BrickTopia Cargo Fleet
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BrickTopia's growth in the past several years has been significant. This growth has been fueled by periodic infusions of new LEGO bricks from various sources including junked LEGO sets, imports from the port of BrickLink, as well as orders from shop.lego.com. Each infusion of new bricks required for those bricks to be transported from the source to BrickTopia itself. Historically, this transport has been performed by a giant who enjoys the continued evolution of BrickTopia. Unfortunately though, this giant can no longer be relied upon as there is a smaller, malevolent (towards LEGO creations) giant that seems to take up much of the larger giants time. Furthermore, the giant often takes breaks from LEGO building to do other, less noble tasks, such as playing video games. To insulate BrickTopia from the ups and downs of the giant's time, the city decided to develop a fleet of advanced cargo carriers to take over the job. A new class of ship was developed that emphasized speed and over cargo capacity. This new class, as well as the first ship, was named the "Susan Williams" after the great LEGO customer service rep from the 1970's. The Susan Williams class cargo ships are powered by a compact nuclear reactor, which never needs refueling during the 20-year lifespan of the vessels. The reactor generates an enormous amount of power, propelling the ship at speeds in excess of 60mph (100kph). To help attain such speeds, small wings along the side of the ship lift it almost completely out of the water when in transit. Quick navigation is critical at such speeds. The two domes on the front of the ship house the automatic navigation system, which can quickly divert the ship to prevent collisions with sea-life, other boats, and giants who get too close. The cargo on this particular vessel is a batch of the new "Bluish-Gray" bricks. To the consternation of BrickTopia, LEGO changed their gray color in 2004 to a new shade that doesn't match at all with the old shade. This has forced BrickTopia to begin stock-piling new gray bricks until enough are assembled to use on a new building. |
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Below, one sees the flagship, the "Susan Williams" steaming into BrickTopia harbor (past the Coast Watch HQ in the background). The large "smokestack" acts as a cooling tower for the reactor.
On each side of the control tower, are situated personal jet-skis (see orange vehicle in center of picture under curved glass). These jet-skis make perfect recreational craft for the crew while unloading/loading cargo. More importantly, these mini-craft act as fast escape vehicles in the event of minor accidents such as nuclear core melt-downs.
Below, one sees the inside of the control tower. Because of the ship's relatively small size, and high degree of automation, only two crew members are required. Often, only one crew member need be on duty, while the other member sleeps in one of the beds behind.
