Happy New Year to our followers and supporters. The Brick Model Railroader team hopes you had a wonderful holiday season.

Today we celebrate our fourth birthday. 2020 was filled with many new experiences, new challenges, and new opportunities. We’d like to reflect on some of that today.

Brick Model Railroader launched on December 31st, 2016. We were just a rag tag bunch of LEGO® train enthusiasts with an idea to crate a sort of hybrid blog for LEGO trains. We wanted to take what was great about the old RAILBRICKS, the in-depth articles on the LEGO train hobby, and give those types of articles a new place to be read, free of the constraints of a bound publication.

Our mission for the Brick Model Railroader website was and still is to serve the LEGO Train Hobby as an online news resource, and to help promote and grow the hobby of LEGO Trains in all it’s forms. Of course we have since added to that, primarily with our line of Premium Instructions, train parts, and decals. But the main focus of the website here will always be sharing everything great and news worthy about the LEGO train hobby with our fellow hobbyists.

We’ve grown quite a bit from our humble beginnings. And 2020 would continue that growth. So let’s take a look now at what we’ve done this past year.

The BMR Team Adds New Members

In 2020 we added several new members to the BMR family. From Europe we added Gerbrand (a.k.a. Raised) and Enrico Lussi. Both have contributed some great articles to the website and have become our window into the European side of the LEGO train hobby.

We also added three new contributors form the USA, Aaron Burnett, Matt Csenge, and Chris Stone. All three are excellent model builders and also pretty good writers as well.

We look forward to more great LEGO train articles from our team, and we are looking to add several more in 2021.

Events We Attended in 2020

2020 proved to be a challenging year for events. The Covid 19 pandemic forced the cancelation of numerous LEGO fan events and model train shows across the globe. But the team at BMR was still able to attend a small number of events this year.

Our first event of the year came in January with the Amherst Railway Society’s Railroad Hobby Show at the Eastern States Exposition Fairgrounds in West Springfield, Massachusetts. The New England LEGO Users Group was there displaying their amazing Lego train/city layout at the show again. Fellow PennLUG member Nate Robinson and I traveled up to participate in the display, represent Brick Model Railroader, and experience the show.

Enrico and Raised attended the De Nederlandse Modelspoordagen (Dutch Model Railway Days) in February.

Also in February Glenn Holland and myself participated in the Winter Great Scale Model Train Show in Timonium, Maryland. The winter show this year was held on February 1st and 2nd, and was the first time a L-Gauge Modular Standard, LEGO train layout was displayed at the show. The display was organized buy Monty Smith, with participation from several area LEGO clubs including PennLUG, Charm City LUG, and WamaLTC.

With the outbreak of the covid 19 virus Allin person events from March onward were pretty much canceled. However some LEGO fan events were able to hold virtual events online. Members of the BMR Team attended several of these, including hosting LEGO Train Roundtables at several of the Virtual Brickworld events.

New BMR Products

This year also saw the continuation of our original Premium Instructions products by adding several models to our regular lineup as well as the introduction of our new knuckle couplers.

This year BMR launched a band new online store.

Our old store served us well, but we were starting to out grow it. As we added new products, it was increasingly hard to navigate and find what you were looking for. Also the look was growing stale, and our products were not being shown off to their fullest potential. So in June we completed moving our store over to a brand new platform. One full of shiny new widgets, and hopefully a much better buying experience for you.

Click Here to Check Out the New BMR Online Store

With the new store, we also launched three new Premium Instructions. The Gunderson 60′ High Cube Plate F Boxcar, the American Car & Foundry 70-Ton 1958 Cu. Ft. Covered Hopper, and the Pacific Fruit Express R-30-9 and R-40-9 Reefer as well as a full complement of decals for each.

In October we launched a brand new product for Brick Model Railroader. Our Brick Train Compatible Knuckle Couplers. BMR, in partnership with BrickForge, created a replacement for the old LEGO® 9v era magnetic train couplers. These new couplers are now available for sale in our BMR online store.

We have even more cool new products coming for 2021, including our EMD SD40-2 Premium Instructions.

We originally planned to release the SD40-2 in December 2020, but we wanted to make sue we had a few last details completely sorted and not risk rushing out a product that does not meet the highest quality we strive for. So we’re pushing it to January for release. The first four road names offered will be Norfolk Southern, Conrail, BNSF, and Burlington Northern. All four will each offer a choice of two different paint schemes. Look for an announcement on sale date soon.

We will also be restocking all our other Premium Instructions next week.

Brick Train Awards and OcTRAINber

In 2020 BMR was involved with he Brick Train Awards, a virtual, global competition to showcase LEGO® train builders from across the world.

The awards started in 2020 as a response to much of the world being in lockdown due to COVID-19, giving a chance for LEGO® train fans around the world to meet and compete internationally. The competition is organised by Richard (aka Bricks McGee) of LEGO Northern UK Railway and Cale and Glenn of Brick Model Railroader, and supported by a range of generous sponsors from across the world.

The 2020 Brick Train Awards had 10 categories for judging the best LEGO® models for locomotives, rolling stock and LEGO® train displays. Each category is judged at a regional level, and the winners from each category then go head-to-head in global awards.

The Brick Train Awards will return again in February 2021. More details coming soon.

BMR’s own OcTRAINber challenge returned again in 2020. This year’s theme was dioramas. We had some really great entries, so good that it’s taken us a bit to get through them all. Yes, we know you are all still eagerly awaiting the results. Soy for the delay. Of course Rased, who runs the OcTRAINber challenge, has been busy with a brand new baby, so that hasn’t helped. But some things are more important than LEGO trains. Don’t worry, we will have our results soon.

Product Reviews

LEGO released two special train sets in 2020 and BMR reviewed them both. The first was the  40370 Steam Engine. 

The set is a replica of 7810 a push-along steam locomotive that was released in 1980, and commemorates the 40th anniversary of the 12v train line being launched worldwide.

The second official LEGO train set we reviewed this year was the 10277 Crocodile Locomotive.

It was quite a surprise to see a LEGO train set targeted directly at adult train fans, but it was certainly welcome, and is a great set to own and build. We hope this is a sign of more good train sets to come.

We also had the opportunity to review a new book on LEGO trains. The LEGO train project book by Charles Pritchett.

This is a great book for those new to LEGO trains who want to expand their collection or want a couple of interesting designs to use as inspiration. 

We did have one more review planned for 2020, the North Pole Railroad train set from BrickTracks. But the US Post Office decided to hang on to our copy for a few extra weeks. So look for this after the new year.

BMR Started a Podcast

In 2020 BMR launched our own podcast.

We’ve been adding new episodes as time allows, and look forward to continuing it in 2021.

Modular LEGO® Intermodal Standard

And to round out the year in review, in 2020 BMR worked with Brick Train Depot to create a Modular LEGO® Intermodal Standard.

The purpose of this standard is to allow for builders to build and collaborate on intermodal equipment for LEGO® trains and train layouts. It defines standard lengths, widths, heights, and connections for LEGO container and trailer models that are based on real world intermodal equipment sizes.

This new standard will allow intermodal designs from BMR to interact seamlessly with those from Brick Train Depot. This is win for every one. It continues to create a healthy ecosystem for the LEGO train hobby, where builders can freely enjoy models from both of our groups, and any one else following the standard, with the knowledge the they will all work together seamlessly.

This will also hopefully be a welcome addition to collaborations between train builders. Builders can create intermodal models that will work perfectly with those from other builders from across the globe. This is key in being able to bring back the Train Club Container Swaps. Something I’m very much looking forward to.

Look for instructions from BMR based on this new standard to be released in 2021.

Thank You for Supporting Us

Lastly we would like to thank all of you out there who have supported us this year, visited our website, and read our articles. We love sharing this hobby with you. We will continue to support this wonderful hobby and work to grow our community. Thank you for letting us be a part of your lives. We very much look forward to 2021 and all the cool things that await.

On behalf of the entire BMR Team, have a Happy new Year!