The designers behind 10361 Holiday Express Train have revealed the many ways in which the LEGO Winter Village set connects to a similar previous festive model.
The LEGO Group is offering up a number of Christmas-themed treats for builders this year, including the 956-piece 10361 Holiday Express Train. In a recent video diving into the creation of the LEGO Icons set, the designers responsible for the model have revealed that there are plenty of connections between the latest Winter Village build and a previous release from 2016.
“After nine years, we thought this is the perfect time to bring a new train to the Winter Village collection,” said Senior Model Designer, Jae Won Lee. “I thought it could be really fun to have a trip from the North Pole to the South Pole to meet the penguins."
“It was a very big challenge to make it different between the previous set and this one. So I decided to change the colour schemes, because the previous train had a lot of red and green, but I really wanted to design our new train for the winter season.”
The model Jae refers to is 10254 Winter Holiday Train, a 734-piece LEGO Creator Expert set that made its debut in 2016, one that opted for a completely different visual approach, which therefore required the creation of some initial sketch models for the new build.
“This is the first prototype train with the red and dark green colour scheme,” Jae explained, “It has a long body and a big decoration on the front. The second prototype train has cartoonish steam on the top and small decos on the side and front. I think the blue colour train is quite unique and very special.”
The connections between 10254 Winter Holiday Train and 10361 Holiday Express Train don’t end there though, as the LEGO Icons set’s minifigures also allude to the previous Winter Village release.
“Jae had a really good idea of bringing back four of the original characters from the set we did nine years ago,” said Graphic Designer Crisy Dyment. “We tried to imagine what they would look like and how they would have evolved over those years.
“One story idea we had was that the gentleman [minifigure] was going to end up proposing to the girl. We had the gold ring ready to go and everything, but we decided not to do it as that may have prohibited the storytelling for people who have had the original set for over nine years.”
“In someone’s imagination or memories, they are not a couple – they are siblings or family,” added Jae. “In the end, I decided to keep it open to everyone to make their own stories.”
There was an additional minifigure included in 10254 Winter Holiday Train, but she hasn’t made the festive journey with the rest of 10361 Holiday Express Train’s cast of returning characters.
“Grandma sadly wasn’t able to join in, as she’s happily retired somewhere on a beach,” stated Crisy. “However, the [now grown-up] girl actually has the same face as the grandmother, so it was a fun way to pay homage to grandma, even though she’s not in this set.”
10361 Holiday Express Train is available to purchase right now, with the LEGO Icons model priced at £109.99 / $129.99 / €119.99. To find out what we thought about the festive release, be sure to check out our in-depth review of the build right here.
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