Category Archives: Products

Reviewing Powered UP!

Recently, to allow for testing and review, The LEGO Group supplied Brick Model Railroader with a number of components from the newly released LEGO Powered Up line of electronics. Powered Up is TLG’s update to the popular Power Functions line of motor, battery, and remote systems.

Powered Up! Elements

As “mostlytechnic” mentions in his review on EuroBricks, the components have been released in the newer Boost and Train sets, which started in 2018.

The post on EuroBricks is excellent (and recommended), so rather than write another straight up review of something you can read elsewhere, I concentrated on playability as it concerns us train fans.

Continue reading Reviewing Powered UP!

Our January Show Schedule and Premium Instructions Update

We’ve got a very busy month ahead of us! We’ll be at several train shows joining the Pennsylvania LEGO Users Group (PennLUG) at their train layout as well as visiting friends. Let’s take a look at what January has to offer.

World’s Greatest Hobby on Tour Show, Oaks, Pennsylvania

A Norfolk & Western duo, A class and a Y6b, are being serviced in the yard before going out a coal drag.

This coming weekend, we’ll be at the World’s Greatest Hobby show in Oaks, Pennsylvania. Public hours are Saturday the 12th and Sunday the 13th, from 9-6 and 9-5 respectively. For those in the area, it is the same convention center where Philly Brickfest is held every year: the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. We attended this show last year when it was on Monroeville, Pennsylvania (closer to Pittsburgh) and it was one of our favorite shows. There will also be several model train manufacturers in attendance with their own displays, and much more. More information is available on the show website.

Link to Cale’s photos from last year’s show

Continue reading Our January Show Schedule and Premium Instructions Update

The First Locomotive From Brick Model Railroader

It’s finally time.

After a year and a half of trial, failure, and redesigning, and exactly one year after we originally planned to, Cale and I are pleased to announce the first ever Brick Model Railroader steam locomotive kit.

The locomotive we have chosen to model is a Reading 4-8-4 T-1.

BMR Prototype Model, Engineer Side 3/4 Veiw
BMR Prototype Model, Side Veiws
BMR Prototype Model,Fireman’s Side Rear 3/4 Veiw
BMR Prototype Model,Nose Profile

This is a locomotive we are very excited about. The Reading Railroad was located in the eastern part of the state of Pennsylvania, and the BMR Model Team (Cale and Glenn) are Pennsylvania residents, making the Reading a home road for us. The Reading T-1 felt like a natural choice for a prototype for both Cale and myself. It has been on both of our “to do” lists for a while, but other projects have taken priority since. The T-1 will fit well with all of our current transition-era Premium Instructions models, as all of them were used on the Reading and could very well have been seen behind a T-1 at any point during their service life.

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I’m sure many of our readers are wondering why it’s taken so long to get to this point. Allow me to answer a few questions you may be having.

Continue reading The First Locomotive From Brick Model Railroader

Brick Model Railroader Teams Up With Brickmania

If you follow Brickmania on their social media outlets, you probably already know what this is about.

Almost two weeks ago now, Cale and Glenn where invited to attend the NILTC show in Cantigny Park. You can read Cale’s report on that awesome event here. We attended the show as guests of Brickmania to be a part of some of the final steps leading up to the release of a locomotive kit designed by us. We’ll be shedding some light on the details of this epic collaboration in this article.

Brickmania

Firstly, you may be wondering what Brickmania is. 
Founded in 1999 by Dan Siskind, Brickmania specializes in high-end custom model kits made with re-purposed LEGO bricks. Their focus is mostly within a military theme, but have ventured outside of this norm to produce space race, sci-fi and fantasy, and pop culture kits as well. They release one new kit every week on Friday morning while restocking older kits and also producing other custom products like books, minifigures, their own table-top game, and a lot more. All production is done in-house at their headquarters in Minneapolis. You can read the full history on their website. Brickmania continues to drive the hobby in many ways and always raises the standard for custom model kits.

Continue reading Brick Model Railroader Teams Up With Brickmania

52′-6″ 70 Ton Drop-End Gondola Premium Instructions, Restocks, and New Decals!

It’s taken a while, but we’re back with a new premium instructions kit and more!

52′-6″ 70 Ton Drop-End Gondola

Our premium instructions include instructions to model a Bethlehem Steel Car version of this gondola and a Pennsylvania Railroad G31 / American Car & Foundry version. Both designs were largely the same with the main differences being the construction of the body (riveted versus welded) and the location of the brake wheel. The details may be slight, but enough to warrant a few call-outs and sub-models to allow the builder the choice.

Box Front Cover

Box Back Cover

Continue reading 52′-6″ 70 Ton Drop-End Gondola Premium Instructions, Restocks, and New Decals!

Review: 60198 Cargo Train with Powered Up System

At long last, way too long probably, Brick Model Railroader has built and reviewed the new Powered Up train sets from the LEGO City line!

The complete 60198 Cargo Train set.

Unfortunately, and quite obviously, we are pretty late to the review party for these new trains. While BMR is a Recognized LEGO Online Community (RLOC) and we do have some benefits from that, we were not able to obtain the new train sets before the official release, but we did try. Cale ended up buying one of each anyways so we could provide a decent review for our audience, being the only Train-specific LEGO media around.

Let’s dive into the new 60198 Cargo Train with Powered Up!

Continue reading Review: 60198 Cargo Train with Powered Up System

Powered UP Questions & Answers

With the release of the new LEGO City trains, driven by the new Powered UP system, fans had many questions.  Kim Thomsen, of LEGO, worked with fans to gather questions, and to research answers.  The following is from Kim:

With the launch of the new Powered Up system in the LEGO Train 60197 and 60198 a lot of questions surfaced in the AFOL Community. We asked the Ambassadors of the Recognized Communities to bring all those questions to us and below you have the answers to all those questions.

We hope this will clarify and answer a lot of the questions and concerns in the AFOL Community.

Continue reading Powered UP Questions & Answers

BrickTracks Announces The R104 Switch Tracks KickStarter Campaign!

And now for some awesome news!

BrickTracks, the company behind those injection-molded R104 and R120 (with R56 now available for pre-order) curves has finally launched a Kickstarter campaign for R104 switch tracks.

I won’t be going into every detail in this post, as everything is explained on the campaign page, but here’s a run-down of what’s going on:

Continue reading BrickTracks Announces The R104 Switch Tracks KickStarter Campaign!