This is my fourth year attending the show. The first year I met up with my good friends Jeremy Beckett who was the co-author of the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary and Dave Tree from All the Cool Stuff. As its only 20 mins down the road from me I attend every year and really enjoy it as I’m a huge fan of all things LEGO and have been since a very early age.
Held at the Swindon Steam Museum, an historic building from the great British steam era of industrial Britain, all year round it houses a stunning collection of historial steam trains and related exhibits. But for one weekend once a year it becomes a LEGO fans dream exhibition run by the UK Brickish society.
For the full gallery of my day at the Great Western LEGO Show click here.
This years event was once again astounding with some mind blowing creations such as the minifig scale Olympic stadium, Gerry Anderson Supermarionation displays, huge cityscapes, train layouts and custom minifigs. I had made a special set of 4 Red Dwarf minifigs with custom decals in celebration of the return of the 10th season of show and the ever popular Mosiac, where it’s made on small baseplates by the event attendees and then put together to be viewed from the gallery upstairs. There was plenty to do all day and also an amazing LEGO shopping area with lots of independent traders as well as LEGO shop Milton Keynes. I managed to pick up a Baggie TC-14 and shirtless Darth Maul from my mate Rhys from the little games shop in Farnham.
Star Wars wise there were plenty to see with creations by many members of the brickish society.
James Suttons stunning LEGO big figs of Star Wars classics like Biggs, Lando, Luke and Leia all displayed on a custom Han in Carbonite display. He also had exclusively at the event a CD of PDF files that you could buy with instructions to build your very own Han in Carbonite in whatever colours you desired. He told me fans had already told him they intended to do a multicolour version and a thawing out version too.
Sam Pearce was displaying his amazing new creation, a downed minifig-scale AT-AT that had over 5,500 pieces and took him over a year to build. The huge fallen beast had been defeated by the Rebels.
Tim Goddard had come with new mini scale Star Wars creations on display like the Sail Barge, Y-Wing, AT-AT, Slave-1 and Bongo. I’ve been a fan of his creations since I first saw his builds in the back of the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary, where he had created a superb Imperial outpost.
All in all as ever a great day out for all fans of that 50+ year old little brick that can do so much.
For the full gallery of my day at the Great Western LEGO Show click here.