My quest for Inter-City train (to build the 7740 Inter-City Passenger Train from spare parts) has been mostly dormant since I found myself again lacking plates, waiting for the right moment to resurrect it. I did, however, pay a little attention to the project when re-visiting LEGOLAND Billund and the LEGO Shop there. Namely, I explored the local Pick a Brick wall and the Build a Minifigure station, shown partially below in my two 2012 pictures.
Although the brick à la carte selection at the world’s largest LEGO Shop in Billund is impeccable, as is the Build a Minifigure station there, the reality of exactly how large the overall LEGO part selection is hit home again. Only a very limited portion can be available at even the largest of stores. For example, 7740 Inter-City Passenger Train included 10 minifigures and given the year, 1980, all of them of rather simple compositions – yet I had trouble acquiring anything beyond pants at the Build a Minifigure. There were no classic faces or shirts available (I know some of them are still manufactured), although there were some classic accessories.
Unlike the Pick a Brick wall, where you pay by weight, Build a Minifigure lets you only build complete sets of 1 or 3 minifigures. I therefore completed six partial minifigures with whatever shirts and accessories I could find. (The store was open for the last hour of the day and the station was packed with people, it was a bit of a chore.) In the end the minifigures look nothing like the passengers and crew of 7740 Inter-City Passenger Train, this gang is more reminiscent of the band Village People or something. Don’t worry, I won’t use these as is. Here is my loot:
As you can see from the photo, I also paid a visit to the Pick a Brick wall, with similarly measly results. I was armed with the parts list of 7740 Inter-City Passenger Train (some of which I had already acquired new), but there weren’t really any positive surprises there either. I ended up getting some nice transparent and golden pieces, completely irrelevant to this project, plus more relevantly extra pieces of red, yellow and black – just in case. I also bought some flowers, I love LEGO flowers (except for the fact that you never know what to do with the fourth petals). I could definitely use better bookkeeping, I’m not completely sure which of the smaller parts I’m still missing…
P.S. While the Build a Minifigure station sells only full minifigures, the Pick a Brick wall sometimes has minifigure accessories as pay by weight. Last year my son bought a bunch of minifigure construction hats there. He has more construction hats than minifigures probably.
Quest for Bricks 
3 Responses to Banging head on Pick a Brick wall
[…] to help the cause – and dabbled with Power Functions too as an alternate means of power. As I reported yesterday, this summer I also bought some extra parts from LEGOLAND Billund’s LEGO Shop. Thus, so far I […]
[…] because minifigures are not that easy to acquire new – you are at the mercy of whatever those building stations in stores have available, they may have next nothing useful, but they might also have surprising […]
[…] bar. The rest I built from a combination of other old spares and the few new parts I was able to acquire from the Billund LEGO Shop and from other new set purchases. I found getting new pants was pretty easy, […]