Ralph 'Mad Physicist' Savelsberg is a Dutch builder, famous for his incredibly accurate models of military aircraft, and his wide range of car models, especially the ones from movies and TV. He also writes for the Brothers Brick, and in that capacity he interviewed me several years ago.

After getting permission from the Brothers Brick to borrow their 'Builder in Residence', I recently sat down with Ralph when he visited Ireland. What was supposed to be a proper interview soon turned into a more informal chat about our shared hobby.

I started with an easy question. What's the first set you can remember? Ralph said he vaguely remembered Duplo from his early childhood, but the first real memory is of 314 Police Launch, a set I also had. Fun fact: it's the only floating boats set with 'stiffies'. He wasn't even a teenager when Top Gun was released, and started a love for military airplanes that continues to this day.

When asked about Dark Ages, Ralph told me he didn't really stop building but rather stopped buying LEGO between the ages of 14 and 25. It's no surprise that it was a military airplane that ended his long pause in buying LEGO. One day he spotted 3451 Sopwith Camel in a shop at a healthy discount, and decided to buy it. It wasn't just the subject that caught his attention but also the colours; there wasn't much brown in his collection from the 80's, and tan in those days only existed in LEGOLAND. He liked the set so much, he went back to the same shop for a few more.

He reminded me of the 'grabbelbakken' that that store had in the early 2000's. Nobody knew where the parts came from but suddenly there were these bins with random parts that were sold by weight. Many AFOLs would spend hours trawling through them.

By then Ralph had finished his physics studies, and started his career. His choice to study physics wasn't related to his love for military airplanes, but he ended up working in aeronautical engineering. And that career brought him to Southampton in 2006. He decided to join the Brickish Association to meet some like-minded souls in his new country. One of the first AFOLs he met was Ed Diment, and that meeting put his AFOL career in a different gear.

Before long he was building cars for Bricksboro, a large collaborative display by members of Brickish, and building all the aircraft for Ed's massive Intrepid model.

Around the time of Bricksboro, Ralph was working on an English street scene. As a backdrop he chose an elevated railway, not uncommon in English cities. Once you have a bit of railway, you need a train, so he built a little commuter train. Two years later he had many competative train builders worried when applied his talents to build a scaled-up version of the Maersk train set. Luckily for those train builders, he hasn't built another train since. But that might soon change... there are plans for a North-Korean rocket-launching train.

Maersk Diesel Engine, inspired by set 10219: Maersk Train

Ralph has been a prolific builder, to say the least, so I asked him what he does with his models. He told me some MOCs get revisited after a while when new parts become available, some are dismantled, but most are kept. He is lucky to have a house with lots of storage and space to display models. Nowadays he works on military rockets and missiles, including the ones that hang under his beloved airplanes, and he makes sure there are some models of rocket launchers on the shelves behind him in zoom calls.

A small part of Ralphs collection in his LEGO room

Ralph doesn't think his car style is anything special, but I begged to differ. He is one of the most recognizable car builders out there, with a mix of Model Team and Miniland. He explained how his scale and style developed. LEGO has a limited number of wheel sizes, and they typically determine the scale of a vehicle. That applies to AFOLs but to LEGO set designers too. It's why the Creator Expert vehicles look strange together; each has been designed to a slightly different scale to match an available wheel size. Ralph applied the same rule, but wanted his models to work together. With the tyre sizes at the time, he found that on average 1:22 worked well, which is about 10% smaller than the cars in Miniland. At that scale one of the available wheel sizes worked well for cars, another for trucks. Sometimes the wheels are slightly too big or small for a car but that's a compromise he's willing to accept.

Ralph enjoys the fact that more and more colours are available for building his cars. For example the resurrection of teal enabled a particular model. He told me the story of how he was in Kyoto for Japan Brickfest a few years ago. While doing a bit of sight-seeing with some other builders they visited a monastery. In the middle of the beautiful tranquil courtyard stood this ugly little teal and tan delivery van. He immediately knew he wanted to build that little car.

While he's always built cars - he's got an impressive collection of emergency service vehicles from all over the world - he is best known for his movie cars. It's a collection of dozens of cars that start 10 years ago and now includes a wide range of vehicles, from the A-Team van to the ZZ-Top Eliminator. While most are known world-wide, there are some local preferences. Ralph told me he exhibited the collection in his native Netherlands, and nobody knew what Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was. But while in the UK, that's a model people recognize from a distance.

I asked him what he thought of LEGO taking inspiration from his collection and releasing more movie cars. Laughing, he said he likes the Creator Expert cars like the Delorean, Ecto 1 and the Bond DB5. The Aston Martin didn't quite get the shape right, suffering from a focus on gadgets, or play functions. His favourite, though, is the Mustang, in part because it doesn't rely on stickers for the A-pillars, which I thought was an interesting view.

Royal Netherlands Navy Lynx and Dutch Police EC135

UH-2A Sea Sprite, SH-3H Sea King and SH-60F Seahawk

And while on the subject of new sets, since Ralph has built more helicopters than most AFOLs, I had to ask him about the recently announced Technic helicopter. Strangely, for an engineer who builds LEGO, he has little interest in Technic. He said for his liking the form has suffered too much for the function; it's very top-heavy.

Finally I asked him what's the set that got away; the one set he wished he had bought at the time, but never did. The answer was no surprise really: 5571, the Black Cat truck from model team. I wish I had one myself..

Can you think of a car that Ralph hasn’t built that you’d like to see? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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