Martin's blog

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, choose the ticket type you require below:

• adults - £11.00
• children 3-16 and concessions - £9.50
• family tickets (2 adults, 2 children) - £38.50
• family tickets (2 adults, 3 children) - £44.00

We regret advanced tickets are not available directly from STEAM.

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.

Chris Lee is a new name in The Brickish Association, but has been prominent builder for the last couple of years.  His latest project is his biggest yet, and comes in the form of the mighty USS Haggard (DD-555).  It will also be the first public appearance of any of his models at a public show - and for this we are very grateful.

Chris says "This all started with a casual comment Ed (aka LEGO Monster) made on Flickr early this year. He knows I'm getting quite in to ships these days, and when he'd announced his intentions with Intrepid, he mentioned it should have an escort".  Chris then goes on to say "So instead of building just to occupy my time, I felt it was time for a proper project and some loose collaboration with a real expert ship builder; these opportunities don't come round often.  I decided on building USS Haggard as it was part of the same task force as Intrepid for the Okinawa invasion in 1945."

Haggard was a Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy and launched in 1943.  During the war in the Pacific she fought in numerous operations, sinking two Japanese submarines, and downing several aircraft. She was badly damaged by a bomb-laden Kamikaze strike off of Okinawa in April 1945 whilst on carrier picket duty and decomissioned upon her return to the USA, just two years after her launch.

James Sutton is well known to many people in the LEGO fan community, but probably better known as 'the Yoda guy', based on his most famous recreation of Steve Gerling's Jedi Master from Star Wars Celebration II. Over the past few years, James has excelled at building replicas of some amazing models built by LEGO Master Builders – he's tackled C-3PO, R2-D2 and Jango Fett all built by Erik Varszegi to name but a few.

This year, for the Great Western LEGO Show, James is tackling something a bit different - and with a twist. You may have seen Jamie Berard's incredible Town Hall, originally built for the 1000steine event in Germany in 2007. Jamie's a designer at the LEGO Company and creator of the 'Cafe Corner' series of modular buildings, of which there are now five.  Jamie created the Town Hall specifically for the 1000steine show in 2007 with no intention of it ever being available as a set. Our James isn't going to bring an exact replica of the Town Hall to the Great Western LEGO Show, he's going to build one at the Great Western LEGO Show! James reckons he'll complete the build in a day, with help from his glamorous assistant and long term LEGO buddy, Tim Fegan. If they do finish it on Day 1 of the show, they get to rip it apart overnight and build it again on Day 2, so there will always be some building activity underway.

Welcome to the Great Western LEGO Show!  For the first time, we've created a web site to accompany the show in order to keep our regular visitors up to date with all the things happening in the run up to the event.

The show is hosted by STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway and all displays are by members of the Brickish Association.  As some of our most talented builders are well known in the LEGO fan community, we want to make sure you know who will be displaying at the event and hope to give you a taste of what you can expect when the doors open.

To help us keep you informed, please sign up to our newsletter and we'll drop consolidated updates into your mailbox as well as other important information about the event.  We're planning on adding more features to this site as well, so make sure you get to find out about them first!