Subject:
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The Tale of a Monorail
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Sun, 7 Mar 1999 05:27:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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669 times
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On 11 Feb I bought a 6990 monorail on eBay. I was, for some reason I
still don't quite understand, the only bidder, and I got it for $175
(which considering other monorail prices, I thought was a good deal).
On Thursday last it arrived, having been opened by Customs on the way.
Not very well packed - the seller had put the whole lot, half assembled,
in a box and packed it on top with wadded newspaper. Everything had
disintegrated and the small pieces had migrated under the box flaps and
into the newspaper. I had to unwrap every sheet and make sure there were
no strays hiding from me.
All the major parts were there but it was all very dusty, so I bagged up
the washable parts in an old pillowcase and put them in the washer with
a load of towels for padding.
When the washer finished its cycle I opened the door, started to pull
out a towel, and was greeted by the merry tinkling sound of lego bricks
falling to the floor. Oops. The pillowcase had been too old: it had
split in the wash in several places. I spent the next 45 mins or so on
my knees in front of the washer (front loader, you understand),
carefully pulling out each wet towel and getting all the bricks which
clung to it, and those which fell off onto the floor. For those who
don't know, the color scheme of 6990 (apart from the transparent pieces)
is all black and white. Did I mention I have a black and white
marble-pattern bathroom floor? Yes. It was fun. Then I stuck my head
into the washer and retrieved what I hoped was all the remaining pieces.
Surface tension sticks small tiles to washer interiors quite nicely.
Amazingly, even the tiny antenna/control stick pieces did not seem to
have disappeared through the holes in the waher drum.
That done, and them all dried, I put it together. Fun! Came with no
instructions so it was interesting working off black-and white laser
prints of downloaded instruction scans. No way to tell which color trans
parts were supposed to go where, so I made an artistic arrangement <g>.
All there except for a few 1x1 and 1x2 tiles which I could replace from
stock. Runs beautifully. I have some extra track from a classified ad
buy a few weeks ago so I set up a long point to point run and let it
trundle back and forth. The cats don't know what to make of it.
There were a lot of parts left over. Wheels, wings, white quarter
octagon walls, all kinds of stuff. Back to Pause to see what they might
build.
Turns out I have 6925 Interplanetary Rover, 1621 Lunar MPV vehicle, and
1620 Astro Dart as well as the monorail.
I'm happy. And there are _still_ some parts left, though not enough to
make another set.
Next: take the whole thing apart and build something which looks
suitable for a town. This lot has some _great_ parts in it but the
structures are not to my taste (even for a faroff planet they don't make
much sense). My daughter has already laid claim to the big trans blue
1/4 domes for an underwater complex we're planning, but she wants
another two to make a decent dome. Anyone got 2 big 1/4 domes they'd
like to trade?
Kevin
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