CactusBrick Minifig Scale City Road Standard

CactusBrick has a standard minifig scale city road module. This allows for multiple club members to add to our city/train layout. The standard is built onto of a 32×32 baseplate. The road section itself is 32 studs wide laying on the side between sidewalks on each edge. Here’s a picture of a basic road section:

City Road Module
City Road Module

The road section itself going from bottom to top is a full white plate layer, 5 black bricks, a striped white/black plate layer (2 studs white, 4 studs black, repeat), 5 black bricks, a yellow plate, a black plate, another yellow plate, 5 black bricks, a striped white/black plate layer (same pattern as previous striped layer), 5 black bricks and a layer of white tile for the top.

The sidewalk is 2 studs wide on one side and 3 studs wide on the other. The sidewalk is build with layer of brick on top of the baseplate with a layer of tile on top of the brick. The outer edge of the sidewalk has the standard Technic Brick with Hole at the 10th and 11th stud location from both edges.

City Road Module Edge
City Road Module Edge

The edge of the sidewalk (next to the road) is Light Bluish Gray tile for both sides of the road with Dark Bluish Gray tile for the remaining sidewalk. Depending on what’s next to the road, green bricks/plates are allowed for the sidewalk as well as the entire sidewalk being Light Bluish Gray if the building next to it has Light Bluish Gray sidewalks. Optional features of the road include the studs on the side in the 3 stud wide sidewalk section to hold the road and a technic brick on the side of the road to line up with other roads. Also, there are 3-way and 4-way intersections as well as curves. The most basic additional feature is a crosswalk for some of the roads.

CactusBrick Microcity Standard

We have a micro city standard based on the TWINLUG Micropolis Standard. This standard is described here:

http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-standard/

The 16×16 module (or quarter block) is the smallest module but we have 32×32 modules (a full block) and even a multi block module that we have shown at events. The key is for the sidewalks and roads to line up with it’s neighbors. We use the standard White Tile 1 x 2 for sidewalk.

Here is our microcity display shown at Phx Comicon 2014:

Micro City by Corey, Stephanie, Josh, Steve N and Clark.
Micro City by Corey, Stephanie, Josh, Steve N and Clark.

We also have edging so the sides of the modules are not seen (most of the siding is using filler brick so it generally doesn’t look very good):

Micro City edging
Micro City edging

One club member has built a freeway for the micro city:

Micro City Freeway
Micro City Freeway

Other ideas for similar features are rivers or canals, expanded/wider roads, light rail or train, and elevated trains. The only catch is it needs to be integrated with the rest of the micro city. So, in general, these non standard width elements must go from one edge of the layout to the other edge. For example, the freeway goes completely through the layout with special pieces to form up to the edging for both sides.

Phoenix Comicon 2014

We were at Phoenix Comicon 2014 this year in the exhibitor hall (next to the Star Wars guys). This was our largest display ever.

May 17, 2014 Meeting

We had 29 people attend our May 17, 2014 meeting. We are now looking for a larger room since it was too crowded in the current room.

Here’s some pictures of what people brought in:

McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park Display

We have a 4 ft by 8 ft area in the model train building at the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park (7301 E Indian Bend Rd, Scottsdale, AZ) thanks to the great guys at the Paradise & Pacific Railroad club. We just changed out the display. This display will be there until late September. The first few pictures show us putting in the new display.

April 19, 2014 Meeting

We had 28 people attend our April 19, 2014 meeting.

Here’s some pictures of what people brought in:

Tempe History Museum – March 15, 2014

Cactus Brick had a display at Tempe History Museum. The display included a city/train layout, several historic buildings and a few misc Lego items.

March 15th, 2014 Meeting

We will be holding our March 15th meeting during our show at the Tempe History Museum. The show setup starts at 10AM, public viewing starts at Noon and breakdown starts at 8PM. Everyone is welcome anytime during those hours.

Tempe History Museum is at Southern and Rural (behind the Tempe Library).

CactusBrick show at Tempe History Museum on March 15, 2014
CactusBrick show at Tempe History Museum on March 15, 2014

February 15th, 2014 Meeting

We had 18 people attend our February 15th meeting (1 new person). No major event for the meeting. We had a lot of agenda items to discuss.

Here’s some pictures of what people brought in:

Tempe Marketplace Display — Feb 6 to Feb 9, 2014

Cactus Brick had a display at Tempe Marketplace on Feb 6 to Feb 9, 2014. The display was our largest city/train layout we have ever done. This event was to help promote THE LEGO MOVIE which opened on Feb 7th. We had Emmet and Wyldstyle from Legoland on Thursday and Friday.