Martin's blog

Once again some of the great builders from The Brickish Association will be giving presentations about various aspects of the LEGO hobby. The sessions will take place on the Station Platform, which is just before you enter the large display hall.

The schedule below will run on both Saturday and Sunday, so you won't miss out whichever day you visit:

11:00 - Building the Olympic Stadiums, by Warren Elsmore
This summer Warren was asked to help celebrate the Games by building the Olympic Park in time for the Opening Ceremony. Find out how he undertook such a daunting task.

11:30 - Designing & Building Steam Locomotives, by Andrew Harvey
Learn how to create detailed models of real steam engines

12:00 - Themed Builds, by Robert Clarkson
How to create your own new models that fit within the current LEGO themes

2:00 - Building my Home Town, by Skegga Thorn
Learn how Skegga recreated the notable buildings of High Wycombe for her minifig scale model 'High Brickham'

2:30 - Neo-Classic Space, by Jeremy Williams
How LEGO's first Space range from the 1970s and '80s inspired a modern fan theme

3:00 - Emergency vehicles in the Brick, by Ralph Savelsberg
Designing and building realistic scale models of British emergency vehicles

3:30 - Train Stations, by David Tabner
The inspiration, design and evolution of East Brickley and Brickgate stations, part of the SLTC train layout

We hope you have an opportunity to see one or more of them, they are usually very entertaining and suitable for everyone, young and old.

Good news!  The Milton Keynes LEGO Store have confirmed they will be bringing their store to the Great Western LEGO Show this year.  They will bring a whole range of LEGO sets you won't find on the high street as well a some firm favourites.  Make sure you bring your Christmas wishlist with you!

You can now book tickets for the show today!  Advanced tickets ensure you do not have to queue to purchase tickets on the day. Your fast-track ticket confirmation barcode will be scanned on arrival and this will also enter you into an exclusive draw for advance ticket holders to win cool LEGO prizes.

Please be aware that our ticketing partner, Swindon Tickets charge a booking fee of £1 per individual ticket or 10% for family tickets. You will need to print your ticket confirmation at home and bring it to the show.

To purchase advanced tickets online, click the Swindon Tickets logo above (all prices below include booking fees):

• adults - £11.00
• children 3-16 and concessions - £9.50
• family ticket (2 adults, 1 child) - £28.60
• family tickets (2 adults, 2 children) - £37.40
• family tickets (2 adults, 3 children) - £44.00

Tickets are valid for one day.  We regret a dvanced tickets are not available directly from STEAM.

It's not long now until The Great Western LEGO Show opens its doors for the tenth time!  Yes - this will be our tenth year in Swindon and wow, has the show changed.  We started off in 2002 with a handful of people who brought a LEGO train display to STEAM.  A couple of hundred visitors came to see it and loved what they saw - and what adult fans could build with LEGO bricks.

Ten years later, we are far from just a LEGO train show.  In the last few years we've displayed models from films, TV, books and real life as well as some amazing planes, trains, cars, boats, ships and helicopters - not forgetting some of the coolest spacecraft anyone could imagine.  The show runs for just two days and thousands of people travel from all over the country to come to see it.

Five years ago we started building giant mosaics at the show.  Each one uses nearly 100,000 LEGO bricks and you, the visitors build it! The first one celebrated the 30th anniversay of the LEGO Minifigure.  Since then we have created giant images of LEGO Star Wars, Harry Potter and most recently Pirates of the Carribean.  This year brings a whole new surprise.  It's based on one of this year's advent calendar themes - so look out for something colourful!

We've also got a whole lot of new displays to show off this October.  Look out for previews here in the run up to the event.  If you sign up for the newsletter, we'll email you updates as well.

See you soon!

The show planning is now taking shape with some great builders and models signed up to display.  The local radio advertising is in the bag and the show leaflets will be in circulation over the summer holidays.  We'll post them here for you to see as well.

News will be breaking soon of some guests we have coming over from the LEGO Group in Billund, Denmark.  We're really excited about a couple of LEGO designers who will be at the show for the entire weekend to talk about their models that we see in the shops today.  More details on this to follow!

For those people who come from further afield, we're working on a deal with a local hotel to get you tickets and accomodation in one package.  Again, watch out for more info here soon.

Well, it's May and that means there are just five months to go before we open the doors to the 9th Great Western LEGO Show.  Wait a moment...the ninth show?  It seems like only yesterday that a handful of us built a small LEGO train layout to display in Swindon one Saturday and we were impressed when a couple of hundred people came to see us.  Last year, around 80 exhibitors had the STEAM museum bulging at the seams when over 7,500 people crowded the event over the weekend!  Maybe we should remind the local traffic authorities that we're coming to town again, and this year will be better than ever!

Plans are now coming together for the show.  We've got some cool new ideas and I'm pleased to say that there's already some great support by both LEGO fans, vendors and LEGO themselves for this year's show.  We'll be blogging here more and more frequently now, so be sure to check back often.  We're also committed to pushing our more newsletters this year, so make sure you sign up if you haven't already done so.  It's fair to say we didn't reach out to you as often as we could have last year, so that's something we plan to improve on as well.

So, sit back, relax and make sure the date for the show is in your diary.  We'll do all the hard work so you can come along for a fabulous day out to immerse yourselves in all things LEGO.

How many minifigures do you have? Now take that number and replace it with how many unique minifigures you have that LEGO actually released. Ann and Andy from Minifigforlife.com have possibly the largest collection in the UK, with over 2400 standard sized minifigs, 250 Duplo minifigs and a few others besides.

They have been jointly collecting since 2005 and have been bringing their collection to LEGO events for the last couple of years.  According to The LEGO Group, they have produced over 4 billion minifigures in the 32 years since 1978 when they were first created.  Andy and Ann have no intention of collecting that many, but do want to collect one of every unique minifigure that is released.

USS Intrepid (In-trep-id adj: fearless and resolute; persistent in the pursuit of victory)

It's not certain you have to be fearless to build one of the World's largest LEGO ship models, but you certainly have to be resolute! Ed Diment (Lego Monster) will be bringing his largest creation to date, a most enormous LEGO model of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Intrepid (CV – 11), to this year's show. At just under 7 metres (22ft) long, weighing 250kg (over 400lb) and using around 250,000 LEGO bricks, the USS Intrepid model will be a truly monstrous sight.

Ed says: "After building a minifig scale model of HMS Hood for the 2008 Great Western LEGO Show, the only way was up – to build bigger! After much debate and discussion with fellow Brickish members project Intrepid was settled on and work began. From the start this project was a collaborative build with all the aircraft and deck vehicles being designed by fellow member Ralph Savelsberg and much of the hard work of building shared with my wife Annie. The project became an even larger collaboration after a conversation with new member Chris Lee, who agreed to build a Fletcher class destroyer (USS Haggard) to escort her. Yet another member, Gary Davis, will be bringing a third ship to complete this task force – but I'll leave what he is brining as a surprise!"

USS Intrepid was an Essex Class carrier in the United States Navy, launched in 1943, the same year as USS Haggard, and served with Pacific 5th fleet until the end of the war. She could carry upwards of 90 aircraft and displaced around 40,000 tons when fully loaded. Intrepid was involved in some of the most famous battles of the Pacific during 1944 and 1945. After the war, the ship was converted to allow jet aircraft to operate from the ship and served through the Vietnam war, finally becoming an auxiliary carrier and helicopter carrier before decommissioning in 1974. In 1982 the USS Intrepid opened as a museum in New York, where she still sits today with a great collection of military aircraft from the World's aviation history, including one of the decommissioned Concordes.

When Andrew Danieli sets out to build another great model, he draws his inspiration from some of his other hobbies; board gaming, card modelling, and collecting miniature cottages. This time is no exception: board gaming, came to the rescue. Andrew had seen a version of "Ave Caesar" where the arena had been built in card, and thought "let's try it in LEGO bricks". First to be built was a chariot and everything was scaled from that. Each cell on the track holds a single chariot, which has increased the length of the board to accommodate five chariots in the imperial alley (in the real game, the chariots need to be turned sideways). The other constraint was fitting the board onto his modelling table, so the track had to be squeezed into a 2x5 arrangement of 48x48 baseplates. This left just enough room for a 16-stud wide strip of buildings to surround it.

Using the Internet for research into the original "Circus Maximus" in Rome and other forms of Roman architecture has helped with the styling of the buildings, although Andrew has drawn some inspiration from the 2D buildings drawn on the original board and the box artwork. Also, by making the whole thing modular it should be possible in the future to display it as a Gladiator-type Colosseum, rather than a chariot racing circus - and to leave parts of the buildings off to allow access for gaming.

This year will be the first time another of our regular visitors takes part as an exhibitor.  Jason 'JasBrick' Burnett is delighted to be a part of such a fantastic show and his contribution is going to be something quite different, but complimentary, as he focuses on the customisation of minifigs. Customisation involves using despicable techniques such as cutting, gluing and painting minifigs and their accessories to create something very different. This dark art is not for the feint of heart as it is a scary prospect when messing with something as iconic as the LEGO Minifigure.

Jas views customisation as a method of exploring concepts and themes that the LEGO Company have not or would not do themselves...he might create a minifig related to a film or other form of intellectual property that LEGO themselves could not do due to licensing rules or a conflict with the company's core values. Being an independent hobbyist gives Jason the flexibility and freedom to let his imagination run wild.