Mission
The intention of Brick Express is to design and release high quality Lego® train models.
Modelling
Design starting points for all Brick Express models are a high degree of faithfulness to the real-world design, beauty, playing possibilities and quality. In most models you will find some rare and hardly available (and more expensive) Lego parts. Designing custom sets is a game of making choices. Choices for example between good looking rare parts and not so good looking much cheaper parts. In the Brick Express models you will find the most beautiful solution to my opinion. Sometimes I do not succeed in reproducing a faithful Lego model of a real-world design. In this case however the design effort may still result in an interesting spin off train model. Examples are the green Hopper Wagon and the light gray Gravel Wagon. The latter being based on a Blue look-a-like gravel wagon of the Dutch company Railpro.
Set life cycle
A model passes 5 different stages during its life: design, production, available, sold out and out of production. Once a model is designed the model is frozen and I will start collecting bricks for the first series and start working on the building instruction. Once this is finished the set becomes available. When a series is sold out I will look at the availability of the parts to decide if a succeeding series of a particular set will be produced. This may happen several times. If not, a set is taken out of production. However the building instruction of the model stays available.
Number of sets
The number of sets of a particular model is limited. The sets are produced in small series. The size of the series varies. The first series of the early Brick Express sets like the Hopper Wagon and the Gravel Wagon were as small as 5, 10 or 20 sets. Nowadays new sets are mostly produced in series of about 50 sets.
Quality
If not otherwise mentioned, only original and new Lego parts are used. All models are delivered in accompanying sealed boxes with a clear, detailed, easy-to-follow step-by-step building instruction and parts list on CD-Rom in PDF-format (Adobe Reader). All boxes are weighted to check for missing items. If still an item is missing, it will be sent forward for free.
Price
The actual price of the sets will depend on the purchase price of the Lego® bricks. Because the price of bricks may vary and taking into account that the sets are produced in distinct series, the price of a particular set of a succeeding series may vary from the preceding one.
Coming years
My aim is to develop one or two models a year. At this moment I'm working on a Dutch steam engine that can be motorized by adding Lego Power Functions.
Suggestions
If you have any questions or suggestions for new models, just contact me at brickexpresstrains@gmail.com
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