LEGO Creator Expert London Bus 10258 Building Kit (1686 Pieces)

My recent experience of Lego has been helping my granddaughter to build her Lego Friends sets, so this London Bus was something very different for me – a ‘lockdown' project inspired by a schoolfriend sharing his project! It was a very enjoyable build and the completed model looks even better ‘in the bricks' than ‘in the pics' – in particular the tiles on the sides look very heavy on the box and instruction booklet yet are fine on the model. There are many lovely details, the engine, staircase, ticket box, fire extinguisher, and seats. I made my own destination labels for the route that passed my school. I made a couple of minor changes: • I took out the 1x1x3 pillar from the front of the driver's door and replaced it with a spare 1x1 flat tile – makes the cab look better. • Also replaced the three transparent bricks below the windscreen with red 1x1, 1x1 with knob, and 1x4 bricks – and used the spare clear round brick to make an offside side lamp to match the one on the nearside (I took the 1x1 with knob from stage 45 and replaced it with a plain 1x1). I also built it with the shorter window as the last on the lower deck, and in the corresponding position upstairs, with a slight rearrangement of the bricks and plates above and below – it looks better balanced. As others have said, it would be nice to have at least driver and conductor figures. The only real disappointment is the front of the upper deck, the corners look a mess and the screen (with that awful sticky label) slopes too much – it really needs special bricks for the top corners to merge the front and side roof curves properly. I am now investigating the extra parts needed to extend the whole model by 2 studs to eliminate the short window altogether – downstairs the seats over the rear wheels would be for four as on the real thing, upstairs the seats could be moved back 1 stud to eliminate the awkward '1½' seats at the front, and the rearmost seat moved forward 1 stud with a proper seat rather than the bench. Anyway it's got me being creative!

Really enjoyed building the London Bus set. Brought back so much nostalgia and I loved the extra details like the gum under the seat and the umbrella in the stand. It's just like the real thing. Didn't find it repetitive or boring at all. I would get so excited every time a section came together. Highly recommend giving this one a go!