Random set of the day: Public Transport Station
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8404 Public Transport Station, released in 2010. It's one of 37 City sets produced that year. It contains 864 pieces and 6 minifigs, and its retail price was US$99.99/£81.99.
It's owned by 4602 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
Help me come to life! If you like the set I've chosen for you today, please pledge your support for me on LEGO Ideas so I have a chance of becoming an official LEGO set!
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48 comments on this article
Those lime parts are useful
Take your car to the train station to get on the train to get to the bus station to get on the bus to arrive at the sanitation facility to operate your street sweeper. Now that's a commute.
Always wanted this one
bUt tHeYrE nOt WeArInG mAsKs
This is one of those gorgeous City sets that I really wanted, for my Lego town, but I just didn't have the lay-out for it. Like, if I had a big expansive city setting, then all this big transport infrastructure would be amazing (I love all the different platforms, that you could easily use with existing train sets), but I just didn't have the lay-out so I never bought the set.
I will say, though, that I think it was about this time, that the 6-brick-tall doors really started to get impractical. I miss those 5-brick-tall bus and train doors. They were much more appropriate, as a piece.
Town (okay, City, but I refuse to adapt) was firing on all thrusters around 2010 and hadn't quite reached the point yet for me where it all just became too much to even care about (that was coming, though--don't get me wrong, City has great sets, but there are so many and they all just blur together). This was on the fringes of my awareness and beyond my means at the time, but it is an excellent set.
A-minus grade
Absolutely one of my favorite Lego sets and glad I bought two at the time. Not sure if its listed but recall it was a Toys R Us exclusive, or atleast it was in Canada. I’ve since extended both Blue Trams and its the focal point whenever someone comes to see my Small Lego city setup.
I like the tram
Man I didn't realize that set was that old!
It's fun getting small collections of vehicles and buildings for expansion
Street sweepers are my favorite form of public transit
Hey, it’s a single-seater Yellow Cab.
@MCLegoboy:
You forgot the bike! Plus there’s like five other people who can give you piggyback rides.
@Zordboy:
Doors? The only public transportation I’ve made is an 8-wide vintage Routemaster bus. No doors. Not even for the half-driver. Yes, surprisingly, I’m a bus big enough to accommodate a horse (yes, seriously) and 17 passengers (plus a ticket-taker), there wasn’t room for the driver’s legs. So he’s a Routemastaur.
As someone who wanted, but never got this set, I personally view this set as one of the better City sets of all time.
For half a second I thought this was going to be an article assessing the status and history of public transit in Lego City and was more probably more excited than I had any right to be.
@Mr__Thrawn :
Get blackout, gutter-crawling drunk a lot, do you?
@Lego_mini_fan
Well, there aren't that many of them, and the only really rare ones are the wheel arches and 4x6 plate with 10 studs. Even at the time there was Power Miners, where the color was in the LIMElight, so they were better lime parts pack.
@PurpleDave said:
" @MCLegoboy: You forgot the bike! Plus there’s like five other people who can give you piggyback rides."
I've failed...
[Mad World begins playing]
@GSR_MataNui said:
"Man I didn't realize that set was that old!
It's fun getting small collections of vehicles and buildings for expansion "
Next year Forest Police and Forest Fire can become RSOTD.
No. Nope. I refuse to believe that this set is more than 10 years old.
This is the same year the City advent calendar came with showering Santa!
So many rare vehicles here. This is great.
More of this please Lego.
Most if not all of these vehicles were featured in LEGO City Undercover (many other sets in the era also were, including the Grand Emporium). The blue streetcar was seen early on, and if memory serves may have been indestructible ��� instantly demolishing any vehicle running into it. I always found it odd that the line was restricted to the first sector of LEGO City.
Oh yeah friends is coming soon next year!
@ChromedCat :
I think Brad Dourif’s wife said it best when she found out he had to shave his eyebrows off again to film additional scenes in LotR.
If you ask me, I'd say the glory days of LEGO City were 2009- c.2013. This definitely shows that era. All four vehicles in particular are pretty decent.
One of the best large, multi-build city sets. Each build alone is, at minimum, a decent build (if not particularly flashy).
Combined, this is a fun set that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I agree with the above grade of A-.
I remember LEGO the year before sending an email to my son & I with concept art for this. It was one of three proposals. I remember one was a big rig truck stop. I don't remember the third. We were to pick our favorite and why. We wanted the truck stop like 6393.
I would love to read an investigative ThrowbackThursday article on the topography of LEGO city, comparing and compiling the different streetmaps like this 8404 has. (up until 2011) there should be stickers with maps at least in sets 1254 6399 6676 7035 7237 7743 10184
Looks for space in 'the boat' marked "Never had this set, but...":)
Seriously though, I liked the 'look' of this set when I first saw it; although looking at it with...modern eyes, I'm not crazy about the bus's color scheme, and the tram/L-Rail suffers the same problem a lot of them do in these type of sets: no rails...I'm getting "Inception" flashbacks...:)
I had forgotten of its existence but now that it's here, I recall - this is one of my wee day favourites!
@Jack_Sassy said:
"I had forgotten of its existence but now that it's here, I recall - this is one of my wee day favourites!"
You have a designated Wee day? I just do it every day...
Loved this set. The bus is rare because it is a touring bus rather than a public transport bus. One weird feature of the bus is front doors on both sides, which real busses don’t have. Bus is much improved by removing the door on the right (there, I said it).
A bit expensive for a set without a baseplate or train tracks.
@Russell844 said:
"This is the same year the City advent calendar came with showering Santa!"
I thought that was a joke, but no, there is actual showering Santa.. That might easily be the best thing in a Lego advent calender.
Converted the tram to run on 9V track
Truly this was worthy of the limited "Fan's Choice" label. I love this set so much. Moreover, not a single cops versus robbers vibe at all.
@sid3windr said:
" @Jack_Sassy said:
"I had forgotten of its existence but now that it's here, I recall - this is one of my wee day favourites!"
You have a designated Wee day? I just do it every day..."
You know how it is out in the sea, can't have a moment of rest, so hard choices must be made.
man... lego city was so strong around 2007-2011. so many fun sets.
This is one of my favorite sets in my collection, although at the time I never knew about the other fan choice options and probably would have liked a truck stop too.
The tram was my first train, followed by the excellent Maersk cargo train a few years later.
@TheWackyWookiee said:
"If you ask me, I'd say the glory days of LEGO City were 2009- c.2013. This definitely shows that era. All four vehicles in particular are pretty decent."
Yes, 2009 in particular was probably my personal favorite year of the LEGO City theme.
Yellow car! (1 point!)
What a awesome set. Pity it passed me by as I was just coming out of my dark ages at the time.
Given LEGO's official comment about Vidyo, they have to be reading this site. My advice to LEGO--more sets like this, less like Vidyo, and for the love of Ole Kirk Christiansen, please stop sticking 4+ sets in regular themes! Seems 4+ has replaced a lot of the smaller former "Great Vehicles".
@anthony_davies said:
"One weird feature of the bus is front doors on both sides, which real busses don’t have."
Some touring busses actually are equipped with a door on the driver's side. At least here in Denmark/Europe. They might be less visible than the main door, though, as they are for the driver only.
Definitely a great set, probably one the best of its time. It is wonderful to see such a focus on public transport, and both the tram as well as the bus are really well designed.
I was lucky to get hold of the set when Toys'R'Us opened a store in my town at the time. They had a wonderful opening offer: 50% off on all LEGO. I didn't mind standing in a queue for 45 minutes to get into the store on that day ??
Great set. I bought “for my son” a small bundle of City sets earlier this year, all boxed, with this one the star attraction. Just got to replace a few missing parts then it can come out of storage for us both to build :)
Is this the natural successor to the old 379 Bus Station?
Way better than 60271. Would have bought this one if it came out now.
Back then Lego really focused on the play element more, giving a bus an tram with not much more was perfect. This is one of their better sets for city. The tall facade buildings in more recent sets don't have the same play features to me. If providing a facade building make it a decent one or just provide a small group of buildings. For city I love any building that's like a doll house and opens up makes play more fun to have a complete building.
@brick_r:
One of the members of my LUG built the Q-Line from downtown Detroit, but he had to deal with the standard problem with running teams on rails, which is that the rails are buried in the street, and there’s no clean way to do that with current parts. So he rigged it up with NXT sensors that would pause it when it reached either end of a straight run of track, and then reverse its direction.
One other notable problem with this is the roof. The Q-Line wasn’t even running yet when it first appeared on one of our displays (they had just tested it with a team of horses), but eventually it would run right past the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, where we display for their Christmas concert. From where our layout sits, we actually had a good view of the top of the Q-Line driving past, and that’s not what it looks like. The upper foot (maybe more) is just a collar that hides a few ugly mechanical components like air units, and is mostly hollow. They’re really not designed for aerodynamics, nor are they intended to be viewed from above.