Lepin 15003 Not Lego Town Hall Set Review - Part One

It's time to unpack and build the Lepin Town Hall modular set.  Lepin set 15003 is a knock-off of Lego's Town Hall 10224 set.

The Town Hall is the third modular set I've got from Lepin.  My first was the 15002 Cafe Corner and the second was the 15004 Fire Brigade.  This set is the biggest one of all the modular buildings with 2859 pieces.

The delivered box was heavy and the 52 bags of parts was overflowing from my storage bin.  

I actually count all the bags to make sure I've got a complete set. I've read on the bootleg brick forums about some Lepin sets that are missing pieces, so I'm a bit paranoid about making sure I've got all of them.  I was missing some minor pieces in the Cafe Corner, but luckily the  Fire Brigade build was completed with no problems.  It's best to not mark your Aliexpress transaction as completed until you've verified your Lepin modular set inventory.  That way, you can still raise a dispute with the seller to either get the missing parts or get some credit on your purchase price.  

As with the other Lepin modular reviews, I will follow the instruction manual and build about 10 steps per day, taking pictures of the building progress as I go.  It usually takes between a week to a week and a half for me to complete a modular building.   Here we go!

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Day One

Before I even started to build the Town Hall, I ran into a problem with the instruction manual.  It appears to have been put together incorrectly and some of the pages were cut in half.  

I'll follow the instruction manual until I get to step 48, after which I may have to search for and download the affected steps from the Internet.  As near as I can tell, there are about 10 steps of the build that will be impacted by the incomplete pages.

I wasn't expecting any firearms with the Town Hall set, but found that I had 5 racks of guns in one of the ziplock bags.  I'm pretty sure the Lego version doesn't have them, so this is a Lepin bonus.

You get eight mini figures with the Town Hall building.  Here's all of them posing with their choice of firearms.   Lepin's mini figure hair pieces are different than the actual Lego hair.

Lepin's Town Hall baseplate is also different from Lego.  This set comes with a thicker one piece 32x32 stud base, which I like.  In the Cafe Corner and in the Fire Brigade, Lepin gave you two 16x32 pieces for the bases which made for some instability at the outset of the modular builds.

The above picture shows the progress after the first 10 steps.  The foundation is starting to take shape and the sidewalk has been laid.

I found it odd that there are two small white windows used as support pieces for the first floor.  Once the first floor goes in, you will never see them and I thought what a waste of two good windows.

From my parts bin, I replaced the windows with some black 1x2 bricks.  I also removed the flat white 1x6 and black 1x3 pieces as well, as I don't see them serving any purpose.  I subsequently also replaced the two round fluted bricks under the front steps with just some standard square bricks as I have very few of the fluted bricks.  Ten steps done and probably a hundred more to go, lol.  Day one complete.  More to come!

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Day Two

On Day 2, with the foundation complete, the building of the first floor can continue.

First floor walls and window sills in place.

It's neat how the design includes access to the elevator shaft at the rear of the building.

Some of the office furniture is now in place.

The pedestals are now ready for front columns to be installed.

The podium and it's town hall crest in the general assembly room.

Here's a look at the base of the elevator shaft.

Steps 11 through 20 completed on day two.

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Day Three

Here we are on day 3, and we've got the first floor interior and exterior walls and windows up.

The back door and windows are in place.  What? we already have a giant weed growing!

The administrative office is open for business even before the building is complete.

Steps 21 through 30 now completed after day three.

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Day Four

Today, I installed the front doors, interior doors and more windows on the first floor.

The double front doors are massive.

The administrative office with door and arched windows added.

More pics of the auditorium.

Overhead shot of first floor.

Second row of windows installed at the back of the town hall.

I decided I didn't like the windows looking into the elevator shaft, so I replaced them with a shuttered window instead.

Day four finished.

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That's it for this post.  The Lepin Town Hall build continues in part two.   Thanks for looking!

Update: Part Two of the Lepin Town Hall Building Review can be found here.