Mould King 12025 Train Building Blocks Set With LED Lights

 Update: if you’re gonna run this as a train set around the tree or house, pull the front bogie and rear 2 wheels on the locomotive. Put ’em back on when it’s time to put it back on display after christmas. Derails went from every few feet to not at all for a few dozen laps around my ground floor. Make sure grade transitions are smooth also.

Update 2: added video after above modifications. Other than the whining of the electric motors this thing goes clickedty clack in the most soothing fashion

Used to be the generics like Megabloks sucked. They were awful. Took me a long time to excise THOSE pieces from my embarrassingly large tub(s) of Lego. The garbage colors, the cheap feel and misfitting pieces. The ‘good enough’ attitude from box open to deposition in the garbage can. I went into this set expecting a set with poorly mimeographed instructions, poor fitment and a likely a fire because it has a LiPo powered brick (sorry china, haha). Also that it would fall apart if you looked at it or bumped it. None of those came to pass (except a little of the last one, but not the fault of the individual pieces, just the model).

The good:
-Instructions are exactly on par with Lego (golden standard).
-Set is difficult to assemble-this is good! I’m a 36 year old man child with a 4 year old helper. It was perfect for us. There are a few illegal moves in this set, but they work very well for how they’re used. Insert the 1×4 rods before you try and clamp the hinge pieces. You’ll see what I mean when you buy it (BUY IT).
-INSANE value. This oughta be a 400 dollar Lego set given piece count (3898) and inclusion of electronics (two XL motors, smoker, lights, wireless controller). I ordered it for half that at the time of this review (2023-12-16).
-Great fitment. On everything. Pieces ‘snap’ together instead of ‘squishing’ together exactly like you’d expect and come apart again with the right amount of force. They’re also ‘build on top of’ strong. With the knock-offs, you build the perfect wall, push down to set the pieces and add on and the thing blows out the side-not Mould King’s offering!!!
-THE COLORS! My pictures or the listing don’t do them justice. This forest green, gold and midnight blue are wonderfully homogenous. No inconsistencies and even color throughout. These color pieces are RARE, gonna make a welcome addition to my bins.
-makes Germans cry (check YouTube lol).

The bad:
-You’re gonna need to sub in some pieces from your own collection. No getting around that for me, but that’s okay because I expected it, as you should with 3000+ piece sets. There’s an average of 1 piece missing per maybe 2-3 dozen steps, which figures out to about 20 extra pieces you’ll need. I can see exactly where Mould King’s sorters dropped the ball because the pieces I had left over were vaguely shaped like the ones that were missing. None of the missing pieces were showstoppers though (specialty shapes, unique colors). All that was missing were your standard bricks (the flat 1x1s, the 1×2 bricks, etc). All of the missing pieces were black, which brings me to point 2:
-THIS WHOLE SET IS BASICALLY BLACK PIECES. I loved the challenge because I open every single bag all at once and dump it on the table and dig from there. Maybe every sixth piece wasn’t black-really.
-some of the cut tube pieces are hard to fit. Keep your sharp trimming razor blade close by, especially for that curved guy at the front of the locomotive’s boiler, passenger side. I loved the challenge.
-some of the parts of the locomotive are fragile. Looking at YOU cow pusher (sub a 2×6 flat instead of the 1×6), storage tanks on the coach (use the negative sloped 2×1 bricks and some 1×2 plates to make them structurally sound). Little things like that throughout construction would be frustrating to some builders (German YouTubers), but any other man child like me ordering this set will know what to do.

Neutral:
-this thing is HUGE. It’s an honest to God minifig scale steam train and it’s not shy about that or embarrassed like Lego’s official oriental express offering. I’m not sure if it’s going to work on the 100 feet of city train track I ordered for our entire downstairs (man I love being an adult with adult fun budget). The curves for city train track are probably a lot tighter than this train can handle (22.5° per piece for city track, half that for included track). We’ll see how that goes.

I know that this train isn’t going to make it to December 26th with my son and I playing with it, but that’s okay. These Mould King pieces are going to be welcome in my collection as my boy breaks them off of the train. Gonna scratch for Mould King and Lego from now on when I get that itch, especially with how they handled bringing this MOC to market.

Buy this set! Also don’t let it be a shelf queen. Put this girl to work.

Das Modell hat schöne Farben, leider muss man auch hier ein wenig mit Klebstoff nachhelfen, damit alles hält. Mal sehen, wie es aussieht, wenn ich es fertig gebaut habe.

This set is actually sized like the Hogwarts Express display model, 10 bricks wide, and the locomotive and carriage are nearly four feet long together. I was surprised, actually, expecting something more like the 8-wide Mallard model, but it’s much bigger and very detailed.

It also includes a circle of large radius track, but I expect most people will want this as a display model. I did try running it, and it was just okay – it derailed after a couple of minutes and it’s a pain to get back on the track. If you’re building as a display model I suggest leaving out all the electronics from the start so you don’t have to bother with routing the wires or removing them later.

But overall this is a really beautiful model and great value for money. There were 2-3 missing pieces and a few extras, but nothing you can’t deal with. Piece quality is generally high although the DIY cut-to-length flex tubing is too soft and not quite the right size. Instructions are mostly clear and complete.

Difficult to put together but doable. Looks great. Very large. Worked at first but once the battery died it won’t charge. The lights flash to indicate charging but now won’t turn back on.