So the BrickFair event is five days long, but for the first three days it is just for those who sign up to be part of the whole thing. People who just want to come and see all the Lego creations arrive as "The Public" during the weekend. So for three days there is lots of set up going on and events and talks all related to, you guessed it, Lego.
The first day only a few things are set up yet. And the Dulles Expo Center is a HUGE space, maybe six times the size of what is seen here.
A trainyard waiting for its trains to arrive
Opening ceremonies the first participants on the first evening
But come the weekend, thousands of people pour through to see all the Lego and buy things from the vendors. This year I didn't have the time to take a lot of photos of all the constructions, but I took a few macro shots of some to show the level of detail put into otherwise giant Lego builds.
A well-camouflaged army on the attack
Scene from downtown
And lots of sunflowers out in the countryside
A couple things were so big that I did have to take a quick photo
This amazing USS Missouri must be 20 feet long and super detailed. Stunning!
The Last Supper, built out of countless little 1x1 Lego bricks. See the power box on the right for scale!
So, while I did not have a contraption entered myself, I was part of The Great Ball Contraption (GBC) table. I helped mostly with it when it was up and running during public hours to keep all the hundreds of little balls going around when they got stuck or popped out of a contraption. Essentially each participant builds a little module that has a bin that catches the balls, something that moves the balls along, and then a way of spitting them out into the capture bin of the next contraption. In this way a pile of people who have never seen each others creations can all show up and just align them one after another in a big rectangle and the balls will, in theory, just keep making a continuous loop. In reality since every part must be Lego, they can and do fail after hours and hours of continuous running (a total of 13 hours for the event).
Connor Christenson sitting at "Double Trouble" and happy with the test results (note the big bucket of balls for testing the machines)
And if you need someone to run the transformer, well, you have to build it out of Lego! This robot was my only construction during the event so I am duly proud of it
During public hours, it is mayhem to try and keep every machine running, but there are a lot of folks helping out and many of the machines worked flawlessly.
The film crew interviewing Tom Atkinson, head of the Great Ball Contraption section, as they film the whole thing while running during public hours
Looks a lot different from the first picture with everything set up. This photo was taken just minutes after the doors first opened to the public as any time later and all the people would block the view
And that's it for BrickFair Virginia 2017. Much fun was had and look for another blog post next year on the 2018 event!
Minifigs R Us
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