The 1955 Lego grocery store

This grocery store is based on a drawing I found in the 1955 Byggebog ('Building Book') which can be seen on the marvelous Brick Fetish here. There's a little Købmand store shown (fourth building at the front) but that was rather close to the row of cottages I'd also built (in the background of the picture above - more on those later). So I decided to adapt the second building at the front instead.

'Købmand' is the Danish word for a grocery store, though it literally means 'merchant'. It's linguistically close to the German 'Kaufmann' or the Dutch 'koopman' (pr 'cope mahn') which mean 'man who buys' and then sells again of course. :)

Grocers didn't sell fresh produce at the time (I believe there were even regulations about it) but my grocer does. The building in the Byggebog has a little terrace in front, which I decided to replace with two upside-down hollow bricks that could contain fruit and veg. 

Those hollow bricks are amongst the oldest Lego parts I have. They're held in place with two inner tubes from a broken brick I saw bits from to repair my little cars (cheating, I know :)  The rest of the building is also made from bricks in cellulose acetate plastic, where I've again clamped some notebook paper between the bricks to increase their grip.

(No) Lego VW 1500 repairs

I haven't had to repair any Volkswagen sedans so far. The red one above I opened up to remove its headlights, which are recessed into the body so can't be pulled out. They can however be pushed out from the inside with a bent paperclip. After I had made a mould the lights went back in. One of my blue VW sedans subsequently got a pair of repro headlights.

The VW 1500 is made following the second Lego patent (see earlier post) so to open it up you'll have to get a thumbnail under the rear of the body and lift that up while pushing against the rear window, the lower edge of which clips into the body to hold it in place.