Fire Station

A couple weeks after meeting Kate for lunch at the MOA Lego Store, I was visiting my parents for Thanksgiving.  During that weekend, I found the Lego Digital Designer application.  What an incredible virtual sandbox to put together potential creations to put in my Lego town.

The first building I came up with was the Fire Station.  I don't know why I picked a fire station.  I didn't have many firefighting Lego sets.  But I think it was the ease of design that spurred me on.  It felt like a pretty easy setup.  Two floors, connected by stairs and a fire pole.  Leave one side of the bottom floor open to serve as the garage for parking all the fire trucks.  How hard could it be?

It wasn't... until I got to putting the floor together.  It took a long time to get it just right (according to my OCD's standards).  Each piece had to interlock with every one above and/or below it.  I didn't want to leave any edges permeating more than one layer of plates.  To accomplish this, I needed some larger, more expensive plates.  Ones that didn't normally appear on the Pick-A-Brick wall.  Ones I had to special order from Lego or a reseller on BrickLink. Ugh.

First floor contents: tools, fire pole, stairs, and yellow fire extinguisher

Second floor living quarters

If you plan on putting together a floor with multiple layers of plates, I suggest downloading the Lego Digital Designer and color coding each layer to ensure they interlock together.

I don't remember when I finally got it finished, but you gotta admit, it's pretty spiffy.  The upstairs area has a table for the firefighters to eat, a couch and chair to sit in, some beds for them to catch some Z's at night.

There are two squads of firefighters, red and white (as indicated by the color of their helmets).  The guy in the white button-down shirt and tie is the fire chief.

Red squad meeting to discuss fire and rescue operations with the chief

White squad members testing out equipment

I could fit the 4208 4x4 Fire Truck into the garage with the rest of the vehicles, since it is too tall to fit in there.  I'll leave that parked outside.  The 6911 Mini Fire Truck on the far right it too small for a minifigure, but it acts as a tool for small fires and will be handled via remote control (not pictured) when the need arises.

Fire response vehicles in the garage (above) and on display (below)

Sets used: 4208, 5613, 6511, 6911, 7942