Build Thread: Lego Titanic

[modeltrains]

This is where the presentation gets impressive. The three boxes contain the parts for the bow, middle, and stern sections. The sides of the three boxes reflect this.

That is a really nice design feature, I like it.

 

[Antares JS]

A bunch of inflatable rafts would have made a huge difference.

Something that occurred to me this morning - another thing that could have made a difference is if the crew had realized it was too late to steer around the iceberg and hit it head-on instead. Sure, there would have been a lot of damage and probably casualties in the front of the ship, but it might have been survivable as fewer watertight compartments would have been breached.

 

[Funkworks]

Lego Kraken: "Iceberg? HA! That so-called "Titanic" had NO chance!!"

 

[boomtube-mk2]

Well, not quite true, but priorities…
Food, car payment, mortgage. And soon, my favorite, property taxes

If you place food and housing above Legos and rockets, then you don't have your "Priorities" in the correct order. .

 

[DAllen]

LAWDY HATH MERTHY

 

[boomtube-mk2]

Something that occurred to me this morning - another thing that could have made a difference is if the crew had realized it was too late to steer around the iceberg and hit it head-on instead. Sure, there would have been a lot of damage and probably casualties in the front of the ship, but it might have been survivable as fewer watertight compartments would have been breached.

There are those who believe that the Titanic was designed so poorly and constructed from such inferior materials that a head-on collision would have shattered the vessel from bow to stern and it would have sunk even faster.

We'll never know.

 

[mo2872]

There are those who believe that the Titanic was designed so poorly and constructed from such inferior materials that a head-on collision would have shattered the vessel from bow to stern and it would have sunk even faster.

We'll never know.

Then you've got the whole "the fire in the coal bins weakened the steel" theory, too.

 

[neil_w]

Then you've got the whole "the fire in the coal bins weakened the steel" theory, too.

If they had only built the original Titanic out of Lego, there would have been no weakened steel. And they could have put the darned thing right back together.

 

[Antares JS]

There are those who believe that the Titanic was designed so poorly and constructed from such inferior materials that a head-on collision would have shattered the vessel from bow to stern and it would have sunk even faster.

We'll never know.

That is simply not true. I think it was back in the 90's, an expedition managed to pull up a big chunk of the Titanic's outer hull. Some engineers ran material tests on that piece (the interior of the material was still in decent shape after they scraped the rust off) and found it was perfectly good steel for the time the ship was built. The idea that inferior material was used to build the ship is sensationalist claptrap.

As far as its engineering, I present as evidence of Titanic's impressive engineering the fact that the ship took on hardly any list as it sunk, and this in turn allowed all the lifeboats to be used, rather than only half the lifeboats from one side of the ship. Grim, sure, but genuinely remarkable stability.

I will grant that the fact that the watertight compartment bulkheads didn't come up to the very top decks was a major design flaw. If they had, the ship probably would have survived, but apparently no one thought it was possible that a scrape with an iceberg would breach enough compartments to sink the ship, kind of like how no one thought a pressurized oxygen environment would doom three astronauts during a test 55 years later.

Then you've got the whole "the fire in the coal bins weakened the steel" theory, too.

I'm not sure how credible that idea is. The iceberg didn't need to rip a gash through the steel plates. My understanding is that prevailing theory has just enough plates buckle and pop their rivets and let water in. The damage might not have even looked that bad from the outside, but unfortunately enough compartments were breached that it was all over. Whether this is true or not though, we will probably never know for sure.

 

[Antares JS]

#2 bag contents

 

[K'Tesh]

Then there's the whole conspiracy theory that the Titanic didn't sink (the Olympic did).

The ill fated Olympic was begat by a series of blunders that damaged the ship badly, including being struck by a ship of the line. Insurance wouldn't pay off on it, and the ship couldn't be repaired to 100%. Theory states that while the Olympic was in for repairs, the ships then had their names exchanged, and the damaged ship was deliberately scuttled for the insurance money (leaving the undamaged ship to keep things going). Then due to the overzealous actions of the captain, and confusion created when some illegal whalers were confused for the planned rescue ship (to load the passengers aboard) caused the tremendous loss of life.

 

[Antares JS]

The #2 bags laid the foundations for the forecastle and forward well deck.

 

[Sandy H.]

I had Lego in the early 80's. My family took care of expenses etc., first and luxury later, so most of my toys were simple (i.e. ball and bat) or second hand. It was a great childhood, so not complaining. The couple of Lego sets I got over the years were pretty generic and you created whatever you had in your head at the time.

With these modern kits, are there step by step instructions that literally tell you each piece to place where or do they just give pictures and cross-sections with colors and you figure it out yourself? Just curious as the nephew is spoiled and there are tons of built Lego objects around his house, but I've never seen him build anything (even though we bought some of them as gifts over the years). I'm not sure if he built them or his dad did, honestly, but I don't think he could follow anything other than 'put part 1 on top of part 2'. Maybe I'm wrong.

Some of the Lego available today is crazy cool. I have too many hobbies, though. . .

Thanks for the build thread! I'll follow along just to learn about something I'll never build and be happy to do so!

Sandy.

 

[Antares JS]

With these modern kits, are there step by step instructions that literally tell you each piece to place where or do they just give pictures and cross-sections with colors and you figure it out yourself?

The former. It's more of a relaxing thing than a real challenge to me. You can actually look up the instructions to Lego sets on the Lego website if you're curious.

 

[jmasterj]

I like working on Lego during my lunch break at work. Engages a different part of my brain.

 

[OverTheTop]

With these modern kits, are there step by step instructions that literally tell you each piece to place where or do they just give pictures and cross-sections with colors and you figure it out yourself?

First choice. The instructions are in color and very clear as to what goes where, and what sequence to build it in. Think like building Ikea furniture, but without the Allen key.

 

[green dragon]

nice looking build, and I though 600 pc sets were a lot, lol. Spent most of today putting this old Amazon Ruins set together.

 

[Vitruvius]

"The Legend lives on,
From the Chippewa on down,
'bout the Great Lake they call "Gitchigume"...

 

[Antares JS]

nice looking build, and I though 600 pc sets were a lot, lol. Spent most of today putting this old Amazon Ruins set together.

I remember that series! I had some of the Egypt-themed ones.

 

[lakeroadster]

I'm a bit long in the tooth and never did get into the Lego craze.

Now Erector Sets... I spent quite a few hours building stuff with those.

 

[Peartree]

I'm a bit long in the tooth and never did get into the Lego craze.

Now Erector Sets... I spent quite a few hours building stuff with those.

View attachment 513026

If you haven't already seen it, you might enjoy this: James May builds a real bridge with Meccano (like an erector set).

 

[Steven]

.

 

[BDB]

This is the build thread I'm here for! I'm going to live vicariously through this one.

 

[K'Tesh]

I just learned something... A lot of people think that the Titanic was the single greatest loss of life at sea. I just did a search, and it's not even in the Top 40. Crazy!

Most of those 40 were WWII incidents alone (though some may have be including people killed on land and sea by exploding ordinance ships), but even several peacetime incidents were far greater. One WWII sinking of a German vessel by a Soviet submarine killed an estimated 9400 people (over 6 times the number lost on Titanic (1517)). And in 1987 an overloaded Philippine ferry struck an oil tanker, which killed 4386 people. It might be noted that the worst peacetime events were often attributed to overloaded ferries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_World_War_II

 

[OverTheTop]

One with land losses that comes to mind was an ordinance ship in Halifax harbour that went off. At 1782 dead it had a higher death toll than Titanic, but mainly on land:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_ExplosionI spent some time in Halifax and even did a sailing race that went through that same waterway.

 

[Woody's Workshop]

Realistically speaking, the damage would look pretty minor from the outside, enough so that you couldn't really depict it well since it would pretty much just look like a big scratch down the side. At least, that's my understanding of the current theories. The Titanic seems to have been a really well-engineered and safe ship, and it just had some really terrible luck with weather and sea conditions making it tough to spot icebergs and getting damaged in just such a way that would sink it.

I saw a documentary on the ship. Apparently there was a fire in one of the coal holds. When it left home port it went somewhere before heading across the pond. Pictures shows at that dock with warped plates from the heat. It was just above the water line. They mentioned that it might have had something to do with the fast sinking. Cold ocean water rising as the ship settled deeper, the cold water over the heated iron fractured, letting yet more water enter the ship faster.
In another documentary, I think it was the 3rd time diving on the wreck, they search for and found 2 sections of the keel far away from the ship. One theory is the ship bottomed out on ice just below the surface as it scraped the side, which led to the splitting.
In that same documentary, they researched the expansion joints. They had been modified on the sister ship Lusitania, right where the Titanic broke in half.
Like most every accident investigation of ships, planes, trains, etc., it always seams to be a compiling of several things that went wrong to cause the disaster. Since the Titanic was way before these kinds of investigations, and no one can no longer dive on the Titanic, we will never know.

 

[K'Tesh]

The latest theory about the sections of keel that were found separated by some distance is that they're from where the ship broke. The bow section was held only by those parts briefly before the breaking away. As the stern sank, they then were ripped away by the force of the water on the ship as it sank. Freed from the ship, they fell and drifted as the force of the water on the torn metal steered them.

 

[Peartree]

One with land losses that comes to mind was an ordinance ship in Halifax harbour that went off. At 1782 dead it had a higher death toll than Titanic, but mainly on land:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_ExplosionI spent some time in Halifax and even did a sailing race that went through that same waterway.

Outside of war, there were 850 lost alongside the wharf on the Chicago River at the Eastland disaster on July 24, 1915.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...usitania-why-has-it-been-forgotten-180953146/

 

[jd2cylman]

This thread is drifting further off course than the iceberg that hit the Titanic…
But still interesting.

 

[Antares JS]

This thread is drifting further off course than the iceberg that hit the Titanic…
But still interesting.

Eh, I've been enjoying it.

Hoping to get to the #3 bag tonight. Last night I was helping my four-year-old finish her Estes 3 Bandits.