2018 LEGO TRAIN SHOW
PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER COSTAS
On a particularly bleak, cold Illinois day, in a similarly uninviting library, something bright and colorful was being built inside.
The Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club was busy at work shaping the event to come.
9 Club-members participated in the event bringing thousands of LEGO bricks, most of which have custom designs.
Some structures were prepared before the setup but many were built on-site.
Members spend anywhere from 6 months all the way to 7 years designing and building their LEGO sets. 95% of what is shown has been designed by individual members without the aid of instruction manuals.
Over the course of the weekend, approximately 3000 people visited the show.
Many parts of the display are fully-functional components from moving trains to lit restaurants.
A wide variety of themes were used from Superheroes to the Wild West to the Middle Ages which often included satirical humor such as the prohibition-era mobster scene at the bottom-right corner of this page.
As the crowd slowed, the signs taken down, and the trains came to a halt, the cleanup began.
After a long weekend full of ecstatic children, press interviews, and a LEGO world perpetually at rush-hour, the Club-members were eager to go home.