Meet IndyLUG Members
In another era, these people might have made model train sets, perhaps in the image of real train tracks in a real town.
But this isn’t that era. So the members of IndyLUG, a Lego club for adults, dream up other things.
Samara Shackelton likes to create elves. Bill Bartley makes submarines. Scott Wright builds historical pieces and scenes from movies. Or he makes stuff that’s just plain fun, such as a tyrannosaurus versus triceratops showdown.
Just do not, under any circumstances, show up to one of IndyLUG’s monthly meetings with an out-of-the-box Lego kit. Unless, of course, you want to get laughed out of the room.
Wright did buy some Pirates of the Caribbean kits for his first display—a vast structure that covered four 8-foot tables—but they weren’t perfect. So he fixed them. “I’m anal to the extreme, so I didn’t build the Dauntless like it came out of the box,” says Wright, a press operator. “I built it like the movie. It’s got the double decks, all the cannons, all the masts are in the right place.”
Last November, IndyLUG (the last few letters stand for “Lego User Group”) created a city that was 46 feet long and 18 feet wide, with moving cars and a train chugging along the perimeter, displayed at Saxony Hall in Fishers for a food drive. Another collaboration—an 88-foot space station—is assembled on site and on the fly every year. Check it out March 17 and 18, at Brickworld Indianapolis at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
But if you ask IndyLUG’s members, the club isn’t about monstrous models or the accuracy of their details. It’s about building a community, brick by studded brick.
