Tag Archives: Train

LEGO trains have been for sale since the 1960s, and LEGO fans have been creating their own custom layouts with LEGO bricks ever since. Whether you enjoy 4.5-volt, 12-volt, 9-volt, RC, or Power Functions LEGO trains, and whether or not you have an opinion about 8-wide, 9-wide, or some other scale, you’ll find lots of gorgeous engines and rail cars right here on The Brothers Brick.

Fly as fast as a... duck?

Yes, you read that title right: there is an outright world speed record held by a mallard, and one that’s unlikely to ever be beaten. Now that’s not quite what LEGO train master Joe Bloomfield has built here – but it’s very close. This is an A4 Pacific class steam engine, built by the London and North Eastern Railway in the 1930s (and now Joe in the 2020s). It’s a fine model, albeit not one for the purists! The vast majority is of course made from our favourite plastic bricks, but a handful of third-party elements add some crucial details. So too do the custom decals, which identify this engine as 60009 Union of South Africa. Coming back to that speed record, the A4s were – and are – the fastest steam locomotives ever built. And the holder of that 126mph record? Not Union of South Africa, but its class-mate, 4468 Mallard!

British Rail Class A4

Midnight sweet train brings holiday cheer in LEGO

It’s not even Halloween, but some folk are already pining for a winter wonderland. Christmas comes early in LEGO courtesy of Eann McCurdy (Miscellanabuilds) whose delightful midnight train scene is both cozy and clever in design. As his eighth and final entry in the latest Iron Builder competition against Geneva D, Eann incorporates the required red cauldron in the engine’s boiler. The pileup of snow in front of the train is a perfect mix of parts, including ice cream, hoods, and a frog. I especially love the forced perspective created by snow-capped trees at two scales. A tiny red byplane appears in the background, referencing Geneva’s prior Red Baron entry.

Midnight Train

As if the brilliant train weren’t a grand enough finale, Eann prints the scene as a postcard for a bonus build that amps up the holiday spirit. Candles, Chrismas lights, and candies show off an abundance of red cauldrons. Dr. Strange capes make a sweet appearance as candy wrappers. Decorated gingerbread is the icing on the cake cookies.

Season's Greetings! (Scene Version)

The Dutch Railways Class 1500 rides again

In this house, we love trains and that means we love this LEGO train model by Malik Geldermans. Malik has done a fantastic job capturing the details of a Dutch Railways NS Class 1500 in brick form. And let me tell you, there is not a brick out of place on this model: the circle – circle – square pattern on the bogies; the 1×2 round tile ribs under the sides; and the 1×1 curved slopes beside the doors are all perfect details! Malik has also proven his handiness with all minifig grippers on the pantographs and on the greebles along the chassis. Great building Malik, we can’t wait to see more!

BrickLink Designer Program Series 2 – Logging Railway: A trial of timber! [Review]

LEGO is releasing a second series of sets from its BrickLink Designer Program, including a fungal cottage, a pirate fortress, a modular train station, and a coastal villa. LEGO sent us an advance copy of Logging Railway by fan designer and LEGO train enthusiast Ties van Asseldonk. With pre-orders for BDP Series 2 coming up on June 6th (for $209.99 USD), read on to find out what we thought of this inventive take on LEGO locomotion.

LEGO sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Read on for our full review below

Learning about Iberian freight trains through LEGO

Something I really like about the global LEGO community is when builders take inspiration from their local surroundings for their creations. Sérgio Batista, for instance, has crafted this nice freighy convoy with a train from his native Portugal. Now I can’t confess to being a train expert, at least not where south-western Europe is concerned, but having seen Sérgio’s model, I’ve now gone down a bit of a Wikipedia rabbit hole reading about the history of railways in Portugal. So I can say with a modicum authority that this is a CP4700 series locomotive, with an attractive brick-built livery!

Just a Lego containers train

And you know what’s better than one great scale model of a Portuguese freight train? Two scale models of a Portuguese freight train! Here’s another slightly less modern consist, with the so-called ‘Nez-Cassée’ 2620 series built by Alsthom. Fun fact: ‘nez cassé’ means broken nose in French, and the stubby cab front is where they get this nickname from. Thanks for the educational trip, Sérgio!

Just a Lego freight train

A “train”-ing spaceship in blue and yellow!

If you need a space fighter to hunt bogies with, this LEGO ship by Linus Bohman might be just the thing you need. Linus built this fighter around a skeleton of railroad track parts including curves and straights from the 4.5V era and six Duplo curve sections. I’d argue that this build is all horsepower, no ballast, with huge engines embedded in each wing. All-in-all, the grey details between the rails provide a nice buffer, while the rails themselves couple everything together!

Overview

A complex train build that never goes off the rails

Look, I’m not a train guy. I can barely tell a caboose from a boxcar, and yet even I am in awe of Smile Leo‘s amazing LEGO train, depicting a China Railways DF11G locomotive. The first thing to notice is the variety of angles at which the bricks and plates all fit together for the smooth, rounded angles of the train’s nose. Next, check out the intricacy of the machinery around the wheels. With another model, I might just classify it as a bunch of greebling (you know, little mechanical details that are there just to look cool rather than have any particular function), but it’s clear that every meticulously chosen element mimics an actual train part. I can almost hear the churning of pistons and the whine of wheels on rails.

This Bavarian beauty goes full steam ahead

Should you find yourself in the 1920s and need to get from Munich to Nuremberg in record time, then you’ll want an express ticket to ride behind the Bavarian S3/6. This majestic steam locomotive is meticulously recreated in LEGO by Bricks_n_Trucks. At 10 studs wide, the engine is comparable in scale to the Hogwarts Express Collector’s Edition, but unlike LEGO’s largest steam engine model, this train is fully motorized with a BuWizz engine (see the video below the fold!). The version you see here is an update to the builder’s first iteration, and spotting the differences highlights how much thought went into the smallest details.

Bavarian S3-6 (BR18.4)_(Update)

But what’s a Bavarian steam engine without luxurious cars to pull?

Click to see the train cars and video!

Train Engine Shed? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time

If this handsome structure from builder legolux1973 looks familiar, you might recognize it from its young, wild, LEGO World City days as 10027 Train Engine Shed. Since then, though, it’s moved to the country and developed a quiet, studied sophistication clad in dark red. Only one engine bay is needed these days, but it’s grown to make space for modern locomotives and there’s a small office smartly tucked to the side. The black half-circle arched windows top off the banks of windows, and note the small 1x2x2 window with grille tucked in sideways above the bay doors. The scene is finished with lots of little details, including some fuel containers (Octan, of course!), a pallet jack with a pallet and boxes, a little portable tool cabinet, and lots of tasteful landscaping. We’ll raise a grease can to you, Train Engine Shed!

Legolux1973 LEGO Engine Shed 01

LEGO Ideas 21344 Orient Express revealed [News]

LEGO Ideas switches to a new track with the reveal of 21344 Orient Express. The Orient Express is a classic train that is a part of popular culture, most prominently in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express novel and its movie adaptations. The Orient Express first ran in 1883, and though the original incarnation ceased operation in 1977, you can still ride the Venice-Simplon Orient Express in very similar coaches today. The set rumbles in with a 4-6-0 steam locomotive, a 3-axle tender, a restaurant car, and a sleeping car with two classes of accommodations. Built from 2,540 pieces and including 8 minifigures, it will be available from LEGO.com and LEGO stores worldwide starting December 1st for US $299.99 | CAN $TBD | UK £259.99. 

Click here to see more of The Orient Express

See a slice of Bavaria on the LEGO rails

Frequently featured for his impressive LEGO train builds, Pieter Post comes in strong once again, this time tackling the Bavarian D XII locomotive in its natural habitat. Before getting into the train itself, please take a moment and appreciate the German countryside laid out in this impressive scene. The impressive mix of fields, brambles, and reedy water leads to a carefully constructed incline topped with the train tracks. Building this hill at a bevel along the track’s curve, and with a clean slope of pieces merging the angled plates into the hill’s underside, the whole ordeal is impeccably clean! And make sure to give the scene a hard look to appreciate all the brick-built wildlife populating the scene, as well as the stud-reversal technique Peter used to make that gorgeous bridge.

Lost World – Bavarian D XII

But as in all of Peter’s scenes, the train is the real star of the show. You’ll have to forgive me for not knowing all the lingo, for I’m no LEGO ferroequinologist. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the form of a well-recreated locomotive. Clad mainly in black, this engine sports highlights in gold, with a set of brown and red-paneled water tanks on either side of the boiler. I always appreciate Peter’s detail to the undercarriage: a symphony of bars, clips, and minifig accessories perfectly replicating the real thing.

Bayerische D XII - Bavarian D12

KFC: Kentucky Fried Choo-choo!

When I say meals on wheels, you probably picture a burger van. But Dicken Liu has other ideas! Where these crazy LEGO chicks are going, they don’t need roads – only rails. Which is probably a lot more restrictive when it comes to delivering food actually, not to mention expensive. And the maintenance costs will be astronomical. Seriously, where’s the business case here?! This is what happens when a marketing team is given unlimited access to the purse strings. They come up with mad ideas like this and need to hire builders like Liu to make it come to life.

Crazy Chick

Props to them, to be fair – he’s done a great job with such a whimsical design. Despite the bright colours of the train, the way the track is done caught my eye. Rather than using existing LEGO track elements, these rails are built using brackets and tiles, and it looks great. The cooking car even has an interior too! Although suddenly this looks a lot more sinister than it did at first glance, with chicken minifigures cooking whole chickens with tridents, feathers and all…

Crazy Chick