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Eureka is a remote, cozy little Northwestern town where the best minds in the US have secretly been tucked away to build futuristic inventions for the government… which often go disastrously wrong!
Their latest experiment accidentally resulted in small pockets of reality to materialize and overlap right in their own back yard, creating a new Eureka made up of people and material from different times and dimensions. Someday it may all be returned to normal, or it could be torn into thousands of small parts before reforming as something else entirely!
The Theme
Every great brick project needs a theme and this one is no different. As I am sure that some of you have noticed, it is named after a 2006 science fiction TV series called EUReKA. In the series, that town was the home to a group of (nearly mad) scientists whose inventions caused constant chaos, usually resolved by Sheriff Jack Carter. It’s the same thing here – an experiment gone awry has caused a rift between universes, changing the town completely! Now you can find elements from all sorts of pop culture sources. The castle from Frozen looking down on Hogwarts while a Pterodactyl circles the Transportation center waiting for the Shuttlecraft Galileo to take off. Yes, it’s all here… in 1/87 scale… or at least until Carter resolves the case and the credits roll!
Building Eureka
This adventure started simply enough. I happen to collect slot cars, and found what was billed as the “World’s Smallest Slot Car Track” (1/87 scale) during a sale on Amazon. I didn’t have anything in that size, so what the hell? The fact that it was Lego compatible barely even registered.
This “mixed media” project is a combination of Lego compatible kits, “free build” structures, die cast vehicles and yes, even some actual Legos. Basically, whatever I needed to make it work. The finished(?) product is 95″ wide and 30″ deep and utilizes over 11,000 parts! Read on to see how it all came together.
Once the original kit arrived, I built the track and tried out the cars. It is a surprising decent slot car system, especially with the speed limiters on the controllers and the downloadable racing app (which forces you to Pit Stop every three or four laps or it shuts down the power to your lane as you “run out of gas”).
So far, so good, until I made the mistake of putting together the included buildings. Nothing too outrageous, but then I happened to see some used bulk Legos at the comic shop. Maybe just a pound or two? Sure. Small baseplates and building kits for $1.25 at Dollar Tree? Might as well add one… two… Oh, what’s this on Temu? That will work, too. Six months later, I had completed my first “version” of Eureka. I liked it so much that I even wrote a review for it on Amazon.
Click here to see a copy of the original review and pictures, aka “Eureka before it had a name”!
After that, there was no turning back. Whenever I found something that might work in my little town I’d go ahead and add it. It wasn’t long before I started to run out of space, so I bought more track… which gave me room for more buildings. A year later, I am almost totally done, but only because I filled the space I had to hold it! This is what it looks like now…
Interested? Want to see more?
Okay, so that’s a lot to take in. Let’s break it down a bit. The diagram below shows an interactive “map” of Eureka. As you move over the map, different areas will highlight. Click on the section of town you want more information on and it will display some high-level detail on that section and a link to the detail page(s) for that particular build with more information, pictures and a place for comments.
If you want to leave a comment on the build as a whole, you can do that directly from this page. Have fun checking it out – I hope it gives tons of ideas that you can apply to your own builds!