The Winter Village theme has grown into a popular and much beloved seasonal product family; with each year’s new releases eagerly awaited by LEGO fans. Winter Village has the special quality of being a “cross-over” theme in that it often incorporates subjects from other adjacent themes into a holiday context.
My winter village layout circa 2023 (5 x 3 mils compatible baseplates 32×32)
One need not look any further than this year’s release of the Star Wars 40806 Gingerbread AT-AT Walker for evidence of this crossover affinity! However, my interest in the Winter Village theme is, of course, focused on trains!
My Winter village layout circa 2025 at an exhibition at the museum of natural history in Ottawa, Canada (6 x 3 mils compatible baseplates 32×32)
For several years, our family has replaced a traditional Christmas tree for holiday decoration with a winter village-themed layout, complete with a customized holiday train (with lights and sound). The village occupies 6×3 baseplates and is fully illuminated, including animated lighting for fireplaces and decorative lighting garlands.
My winter village layout ”in the dark”!
The Christmas Train Tradition
There is something uniquely special about trains within a winter/Christmas holiday tradition. For many years, I would take my children to see the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train when it used to pass through our region. Families would eagerly await its arrival and children would be enthralled by the sight of a decorated and brightly illuminated train heralding its arrival with Christmas carols and Santa’s “Ho Ho Ho”!
With that in mind, it is no surprise that LEGO have released several holiday themed trains both big and small over the years. The latest of course, is this year’s 10361 Holiday Express Train.
My first impression of this new holiday train was just how much of a spiritual successor it was to the 2016’s 10254 Holiday Train. Everything from the size, form factor and play features seemed to tie back to its predecessor in some way. As such, I thought it would be instructive to compare these sets and look more broadly on how we can expand and build upon these sets to make even more interesting trains for our winter villages.
A Tale of Two Holiday Locomotives
Starting with the box, we can already see similarities in terms of scope and form factor. Both represent a caricatured steam locomotive pulling a modest consist of decorated wagons with the notional function of delivering toys.
Each set comes with a loop of track, a tiny station platform, and several minifigures. Lastly, each train incorporates a unique and delightful wheel-driven animation feature—the 2016 train has a rotating Christmas tree and the 2025 train includes both a “chuffing” chimney and an animatronic polar bear!
Looking inside the box, we can see the included loops of track and six element bags—with a notable and much welcome use of paper-based element bags in the 2025 edition that we opened—something I hope will be standard for all future LEGO products.
One other key feature of this year’s holiday train is the special little boxed “present” revealing the very unexpected, but very welcome use of a 3D printed element: a diminutive, yet charming steam locomotive complete with operating wheels, coupling rods and cam-driven “chuffing” animation! The unique attributes of 3D printed elements are used to full effect.
Firstly, it offers the design team new creative opportunities to incorporate bespoke/niche elements that would otherwise be impossible to justify for mass-production injection molding. Secondly, it takes advantage of the “print-in-place” mechanical functions, which can only be achieved using additive 3D printing—in particular, the self-supporting laser-sintered polymer powder technique that I suspect this model uses. (Note: I don’t have official confirmation of the manufacturing technique LEGO used—it is based on my engineering intuition and background in various production methods!)
If we continue our comparison of the assembled train consists, we can see the similarities; but also some notable differences. Both trains are hauled by a completely caricatured representation of a steam locomotive—sadly, neither one is convincing.
Even more disappointing, the 2025 locomotive, although bigger in size, is less believable with its two-bogie wheel arrangement. I understand the charm and appeal of depicting a steam locomotive, and I also understand each locomotive was designed to be easily upgraded to Power Functions/Powered-Up for remote control operation. However, I would rather be offered a two-bogie diesel or electric locomotive than a steam locomotive awkwardly masquerading in the wrong “winter boots”!
Having a bigger locomotive in the 2025 train (or the 3D printed element) looks like it compromised the element budget, and therefore, we have one less wagon in the consist compared to the 2016 train. It is a pity, because part of the visual impact is the length of the entire train. It allows each wagon to have a special creative expression as part of a whole. This leads me to consider these models in terms of their own visual and artistic style.
Effectively, each holiday train has its own “brand identity.” This is the combination of attributes such as form factor, shapes, decorations, and most significantly, its colour palette.
A Train’s Brand Identity
I use the term “brand identity” somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I do feel each holiday train conveys its own distinctive visual flair. I have attempted to capture and summarize the visual identities of both the 2016 and 2025 LEGO holiday trains in the illustration below.
If we examine each visual identity in more detail we can describe specific attributes which characterize each holiday train. The 2016 holiday train is definitely more expressive in terms of colour by using traditional red and green primary colours with complementary use of dark blue and black.
The 2025 holiday train is somewhat more “austere” and restrained in terms of colour; adopting a predominantly blue palette with desaturated accent colours of brown, dark grey and dark tan. The table below explores the visual identity of each holiday train in greater detail and would generally represent a designer’s “mood board” while creating the set.
Now that we’ve unpacked the elements of visual style that characterize each holiday train, we essentially have a template to creatively expand each train with new wagons.
A longer holiday train not only looks fantastic, but also adds more creative and functional scope. This might include carrying more minifigure passengers, transporting more presents, showcasing other winter village cargo, or simply modifying the existing wagons.
Expanding the Holiday Express
Using the style guide above, we can create some new rolling stock for our holiday trains. I am going to showcase three examples:
2025 Passenger Coach with clerestory roof and end porches typical of late 19th-century era trains
2025 Tanker Wagon with a working title of “Hot Chocolate Wagon”
2016 Box Car—a wagon I already created several years ago as part of the discontinued Fx Bricks holiday train upgrade kit
2025 Passenger Coach
The 2025 holiday train offers very sparse accommodation for any minifigures wishing to catch a ride. Therefore, a passenger coach was an obvious upgrade to this consist. I started with a 6×16 stud dark tan base, which I considered the maximum length for a 2-axle chassis.
From there, I added the reddish brown accent perimeter, followed by the coach body. The body is 10 studs long and is flanked by two windowed reddish brown doors on each end. The exterior body is rendered with dark and bright-light blue and incorporates the lovely gold-framed window elements from 21344 Orient Express.
At this point, I was a little too enthusiastic with the pearl gold accents… I added the ornamental end fences and then boldly added the ornate curly gold roof valances. This notionally supports the white roof with the centrally mounted two-tone clerestory roof.
For the underframe, I deviated from the plain dark bluish grey piping with the addition of a reddish brown cover panel. Lastly, I mounted end steps with 1/2 stud offsets as a finishing touch. In retrospect, I would also add brick-built train buffers similar in style to the Orient Express.
2025 Hot Chocolate Tanker Wagon
For the next wagon, I thought a tanker would be a good candidate since they are not often depicted in this whimsical context. To stay on theme, I thought this wagon would be perfect for the transport of large quantities of hot chocolate! This build is certainly more complex and self-indulgent compared to the passenger coach.
Firstly, the wagon base is tapered in the middle, similar in form factor to some real tanker wagons. The wagon body takes advantage of some ideal cylindrical elements available in dark blue (elements 41531 and 60208) as well as nearly perfect bright-light blue end caps (element 65138). The 60208 cylinder (wheel) elements include two outside-facing Technic holes, each 180º apart. These were ideal mounting points to both the wagon chassis and the top maintenance platform.
The wagon was finished with a myriad of pearl gold accent hardware, including railings, steps, fencing, piping, and circular tank banding. This time I did add the train buffers and think it looks better for it.
2016 Box Car (aka the Speaker Wagon!)
This wagon is not a new creation, but rather part of an upgrade kit (now discontinued) that Fx Bricks offered for the 2016 holiday train. The kit included all of the electronics, wiring, additional LEGO elements, and new instruction books to seamlessly upgrade the 2016 holiday train with animated side lights, locomotive headlights, caboose interior lighting, and sound!
The addition of sound presented the issue of finding space to mount a speaker. The solution was a simple matter of making a dedicated wagon to enclose the speaker. The roof and both end walls include grille apertures to help with the projection of sound while still disguising the speaker. A system diagram of the kit is shown below for those curious about the implementation details.
Keeping the Holiday Trains Rolling
I’ve only touched briefly on the topic of winter-themed holiday trains with emphasis on the current 2025 release. Sadly, I missed out 10173 Holiday Train from 2006, and finding a complete one today is nearly impossible without bankruptcy! However, I would like to explore this set more thoroughly in the future since it offered a generously long train including 3x themed wagons and a full-size passenger coach.
I think our current-era holiday trains could all benefit from a similar length with the addition of both new wagons and modified existing ones. Hopefully, this article will jump-start your own creative exploration of scaling up your holiday train to look even more awesome the next time it runs through your winter village!
The LEGO Winter Village 10361 Holiday Express Train is available for around $130 US | $150 CA | €120 EU | £110 UK | $200 AU.
DISCLAIMER: This set was provided to BrickNerd by LEGO. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
What custom cars would you add to a LEGO holiday train? Let us know in the comments!
Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, Lukas Kurth from StoneWars, Wayne Tyler, Dan Church, and Roxanne Baxter to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.
Leave a Reply