Michiana-LUG: The LEGO Users Group and LEGO Train Club 2003 -2007


This was the official website of Michiana-LUG between approx. 2003- 2007.
The content below is from their archived pages.
Take nostalgic trip back to their early days starting in 2003.

Their current site is:http://www.michlug.org where you will find all the latest news.

Welcome to Michiana-LUG, the LEGO Users Group and LEGO Train Club for the greater Michiana Area. We are based in Warsaw, in the Northern part of Indiana. Our members range in location from as far north as Detroit and as far south as Muncie, Indiana.

Michiana-LUG / LTC was founded in June of 2003, and our usual meeting place is now in Warsaw.

If you have an event you would like us to participate in, or one where you think we might be interested, feel free to e-mail us at [email protected] We are currently looking for events in the Michiana area in the winter and spring. If you know of a charity that might like to have a unique LEGO display, please contact us.

Michiana-LUG is proud to be an affiliate member of ILTCO, The International LEGO® Train Organization.

Members & Organization

  • Scott E. Sanburn - President, Treasurer
  • Lynn Sanburn
  • Amy Hughes - Vice President
  • Tony Hedglen
  • Grace Hedglen
  • Stefan Garcia - Secretary, Site Administrator
  • Andrew / Dave / Jeeves Jager
  • Victoria Alvarez
  • David Kohrman - Resident Curmudgeon
  • Chad Smith
  • Tim Richardson
  • Rick Hallman
  • Michael Bosch

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Frequently Asked Questions

 

1) What is Michiana-LUG?

Michiana-LUG is a organization located in Northern Indiana where people of all ages who love LEGO® products meet and discuss anything and everything in regards to our favorite hobby. We also do displays at various places, such as train shows. Our club was started in June of 2003, and we have meetings once every few months.

 

2) How do I join?

Right now, we have no formal requirements. You can post in our Forum, linked to on the left, or E-mail us if you would like to join our club, or to get some more information. We have a Yahoo Group that we use for most club business.

 

3) Are we supported by the LEGO® Corporation?

No. We are a fan based club, with no official ties to the LEGO® Corporation. Although they do know a number of clubs and organizations have been formed throughout the world, none of them are sponsored or endorsed by TLC.

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Editor's Note: The Michiana-LUG community mourns the loss of Bo Jackson, who left us over the holidays. Known for his vibrant passion for LEGO and his memorable win as the "Most Lego Blocks Used" last year, Bo also quietly championed the integration of our new database system, which he often referred to as the "Microsoft Access replacement". This upgrade, while perhaps less visible than a towering LEGO masterpiece, was crucial in ensuring our club's operations remained streamlined and up-to-date. Beyond these contributions, Bo's warmth, humor, and dedication left an indelible mark on our hearts. Wherever you are, Bo, we hope you're crafting both digital and LEGO wonders. You are deeply missed, and your legacy continues to inspire us.

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REMEMBER THESE EVENTS from 2003-2007

Table Building Party

October 25th, 2003

Report

We had a table building party, in preparation for our first show in Fort Wayne, which is GATS. We had the building session in Flushing, Michigan, at my in-laws house, who was nice enough to let us come and build some tables. Milo Olson, my wife's father, is about as interested in tools as I am to LEGO products, so it was a perfect fit. : )

Table Building

The club decided to build the tables according to the MichLUG Standard, since most of the clubs around Michiana are using this standard. We agreed to 9:00AM on Saturday morning. Due to some car troubles, I had to pick up Stefan and his mom Victoria in Kalamazoo, and rounded off the pickups with Tony in Lansing. We arrived in Flushing late Friday night. Stefan and Victoria slept over Milo and Nancy's house, while Tony and I stayed at my parents house, so everyone could get some sleep, because it was going to be a long day!

Saturday

Tony and I drove to Milo and Nancy's house around 7:30AM, and everyone was up by then. Milo, Tony, and I took Milo's Suburban and the plans we printed out, and headed towards Home Depot. We spent a good amount of time getting items, as we were not 100% sure of what materials we needed, but we eventually got everything, and packed everything in, even if Tony had to ride on top of the wood. Sorry Tony!

We got back about 9:00AM, and Amy pulled in. My step dad, Mark Tylus, also came, and we started. The first thing we did was to cut the 2x6's into the corresponding 2x3, and then we started cutting the table tops. We went on, and got the supports cut, and then attached the 2x3's to the tops, and continued on. Milo, Mark, and Amy worked on the table tops, while Stefan, Victoria, and Tony worked on the 2x3's. We stopped for lunch about 1:30PM, where we had some Cottage Inn Pizza delivered. We ate, and got back to work. Our next big thing was to start drilling the holes for the bolts, and we had a lot of holes to drill. Tony got some hard Oak, and made some templates for us, so we could clamp them down and just drill. Stefan and I worked on those holes, while the others worked on assembling the tables tops. After they assembled them, Stefan and I drilled holes into them. We had a nice flow to it, and once we got the larger tables done, we started the smaller ones. We eventually got the table tops done, and started on the braces for the legs. I measured them, Tony cut them, and then Mark cut out the 1.5" square. We made all of those at once, and then had another jig to put those on. Meanwhile, Milo and Amy worked on the table legs. We eventually got to dinner time, and Nancy and I drove to get some Big John Subs, the best subs on the planet. Sorry, no website! We had some subs, and Stefan worked on the drop section for his area in this upcoming layout. We wrapped up the 8 sets of tables in about 10 hours, so that was pretty good. However, we were all tired, so we decided to stay over night. Amy left soon after, and we just relaxed the rest of the night. Stefan completely wasted me playing Goldeneye and Mario Cart 64, so Tony and I took off to my parents house, and got some sleep.

Sunday

Our plan was to get up, and head off to U-Haul to get a trailer, so we could take the tables home, and still have everyone in total comfort in the Tahoe. However, U-Haul had nothing to rent, and it was getting to be pretty late, so I decided to leave the tables up there and go home. We left about 10:30AM, and I dropped both Tony and the Garcia's home, and got home to Osceola about 3:30PM. It was a long weekend, but we did well, and we have a bunch of nice tables for our upcoming shows.

Thanks

Christa and Mark Tylus - Thank you for housing Tony and I for two nights!

Milo and Nancy Olson - For housing Stefan and Victoria, and hosting this building party for us.

Mark Tylus - For your hard work in building the tables on Saturday, it is appreciated!

Bonnie Lannin - For buying us dinner from Big Johns!

Members of Michiana-LUG - For assisting in building these tables!

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Meeting

February 7, 2004

Attendees

  • Scott Sanburn
  • Stefan Garcia
  • Andrew Jager
  • Tony Hedglen
  • David Kohrman

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Meeting

September 17th, 2005

Report

Mom and I arrived at around 11, and we sat and talked with Scott for around an hour or so until David arrived. David set about reconstructing his mill (which I later stepped on). Chad and Amy arrived shortly thereafter. As usual, most of us brought MOC's to share. Victoria, my mom, had her first MOC's to share, 3 "famous couples" semi-vignettes: Maid Marianne and Robin Hood, Juliet and Romeo, and Scarlett and Rett. Scott showed off his new digital camera, bought with credit card points after his last one finally bit the dust, as well as the box to a Blacktron set he won on Ebay. David had the aforementioned paper mill "proof-of-concept," as well as some fascinating books on Kalamazoo architecture from the turn of the century. Chad brought his work in progress spaceship, a sand blue and black beauty in the making. Finally, I had some "maxi-vigs" for a Space project I'm working on, a demo of BrickSpace, the Computer Games issue with a brief article on BrickSpace, an issue of Model Railroader with hopefully some ideas for all for future layouts, and the "gold" 50th anniversary bricks and the new spring cleaning tub.

Club business was discussed as always. This provided plenty to chew, as we're entering the busy portion of the year. There's 4 events coming up shortly. First is MRHS, a one day show with an always fun (note sarcasm) 7 AM setup. Luckily, we have roadies for this one, as Victoria (Mom) calls them. That is September 25. Next after that is the SJVRR show. Setup is at 6 AM Sunday, October 17, and this is "down McKinley" near a lodge named after some type of animal, which may or may not have a cloven hoof. After that is GATS Fort Wayne, our biggest show of the year. That will have a new layout from last year, and should be a blast. GATS FW is October 28 and 29. Since setup and teardown seems to often bog us down, and leave us all cranky and tired, Tony and Scott have been giving some serious thought to how to make things easier. They've come up with a wood covered, fixed module approach, similar to what Steve Ringe of MichLUG used to have. This should make things much easier, though it does mean purchasing more plywood for use. There are some new shows this year that are still up in the air, Science Central, and Cantigny. Details forthcoming as they approach. Amy also mentioned PenguiCon, which with it's roster of Linux geeks, seems an ideal spot for Lego geeks.

Scott is also looking at making an order of shirts now that we have an official logo, Amy's Chessie Kitten design. Mom wants to make a brick mosaic similar to what GFLTC had at NMRA. The club may also look into badges or single bricks from The Brick Engraver. Amy brought up the issue of ballasting, which is always controversial. She noted that IndyLUG had a single plate layer of grey underneath the track, which added a great amount of visual appeal, for not too much extra effort. While the color change may make this more expensive than necessary, it would still be unquestionable less tedious and expensive than the "Mosaic method," and would add much to the display. There was also talk of a new downtown standard, though nothing conclusive was decided. We ended with some rampant speculating of where an ideal spot for a MidWest BrickCon would be, as this region seems to be lacking in such an activity, despite a rather large number of Afol's from the Twin Cities to Cincinnati, up to Toronto and down to Indianapolis. Possible sites mentioned were the Kalamazoo fairgrounds or Radisson, Chicago, or South Bend.

After that, the meeting officially ended, and we sat down to chatter about brick, and watch the First Official Michiana-LUG movie - Tim Burton's rendition of Batman.

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Meeting

September 17, 2005

Attendees

  • Scott Sanburn
  • Stefan Garcia
  • Victoria Garcia
  • Chad Smith

Report

As Scott is in the process of moving, this meeting was hosted at Chad's home. Scott arrived earlier than the rest of the group, and he and Chad played Lego SWII. Victoria arrived a little later, and Stefan the last, after briefly managing to get lost, despite South Bend's dimunitive size. We played for about an hour. They've hit the mark at last with Lego games, and Lego SWII is quite fun! And surprisingly challenging for being aimed at kids, though hopefully that's not just a reflection on our skills! After that, we went down to the basement and drafted a collection of lots Scott had won on ebay, and kindly donated to the rest of us. I'm definitely feeling the pressure to put the parts I won to good use, that's for sure! Our next layout should be quite impressive! With most of the draft done, we headed upstairs for food, kindly cooked by Chad. Stefan brought along his laptop, and shared pictures of BrickFest 2006 with Scott and Chad. Chad also had some new series BSG miniatures to share. Afterwards, we sat down to watch a film a friend of Chad's had made, a parody of Lord Of The Rings called Dork Of The Rings.

It was an absolute blast of a meeting, and we're all looking forward to the next one, and our next show!

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TGG Open House - January 21st, 2006

I

Attendees

  • Scott Sanburn
  • Amy Hughes
  • Stefan Garcia
  • Victoria Garcia

Report

It was a new show venue, and new misadventures as Michiana-LUG displayed at The Geek Group's Open House on January 21st. The show got off to a rough start, with Amy arriving late thanks to her online directions deciding the location was in Battle Creek instead of Kalamazoo. Scott-luck struck again as well as his nice cushion of time mysteriously dissappeared. Purple Dave would've been there as well, had his poor car not conked out somewhere between Detroit and Kalamazoo late in the night. The only misfortune to befall Stefan was being locked out in the snow for 15 minutes. All the other things Stefan had happen wrong were just plum stupidity.

Once everyone was there, we started setting up, and Stefan found out he had a fair bit less track than he had thought. Luckily, Amy was willing to move her library to accomomdate an on the fly revision. Scott set about laying out the space portion of our display. Despite all the early setbacks, by show open we had trains running and storm troopers playing soccer. Throughout the day there was a steady if small stream of people around the displays. Crowds tended to disperse whenever a TGG demonstration (read flashes and explosions) was going on.

The day waned, and the people went home. Thanks to the help of some TGG members teardown went quickly as we simply had to clear the tables, and they would dismantle them. Amy loaded up her buildings, Scott loaded up the Tahoe, and Stefan re-stuffed his car. After everything was loaded, we headed over to Cracker Barrel for dinner.

This new venue was a fun and unique opportunity, and we hope to do many more shows with them in the future!

Thanks TGG - for hosting us at their show.

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RMRC Show - January 6th, 2007

Attendees

  • Scott Sanburn
  • Tony Hedglen
  • Grace Hedglen
  • Stefan Garcia
  • Victoria Garcia

Report

Oh early mornings how we loathe thee. Scott, Tony, and Grace went to Grand Rapids the night before to avoid a two hour crack of day drive the day of the show. Victoria and Stefan only lived 45 minutes away so drove in that morning. Victoria and Stefan arrived first and unloaded the car. Scott and crew were next and we got down to the real business of setting up. This was our first show in a while, so we were a bit rusty, but all things considered it went well. Scott had brought the new IR trains and so we set them up first to have at least one train running at show open. The rest of the layout was up and running in short order. The show this year seemed more crowded than last, a good thing in terms of attendance. Scott had brought along several new sets, and as usual it was the rest of us that got to build them, much to our delight and Scott's chagrin. Stefan built the new crane set, Victoria built the old Creator house, and Tony built the bridge truck.

The show chugged along and neared closing time, but first Stefan had a little fun at Scott's expense. Seeing as the new IR trains aren't track-powered, they can run on 9V track without worry. So Stefan took to racing the IR train against the 9V, tagging along behind it and keeping just ahead of it. I'm pretty sure Scott has a few less hairs now. And it wouldn't be a Michiana-LUG show without a case of "Scott luck" striking - he left the lights on in the Tahoe and had to get a jump from Victoria. After teardown was done, we all headed over to Olive Garden for dinner, where the food was decent but the service was questionable.

It was a fun show, and we're glad to be back after our little hiatus.

Thanks RMRC - for hosting us at their show.

 

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When I moved to NYC I ws concerned that there would not be a lego train club that I could join. I was right. There had been one in New Jersey that was limited to adults. And then they folded. There was one in Central New York, but that wasn.t convenient for someone living in a New York City borough. Then I found a NYCLUG group blog post, but they obviously were having trouble getting enthusiastes to join as their Oct 2006 post showed:

Welcome to NYCLUG's Blog! This is the first post. October 1, 2006. It's finally up and running. Now, if we can just get some members... :-)

NYCLUG first got together more than two years ago, inside the Atrium at Citigroup Centre in midtown Manhattan. Since then, we've had three other get-togethers... but not much activity since then. It's quite difficult to get a bunch of AFOL's together in New York City. A couple lived in Brooklyn, in Manhattan, an honorary guest from Jersey, and then there's me -- way out on Staten Island!

So, we're now trying to revive the franchise -- er, the LUG. We hope that soon, the New York City LEGO Users Group will become a community of like-minded AFOL's who reside in the New York City metroplitan area, who meet on a semi-regular basis to build with LEGO, discuss LEGO, trade LEGO, and, of course, buy LEGO.

We'll need to see what sort of interest there is out there before we can start setting up our first meeting, which at this point probably won't be until January. But, there's no rule against a few prospective members meeting up beforehand!

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Some thoughts:
Some years past. I kept up my enthusiasm for lego train building, recruiting or meeting other enthusiasts. Then Hurricane Sandy hit and I was hip deep in water damage. Fortunately one of my fellow lego friends recommended I call Sun Light Fine Rug Care & Restoration, a NYC water damage rug repair specialist company - a trusted Persian rug cleaning NYC service. I loved the positive vibe that their name "sunlight" gave me. Turns out they provide rug cleaning and restoration services in NYC and the surrounding area 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Just what I needed. Fortunately I was able to book them and they were on the job within 24 hours. I was most concerned with my antique oriental rugs but I had other rugs that were also damaged. Thank goodness my lego models were not in my basement, but instead on the second floor. Unlike some of my neighbors who were closer to the shore line and lost everything, my home withstood the storm with just flooding in the basement and first floor. I checked in with my fellow lego builders and their models were all safe as well. If I ever return to Michigan and return to the MichLug Club, I will have some great stories to tell. In the meantime the NYCLug is going strong with a spiffy looking website. NYCLUG primarily lives online, meeting semi-regularly throughout the year. Its tough working around everyone’s busy schedules, but it's great to have a lug for those of us who live and work in the five boroughs of New York City and love to build with, collect and talk about everyone’s favorite plastic toy brick!!!

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Michiana-Lug.org