slightly different, so this one is an all-you-can-eat style buffet pizza restaraunt. The pizzas are all there on the heated buffet, you pay for you plate and pile on the slices!! Me and brother used to love going to our local Pizza Huts here in Sydney and eat ourselves silly, sadly they have all closed down now, so it's only take away or delivery from Pizza Huts now :(

The attic space up the stairs is the kitchen which is pretty cramped and unfinished, but it has the oven from the original set and bench top for creating the pizzas to go into said oven.

So that is the MOD of the LEGO set City Corner, 7641/60031. It's a great set all in all, my favourite part of it is probably the bus, which I modified to be right hand drive, as my city is in Australia, we drive on the left side of the road, so for safety reasons I made the bus right hand drive. I think I may have to find a couple more buses or Bricklink a couple more to make a fleet of them for Brixton Valley.

YouTube walkthrough

flickr album

This was my first major MOD undertaking. I started out wanting to just to expand the awesome LEGO set, 3661, into a modular building and ended up making a 32 x 32 corner modular, based on 3661. If you have seen any of my video walkthroughs, you will note I like to keep MODs as close to the original set as possible, so many of the original details are still present in the MOD.

So that's the original set, as you can, it is quite different, but also, many of the key details I liked, remain in the building. I wanted the building to look modern and banks always like to show off how much money they have, so I wanted the building to be striking as weel. This lead to the round tower on the corner.

And now on to the interior, this needed to be modern as well, as this bank is obviously 'new' money given the facade of the building. This also works really well with the new official modular due to be released 1st January 2016, being the Brick Bank, 10251; I see Brick Bank being the bank that's been around the town for decades and the City Bank being the new bank that is trying to keep 'em honest, but in the process, becoming just as money grabbing as the rest of them!!

So the ground floor includes the tellers, with full floor to ceiling walls for protection of the bank workers, with just the traditional 'slit' in the glass for transactions. Of course, the door is only opened via the keypad, so no code, no entry! The colours are from the original set, medium dark flesh (medium nougat) walls, dark blue (earth blue) for the counter tops and blue chairs for the waiting area.

The tiling on the floor has now been completed, obviously at the time I was missing the 2 x 2 dark blue tiles, (being some of my orders on Bricklink, somehow I totally missed ordering these with the rest of the bricks!!). A white floor with dark blue and yellow patches seemed the most appropriate pattern for the bank. I find floor tiling one the most effective 'finishing' detail for modular buildings.

The middle story is offices for the bank workers. I envisage the people who sell home loans and open up new accounts and things like that work on this floor. So the office in the middle is the biggest, for the top ranked seller and you can't quite make it out, but there are some trans-clear bricks in the walls between the offices, which are meant to be those think glass bricks that you see in offices sometimes. The flowers in the vase (and missing flowers in the other vase) are also from the original set, they are in a warm gold (pearl gold) goblet.

The top story is in two parts, the first section is the manager's office, which includes the manager's desk with swivel chairs and a lovely water feature to be seen as soon as you finish climbing the stairs.

Also, hopefully you can see, another keypad, which only the manager can use to get into the safe....

And here is the safe! Full of piles of cash, gems, jewels, goblets, gold bars and precious elements! The shelves are from the orginal set but the piles of cash and so on have been added. I also added some safe deposit boxes which you can just see in the bottom right corner of the picture.

This is a better view of the safe deposit boxes, but also a good over view of the top story.  The safe door, which you can't quite see is also from the orginal set, I thought this was an amazing detail and a great build in the original set so I had to have it in my MOD. I'm very interested to build the safe door in the new modular, Brick Bank, 10251.

So that's the run down of my MOD of the LEGO City set Bank & Money Transfer, 3661. I hope you like it, feel free to leave comments on the flickr photos or the YouTube walkthrough video.

YouTube walkthrough

flickr album