{"id":16,"date":"2025-04-18T20:14:27","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T20:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wordpress\/?p=16"},"modified":"2025-09-14T14:47:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T14:47:33","slug":"the-first-dark-age-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/2025\/04\/18\/the-first-dark-age-ends\/","title":{"rendered":"The first dark age ends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2000 I stepped over a shrub in the <a href=\"http:\/\/nl.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/No_Wires_Needed\">work<\/a> car park and felt a nasty twinge. Still, I walked to the train station and then home but the next day my knee had swollen painfully. I was a mystery to medical science and was told to take 2 weeks off and not walk on it. I was phlegmatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;d built up a large collection of Lego but as an adult I never made anything other than the included instructions. This seemed like a shame, a derth of imagination, missing the point of Lego. Here was a great chance to do something about that. However anything I built would have to be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>on a Grand scale and utilise a large proportion of my collection<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>include some technical innovation<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>be better than an official set (ah the hubris!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>oh and buying more Lego was cheating<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" src=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/behind.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since I was a kid I&#8217;ve had the idea of building a circular six engine in Lego based on the <a href=\"https:\/\/brickset.com\/sets\/854-1\">old blue go kart<\/a>. I still think my ideas of 60\u00b0 angles were ahead of their time. Once I&#8217;d got the engine I needed a vehicle for it to drive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I loved the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.evo.co.uk\/audi\/quattro-coupe\/205398\/audi-sport-quattro-s1-group-b-rally-car-driven\">Audi Quattro<\/a>, one of the first 4 wheel drives, compounded by a visit to a showroom with my Dad where the salesman gave me a photo of one in full-on rally kit. I was sure that it was possible to build suspension, steering and drive on the same axle without resorting to this kind of cheating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1023\" height=\"713\" src=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/016.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The final influence came later when I was building the boiler room. I was all set to use one of those sloping computer terminals from <a href=\"https:\/\/guide.lugnet.com\/set\/?q=483_1&amp;v=z\">Classic Space<\/a> when I realised that a Victorian tech level based around pneumatics, levers and cogs would suit the massive engine much better. Mind you this was in a time when Steampunk <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2013\/sep\/17\/short-fiction-flann-o-brien-review\">was neither profitable nor popular<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/20010217.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-21\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Talking of steampunk: imagine a steam train the size of city block, painted with insane levels of detail in the style <a href=\"https:\/\/peterelson.co.uk\/gallery\/category.php?cat=9\">Peter Elson<\/a>, all smoke and sparks. A robot in the foreground mace raised, similar robots beside the leviathan, at the point of resolution, to really ram home the scale. I&#8217;ve no idea whether the book was any good (or even featured such an engineering marvel) but the cover is still the best bit of steampunk I&#8217;ve ever seen. Wouldn&#8217;t it be great if the people of the internet could provide me with a scan of the cover?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How it all began with a circular 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moc","tag-space-planetary-explorer-chassis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lego.dougal.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}