Lego Build: 40138 Christmas Train

The first of the two limited edition christmas sets this year, the Christmas Train is actually quit a looker.

And in the meantime, I amassed about half a dozen of them.  Not for resale in a year or two, but well, they come free with your orders and have some very excellent parts, on which more when we get there.

With over 200 parts, the set comes in a small box, which contains the manual as well as four bags of parts.

The train itself consists of a locomotive and 2 more wagons, and the locomotive as such is the first thing we will be putting together. Using a white 2x6 as a base, it has red hubcap parts to house the wheels.

On top of this, the connector for the wagons is added, and here you already see what I like about this set.  It contains a nice selection of gold and dark green elements, always useful in my opinion.

While the bodywork is plated up, we also build the frontpart of the train and instal this, well, at the front lol.

The cabin then placed on the bodywork.

The boiler is made by changing the build direction with a hinge piece, then it is added in front of the cabin windows.

The roof and the wheels are then added to the structure, and the locomotive is done, time to move on to the second part.

This is the cargo wagon full with sweets and treats.  Starting on a similar base, the remaining two wagons are 4 wheel carriages compared to the locomotive`s 6, but otherwise follow the same pattern.

The connectors for the middle wagon are installed as we fill up the sides of this open top compartment.  With those lovely big dark green arches...

The carriage includes various sweats, and note the brown `twirl` that is used on cakes in lego and such, to resemble chocolate icecream.  This is a colour that will become useful, I see in it for example excellent end pieces for medieval style bedposts.

Add the carriage to the train, and we can continue to the final compartment.

Number three is a passenger wagon, including the old style trains `high bump roof`.

Again following a similar pattern to house the wheels and the final connector.

The wagon has `open` endings with golden rails, and then inside those transparent bricks are used to make the wagon doors.

Once the roof is added to this compartment, we turn it upside down for a moment and attach the wheel sections to it.

The final thing we have to do is create the hump in the roof, using small transparent plates and some more dark green arches.

We connect it to the other two... and the set isn`t completed yet as it also comes with a signpost.

This is essentially a very simple build using a small pinetree and a cone to add the post in, but it complements the set nicely and the use of the `cake donut` like round printed element is well found for this.

And then the set indeed stands fully completed:

And a lot of extra parts are included as well:

It is a good solid build, rather fun to put together, and it looks great in the house for the holiday season.  From a personal AFOL point of view, while it will `survive` in it`s build mode until january, it will without a doubt be disassembled afterwards as it contains just to many good pieces for my ideas :-)