Brickset is reporting that the LEGO The Lone Ranger sets are now listed at Walmart. All the sets are already on Walmart’s website and are available to order a little early. I’ve tested the shipping options to California and if you order today, you can expect the sets to arrive on April 4th with standard shipping, April 1st with expedited shipping, and March 28th with rush shipping. You can also have in store pickup as soon as April 2nd. Arrival dates may change depending on where your locations are. **Update: Walmart has left the pages for the sets up but has taken off the purchase button. They’ve probably realized their mistake of selling the sets early to the public.**Just wanted to let those three little words sink in for a second. Most on this site would agree that this line, with a couple exceptions, is not among the best of choices to place your investment dollars. I tend to agree with that sentiment. I am also a fan of building sets and as such this line is pure gold.
The sets are reasonably priced, have great builds, and come together as a group nicely. For the record I have grabbed a few of these sets at an extreme markdown just in case people forget about the "Lone Ranger" aspect and see them for what they are, excellent Western themed sets.The best investment potential in this line is undoubtedly 79111 Constitution Train Chase, but, it also suffers from having "Lone Ranger" as part of its name which makes very reasonably priced among Lego trains. As of early March of 2014 it is still available for under $100. For that you get a 37 " x 22" oval track and an excellent western style engine and tender. The rest of the set is nice, but not to the same standard as the engine. My only true complaint about this train is the lack of power functions, or even the ability to easily add power to the set. What's a Lego builder to do... You may have guessed by now that this blog is less about investing and more about how to add power to a train set. Although, a brief eBay check did bring up several sellers with listings for instructions only in the $30 range and one seller with a powered coal tender MOC for $109.
So if you think outside the Lego box, there is money to be made here;)My intention was to add power while still having the set look as close to its original design as possible. With this set there is simply no way to add power to the engine without drastically changing its appearance so my first thought was to use the coal tender but decided against it. Again it would have to be modified to the point of no longer looking like the same car and I simply had no extra pieces of the dark green color so I couldn't enlarge it if I wanted to. The flat car was also out for obvious reasons. Luckily the prison car lends itself nicely, it's a large open box, perfect to hold a battery box. The above shots shot the car in its original state, the "box" portion rests on a 6x14 plate with the wheels attached underneath. I started with a completed car and removed the 6x14 and everything underneath it. I then took a pair of 4x4 black plates and added two 1x4 tiles to them along the outer edges.
I added both to opposite sides of the train motor, but it looked "empty" so I also added a 2x4 brick to each side. When I was done it looked like this.I then added the magnetic couplers and a 4x6 plate to each side to hold the top portion of the car.Now for the battery box.I then placed the box over the battery box and decided to add a 1x6 to each side to make it look like the original 6x14 was still in place. This is the finished product.The result looks about as good as I had hoped, while the internal jail door had to be removed the functionality of blowing of the back of the car still works fine. What I was unprepared for was the speed default on Lego train motors, turns out that if you don't have a speed controller they are set to around Mach 5 and will send a small train such as this flying off the tracks, much to the delight of my seven year old. Looks like I'll be getting the IR sensor and remote after all. There is room inside the car to add it and the wire can run through the existing hole where the lever is.
I hope y'all enjoyed this little tutorial and who knows there may even be money to be made adding power to sets like this and flipping them, if anyone tries that let me know how it goes.1. Lego Set 79111 Constitution Train Chase2. 2x 3032 4x6 plate dark blue/grey3. 2x 3666 1x6 dark blue/grey6. 2x 3001 2x4 black brick7. 88000 AAA battery box $12.9910. 8879 IR Speed Remote $12.99All the parts are common and inexpensive, I had all of them in my parts bins, the electronics I ordered from Lego for a total of $55.00. This was a fun and fairly inexpensive little project that yielded a nice little powered train, or at least, it will once the IR receiver and remote arrive. The Lego Group sells various themes of its Lego construction toys.Movie news comes via some strange sources; take these new LEGO sets for example. New LEGO displays at the 2013 London Toy Fair have revealed some spoilers for such upcoming films as Iron Man 3, Man of Steel and The Lone Ranger. The spoilers come mostly in the vein of action sequences or locations for epic battles, but there are a few character inclusions that may raise an eyebrow or too as well.
Hit the jump to check out images and descriptions of the new LEGO sets. All of our LEGO information comes via BrickExtra. Check out the images and descriptions for Iron Man 3, Man of Steel and The Lone Ranger below: Released in April for the Iron Man 3 film, each set recreates a major scene from the movies: 76006 as yet unamed … includes figures Iron Man, War Machine (yes, the picture looked like the leaked picture we’ve seen on this forum!) and Aldrich Killian. Price Point is £19.99. 76007 as yet unamed … includes figures Tony Stark, Pepper Potts (exclusive to that set), Mk42 Iron Man, The Mandarin and another, as yet unamed, figure! Price Point is £34.99 76998 as yet unamed … includes an exclusive Iron Man and The Mandarin. That’s all I noted down. Price point is £11.99. Released in May for the Superman Man of Steel film, again, each set recreated major scenes from the movies: 76002 as yet unamed … includes Superman and General Zod minifigures.
76003 as yet unamed … includes Superman, Colonel Hardy, General Zod, Faora and another figure perhaps, but I can’t read my own handwriting … maybe Lorvan?! 76009 as yet unamed … includes an exclusive Lois Lane, Superman and General Zod. All of the Lone Ranger sets were on display, although the minifigures for 4 of the sets were not present at the Toy Fair … they were all replaced with standard yellow figures. The release date were were given was 19th July, although the dealer catalogue I have suggests May. The sets overall looked really good and may we drive a resurgence is interest in cowboy themes. The guy who was showing us these sets said that the Lone Ranger figure is different in each set, although I can’t vouch for that as we didn’t see all the variants. 79106 Cavalry Builder Set … a nice little “battle pack” set, with 3 cavalry figure and the Lone Ranger. Comes with a horse (the one that can rear up, that first came in the LOTR sets) and a small fort & cannon.
79107 Comanche Camp … a set consisting of a wigwam, canoe and a scorpion pit. Comes with 3 figures, Lone Ranger, Tonto and Chief Redmeat (if I heard my audio recording correctly). 79108 Stagecoach Escape … a pretty nice looking stagecoach (with proper suspension), featuring 5 minifigures … Tonto, Lone Ranger, 2 bad guys and Red Harrington, plus 3 horses. Apparently, the safe that’s on top of the Stagecoach was a Lego invention and they liked it so much, they put it in the film! 79109 Colby City Showdown … a bank and a jail, both of which have plenty of play features where parts of the sets will blow up … a safe, the front of the bank and the jail cell. Figures include 2 bad guys, Dan Reid, Tonto and the Lone Ranger. 79110 Silver Mine Shootout … a pretty nice playset, again featuring parts of the set that will blow up. Set features Tonto, the Lone Ranger, 2 baddies and another Indian. There seemed to be some nice chrome silver parts too (Coins, bullion bars etc), which is the treasure the baddie is trying to steal, I assume.