The 1958 Lego depot

This little depot is based on a design found in a folder of glued-together promotional items that Lego offered to retailers in 1958, printed in the Netherlands. Contrary to later folders where text on buildings was either left blank or used common words like 'hotel' or 'garage', this folder also has images with Danish words in them. Like 'pakhus' which means 'warehouse' or 'storage depot' and which I decided to keep. It just looks appropriate, sounds nice and also fits neatly on the roof (the Dutch 'pakhuis' or English 'depot' wouldn't be symmetrical).

I had first found pictures of this folder on an auction page, but those weren't completely sharp. Then part of it turned up on a forum page, sharp enough to see the construction. And then I found the ever-useful Brick Fetish had it available all the time, here (there's tiny links at bottom right for the rest of the folder) and that that is where the image on the forum had been "borrowed" from (without so much as a credit of course).

My depot is completely constructed from parts in contemporary cellulose acetate as the original building in the folder was. I didn't glue it together of course. Despite having been bleached in hydrogen peroxide, the white bricks do show some differences in hue that must be due to slight variations in the pigments used at the time. A bit of warping is also visible here and there. And I decided to add a step in front of the door.

Using the depot for the removals trucks is slightly tricky on both floor plans, in that the trucks need to back up to the loading platform and so tend to stick out into the street while loading. That's probably why the folder shows a barrel truck loading from the side.

Lego Bedford removal truck repairs

Three of my Bedford removal trucks each had a broken or missing left door. The one at right had it glued to the rear of the side by a previous owner, the other two came in with just one door. But a friendly seller once sold me two loose broken doors amongst other bits, so all three could be put right.

A broken blue brick provided small strips of a useful thickness. These were cut into thinner strips that would become the new spindles for the doors. To be sure, they were tried for size in the hole they would need to fit into.

A bit of the original door spindle was cut off each end, so the replacement could be longer and stronger. Merely sticking new tiny bits on the ends would be very tricky to get right and would come off again at the merest nudge. After being superglued in place, the new ends were sanded down to the same thickness as the original.

The rear of the chassis could in each case be bent down just enough so each door could be fitted in place with the new spindles sitting in the appropriate holes at top and bottom. The doors are fully functional though should best be handled with a bit of care.

As an aside, the lowest of the three Bedford removal trucks is a later version made from ABS plastic. Which is duller in colour than the other two made from the earlier cellulose acetate plastic. But it shows the advantage of ABS, in that it's still straight as an arrow after half a century. The two older trucks show the kind of warping that cellulose acetate unfortunately is subject to.

In repairing the doors, I did mix up these types of plastic in that the broken brick is ABS, used to repair three doors in cellulose acetate, one of which ended up in a truck in ABS again. If ever I find a spare door in ABS I'll swap it out.

The Lego theatre building

This is the Grand Theatre building, built from red brick with a white facade, in a somewhat richer version of the mid-fifties deco style found in the 1955 Lego Byggebog (see earlier posts). The grand entrance is flanked by a box office on each side, topped by a balcony for the patrons from the best first floor seats and two more levels for the more popular seats higher up.

The outer wings have room for other businesses. On the left is a branch of a well-known chain of pastry shops in my native The Hague. At the right is the Ristorante del Teatro, where an Italian restaurant was a fashionable and still quite exotic novelty around 1960.

All the red bricks are mostly cellulose acetate, which was a nice chance to make use of a lot of those. They're somewhat warped, but still good enough to make a solid wall with. The white parts and windows are ABS plastic for reasons of strength and availability. With the exception of the printed beams which are period cellulose acetate. 

The 'Grand Theater' and 'Koek Banket' beams were for the Dutch market, where 'Koek Banket' has an erroneous grocer's apostrophe instead of an ampersand. Both words have no exact equivalent in English - 'Koek' (pr "cook") is any larger cake or similar baked good that's sliced or cut up into portions (in fact 'cookies' is the diminutive of 'koek'), whereas 'Banket' (pr "bahngKET") is a collective word for pastry, pies and smaller glazed cakes etc next to its other meaning of banquet. The 'Ristorante' and 'Teatro' beams were of course for the Italian market, and specially imported to use for this restaurant.

The rear of the block is just a blank wall, with some gaps in it due to the bricks having warped. But I was pleasantly surprised I could still build a wall out of them, and this saved me a lot of other more useful bricks.

As with any of the larger buildings, what I've built is just a facade. A real theatre building would easily be as deep as it's wide or even more and probably a lot wider to begin with as well.  But well, that's where fantasy comes in, also in Lego sets in the shops today.