Expanding the Emerald Night (#10194-1) - Creator Expert Train

The last Creator Expert train was #10233-1: Horizon Express and it went off sale in the US in late 2014. Since then we’ve have a number of CITY trains and trains in other themes, but no Creator Expert-like trains. I’m super excited that #10277-1: Crocodile Locomotive is out although out of stock on LEGO Shop @ Home in the US. For those of you that are mad, don’t worry because at the time of the writing of this post it was also out of stock in Germany. I placed my order on day one (1 July) and I’m waiting for it to ship. It has been in “pre-shipment” status for nine days now which has concerned me. Hopefully it will ship shortly and arrive in one piece.

Before the Horizon Express we had the #10219-1: Maersk Train (available 2011 to 2012 in the US) and then starting on 1 April 2009 and ending on 25 November 2011 in the US we had #10194-1: Emerald Night.

Pictured above is the steam engine from the set configured for PF (minus the battery box in the tender). I think it is a phenomenal model and ranks up there in my book as one of the best trains LEGO has released. It was totally outside of what they have ever done before and it was a welcome sight along with the sleek color scheme. The design wasn’t quite perfect, but with the help of some smart AFOLs, I was able to modify the engine for better operation. The $99.99 price tag in the US for 1,085 pieces was reasonable and it included one coach shown below.

The downside to the set is it only includes one coach and that’s it. You could go on Ebay, Bricklink, or on the secondary market elsewhere to get another coach, but that gets pricey. So the benefit of LEGO bricks is the ability to build on your own. After purchasing this set, I did exactly that… or at least tried to.

I ended up building two additional coaches so I would have three total. The coaches I built look similar, but have a few key differences. You’ll notice the windows are not the same for the main part of the coach and the doors. At the time, the exact ones were too expensive for me on Bricklink. Maybe they are cheaper now, but I’m okay with the different set up. If you look closely, there is a small gap by the window on the door as I couldn’t get that design perfect so it doesn’t look as smooth. Also the door is not very sturdy as it is only held together by one stud on the outer edge of the coach car. It still swings open and shut though.

Additionally, there are two rows of darker brown plates on the original car. The color was not as prevalent at the time I built this so I just used the standard brown color. If I go for an update in the near future, I could easily replicate that.

Finally, at the time I built this, the 1x2 brick with a Technic pin hole in the middle in brown was very expensive to purchase (for me). It has reappeared multiple times since then so buying it now shouldn’t be an issue. I have 1x1 tan plates and could easily match the original coach.

The only other problem I have is the light gray plates on the roof has discolored with age. I either need to follow some of the methods online to restore them or replace them. Not a huge deal, but it would help the train to look a lot better.

And it wouldn’t be a complete train without a caboose. I built up a simple caboose design using the same color scheme with some of the same troubles as the coaches in terms of color matching. Additionally, you can tell the windows don’t exactly line up and the slight gap causes them to bow in a bit.

I wonder how it would look using the dark green on the Emerald Night versus the tan and brown of the coaches?

The picture above is how the whole set looks with the additional coaches and caboose. Despite the flaws in design that I have pointed out, I think the train looks much better with multiple coaches and a caboose. In the future, I may look to modify the coaches and caboose. Should I add other cars? A mail car? A sleeping car? A dining car?

Have you tried to build your own coaches or made any modifications to this set? What are they? Let me know in the comments or email me at store@bricksforbricks.com.

Happy building!

20 Years of Bricklink

The famous secondary LEGO marketplace turned 20 years old on 19 June. Bricklink has been posting some special web content to highlight the occasion. If you go here, you can see all of the content for the 20 days. They have gone through history, first members, stories about using the site from users, and a post from an Admin as of the writing of this post. If you want to see more stories or if you want to post your own story, you can go here. There are a lot of great stories about people finally being able to recreate old sets or piecing together lost sets.

My Bricklink story… I joined Bricklink on 31 July 2009 according to my profile. Has it been that long? I found out about the site and had also downloaded Lego Digital Designer (LDD). I started building some MOCs and needed the parts for them. My MOCs are pretty awful and I quickly learned that I was not a good builder… despite that, I’ll post some pictures of my work which was made possible from bricks purchased on Bricklink.

First off was the diesel engine shown below. I really wanted to capture the stripe going across and was very proud of myself that I figured out how to make the stripe angle up. Otherwise, the engine is a bit too long and is very fragile with no real good place to pick it up. Thank goodness for 9v motors and rails though.

Moving on… I built a small train display and it looks pretty scary. I bought #4561-1: Railway Express off of a teenager locally through a site in the place I was living in. He sold all of his LEGO for $115 to buy an iPod. I got a full up 9v train and motor along with some Harry Potter and Star Wars sets. I got the better deal as I’ll bet he doesn’t use his iPod anymore. Anyways if you look at the bottom left, you’ll see my MOC of #4561-1 rebuilt into a “better” train. The engine is pretty awful, but I like the double decker car. Someday I will modify it, but for now it looks good. I later built a second car with a few orders from Bricklink. There are a few other less impressive builds in the picture as well. However, I’m glad to still have #4558-1: Metroliner and #4547-1: Railroad Club Car.

There are a few more MOCs that I sourced through Bricklink, but I am too embarrassed to show them as they are just plain awful. Thankfully three things happened… one is that I discovered modular buildings and that I didn’t need to try and design something awful, when LEGO would produce something incredible. Two was that around that time some amazing trains came out to include #10194-1: Emerald Night (Bricklink helped me build some extra cars and a caboose… sorry no pics of those), #10219-1: Maersk Train, and #10233-1: Horizon Express. Finally, three is I became a Dad and the amount of time I could spend bricking decreased substantially.

I decided to start a store in 2014 as Bricks for Bricks kicked off. I tried some in person sales and that didn’t work out well (see here). In October 2016 I started Bricks for Bricks on Bricklink and did quite well. You can read about some of our giving campaigns here. That ended in May of 2018 when I transitioned with my non-brick job to Germany. I hope to return to selling on Bricklink when I return to living in the USA.

Happy birthday Bricklink! And happy building!

So That's Why We Haven't Seen More Creator Expert Trains!

I wrote a post a while back complaining that it’s been a while since we had a Creator Expert style LEGO train. Well I think I may have found our answer.

I found an interview with LEGO Designer Jamie Berard by the show Assembled which is an interview done by Mike Psiaki. It’s about a 30 minute interview and I found it pretty interesting. They talk mainly about the new Roller Coaster set (#10261-1)., but they also talk a few more topics like set re-releases and to the point of this post, Creator Expert trains.

Mike asks why there aren’t more Creator Expert themed trains at the 27:50 mark or so. Without directly stating it, Jamie’s response is pretty much that LEGO doesn’t make the money they want to on Creator Expert themed trains. There is a subset of LEGO fans out there that love trains, they each buy one or two of the train sets and that’s it. So LEGO will release the standard LEGO CITY passenger and freight trains on a regular basis, but that’s mostly it.

Jamie also brings up some of the other ways they have tried to incorporate trains. The goal is to get a group that enjoys another theme and to add a train to that theme. He brings up #10254-1: Winter Holiday Train as an example. There is a larger group that enjoys the Winter Village theme. They may not be into a Creator Expert style train, but when a train fits in with the Winter Village theme then it is a buy for them.

After hearing that, you can tell LEGO has done that elsewhere. For example the Hogwarts Express (#75955-1) and the upcoming Hidden Side theme has a set titled Train (#70424-1). It will be interesting to see where else LEGO can add the train line into another theme in the future.

With that being said it leaves us LEGO Creator Expert train fans left out. As Mike mentions in the video interview, he likes the Winter Holiday Train, but it’s not on par with the Horizon Express (#10233-1). I don’t think the LEGO Ideas platform will work either based on Jamie’s interview response. If LEGO doesn’t think there is a market out there to sell advanced train sets, then even if a train set does get 10,000 supporters it might not go into production. Another way to get advanced train sets out there might be the Bricklink AFOL Designer Program. There are some design limitations that I’d have to look up and there are potentially some piece restrictions too, but it could be a possibility. If BrickLink sees this program as a way to increase profits in the future, then submitting train designs there might be the better way to go versus LEGO Ideas.

Dear LEGO,
I would still like to see more Creator Expert themed train sets. Thank you for your understanding!
-Bricks for Bricks

Merry Christmas 2017

Merry Christmas from Bricks for Bricks!  Hope you got all of the bricks you were looking for this Christmas.

There's a simple LEGO Train display under my tree.  It is #10233 Horizon Express pulling up to the Winter Village Station (#10259).  In front is the City Tanker Truck (#3180) and a car from... I have no idea what old set it is... a town set from the 1990s most likely.

Happy building!