STAR WARS Gallofree Yards Medium Transport a.k.a. rebel transport

Lego Version 3.0

I decided to do a lego medium transport because:
-I liked its shape; organic with exposed cargo containers and holes
-Playability: Cargo could be tons of containers with rebel trinckets,
              portable bases, stripped fighters, 3 snowspeeders etc
-Nobody else seems to have made a (admittedly scaled down) minifig
 scale version; aha a chance for fame & glory!
-its an obscure ship

The Making of:
It took me around 2 and a half years to finally finish this ship, 
with long periods of not touching it thanks to frustration at not
making the 'shell' robust and neat enuff for my liking.
Got the top shell roughly the right shape and the two sideskirts, 
then had to figure out how to make it playable; pop top lid? hungry
cheeseburger? front loading and unloading? sliding in cargo? magnets?
slides and magnets? Retractable landing gear (LG)? The ability to 
split into 4 seperate ships for no apparent reason?

I mainly used pictures of the movie models available on the web
and the photos contained in SW Technical Journal. The picture by
Doug Chiang in tEgtVaV is ok but the new one in tNEgtVaV is crap
and based on those mostly inaccurate schematics. Why can't Lucas 
realease a book with nothing but actual movie models and CG? 
Anyway...

Final Specs:
88 studs long
1 pilot
Front loading slide + magnets cargo, repulsorlift truck
Cargo Accessories include: Portable rebel comm centre, Medical pod 
and droid, generator, dish cannon (Hoth), weapons, spares.
Retractable landing gear.

Future: 
Add some upper thrusters that are missing...
Make an episode 1 tan version...

Current Project:
Ep 4/5/6 version of ep 1 rep' cruiser...it's big

NickR6

Any comments, suggestions, requests, critiques:
nick_yzf@yahoo.com.au