ElectroDiva

Star Wars is pretty well served by remakes already - regular UCS re-makes at least now seem to be a thing. Fingers crossed the next remake is 10030 - Imperial Star Destroyer I like it - the "Out of the Vault" range :)

I think if they re-released the Emerald Night it would be to stick two fingers up at Lepin rather than your typical reseller. Its such an iconic set now that I think it would sell very well regardless of whether it was updated or not. Having said that, I would be happy to get it in another colour scheme if that broadened the appeal a bit

Looking good - would be nice to see a video of it running

Jeeeez - how big is the rest of your city? Got any pics of any other gigant-o scale builds you've attempted?

There were some rumours knocking around recently of a D2C Hogwarts next year. What better way to get there than a Hogwarts Express tie in :)

Do you happen to have those in your "investment portfolio" or is that you're genuinely only interested in new sets?

I really like @Agent Kallus 's idea of a mixed price miscellaneous theme for the unloved themes of old - maybe a "Creator History" theme? It would be free to roam different time periods and bring in the odd fantasy element. Here's my wave 1 and 2 set suggestions for something like that: Wave 1: -Pirate battle pack - £10 set with 4 assorted pirates -Comanche camp - £25 set with a teepee, horse and 3 minifigs (2 male warriors and a female) -Colosseum Clash - £50-£60 set with a quarter of a detailed colosseum build and 5 minifigs (2 citizens, 1 senator/noble and 2 gladiators with extra weapons for customisation). Works as a standalone build but you can buy 4 for a full colosseum -Viking Longboat - £100 set with a classic Viking longboat and about 8 male and female warriors complete with different faction shields -King Arthur's Castle - £150-£200 set with a detailed castle build (incl. round table), 13 minifigs (King Arthur and his 12 knights) and a couple of horses Wave 2: -Castle Battle pack - £15 set with 4 different soldier minifigs and a horse (buy a few to get mounts for the above knights :) -Roman Legion - £25 set with 1 mounted cavalry, 4 legionaries and a small siege weapon -Viking Village Hut - £50/£60 set with a 3 in 1 variable hut build, 3/4 peasant minifigs and a farm animal or two (can buy a few to create a small village) -Frontier Fort - £100 set with a western fort build, 2 mounted cavalry, 2 infantry and a couple of civilians -Royal Frigate - £150-£200 battleship with 8-10 naval minifigs (I was going to go with a pirate ship here but we have quite a few of those already and they need a faction to fight :) Each wave would rotate the price point for each subtheme, and at the lower end of the range would be designed in such a way that it is attractive to buy multiples.

Hi All - @Servertijd shared a very interesting piece of news on another thread: http://deadline.com/2017/11/lord-of-the-rings-series-eyed-warner-bros-tv-amazon-1202201636/ It appears that the LOTR rights are being shopped around for a possible TV series (for a frankly eye popping sum of money). I thought the LOTR series was done from a TLG perspective given the battle between the Tolkien family and the Hollywood studios but surely this means a reboot of TLGs LOTR line might now be a possibility?

@Servertijd - that's very interesting news and could well open up the door for more LOTR sets. I'm going to add your link to a thread we have over on the Historic Themes forum so this can be discussed further

Well the Winter Holiday Train does say "Creator" and "Expert" on the box so I think we have to conclude it was part of the line :). TBH I'm not the biggest fan of the set and agree completely that it isn't up to the standards of the previous 3 (imho exceptional) creator expert sets, but technically it's part of the line. I hear you on looking for patterns to understand the inscrutable decisions of TLG btw - I can't for the life of me understand why such a loyal and passionate fan base as the trains fans can get such little love from them. Sadly, it's not just train fans that get poor service though (I also happen to be a big fan of classic castle and pirates which also seem to be low down on their priority list)

Yep - sadly the US /Canadian resellers seem to have better prices for most sets post 2010 than the European resellers. Filling in the holes from my dark ages would have been a lot cheaper if I had been based there rather than the UK :( You can still get Kingdoms Joust for about 25% above original retail in Europe though which isn't too bad. It really is a lovely set. The LOTR theme ended far too early imo. They could easily have had at least a few more waves. I would love to see some re-releases (particularly 9474 so I could buy a few of them and build an epic Helm's Deep), but I think that's wishful thinking given the license is now pretty dead. The only way I can see it coming back is if the Tolkien family can somehow be convinced to sell the film rights to the Silmarillion (unlikely as they feel they were screwed for LOTR and the Hobbit).

That seems like an odd way to look at it. They don't stick to the one and done rule in any other line so what makes you think they would do that for the Creator Expert Trains ? Infact, they have already produced two steam trains in the line (Emerald Night and Winter Holiday Train) so your theory doesn't really make sense. I would speculate that in addition to the expected City passenger and Cargo trains next year we *might* get an Expert train towards the end of the year to get back to the 2 year release cycle. If that *doesn't* happen, I think there would be a pretty strong chance of getting one in 2019.

That's very harsh @3797 - there have been some great train sets released since 1993. There were all the gems in the 9v era (too many to list), and since then we've had the Emerald Night, Maersk and Horizon Express sets. I even really like the last city cargo set (60052) - which is very close to a perfect cargo starter set imho (the one significant failing being the silly cattle cars) Admittedly it's been slim pickings for Train fans in the past couple of years but I personally will wait to see what happens in 2018 before calling it a terminal decline..

This is one of the finest Lego train MOCs I have ever seen. Clearly there are a lot of non-standard / custom parts but I think even a Lego purist would have to appreciate the end result. It seems to have been a labour of love for you and I hope to one day attempt something similar with the Orient Express.

Well I hope he keeps up his track record of successful rumours :) If it *is* true, what do you think we'll see? Pretty simple recolours of one of the recent cargo and passenger trains or something a bit different/more adventurous? If we see a return of the proper Creator Expert train series next year that would make me very happy indeed. The Winter Village Train from 2016 was ok but not a patch on the Emerald Night/Maersk/Horizon Express sets

I think it's high time we started a 2018 Lego Trains thread after a pretty disappointing 2017. 2018 has to be an improvement right? Quite a few people seem to believe that there is a "pattern" to the City train releases and according to this pattern we should expect a new Passenger Train, Cargo Train and Train Station in 2018. @Duq explained the pattern very well on the 2017 Trains thread. In addition to these expected releases, there is also a rumour that the next modular building could be a central train station. Personally I find that a bit hard to believe but you never know!

The Santa Fe is the only classic train on my wish list that I haven't bought yet. The reason being that to really do it justice you need two engines and 3+ carriages which is just ridiculously expensive on the resale market (about £1k last time I looked). I would *love* for TLG to re-release it as an engine + 2 carriages. I'd buy two of those in a heartbeat

10223 Kingdoms Joust is currently available on BrickLink new and sealed for less than the original RRP. Its a fantastic set and if you want it I wouldn't hang about waiting for a re-release.

Individual sets only please (preferably with pics so we can all board the nostalgia train :) Great call on Mill Village Raid btw - I have Medieval Market Village and would *love* to add that to it Never say never - not on this thread. Dare to dream the return of Monorail !! Oooh - how did I not know about Shuttle Launchpad? That set looks like all kinds of awesome That approach (revamps) is absolutely fine by me.

You make a reasonable case and to be honest I don't have a huge problem with your type of investing - i.e. picking up surplus inventory that no one else seems to want at the time (hence on clearance). Any returns you make from that - fair play to you - although you should accept that anyone on the buying side of a 4-5 x RRP equation is going to feel a bit salty regardless of the "market value" at the time. I also don't particularly have an issue with small time investors who buy a couple of copies of a big set - one to build and one to sell at some point in the future to help fund the hobby. What I do have an issue with is people who buy up huge stocks of popular/d2c/low volume sets (usually right at the beginning of their on sale period or a double/triple points events), hoarding them for *mad gainz* and denying genuine fans the opportunity to buy them for extended periods of time. People like that are never popular in any field of collecting (even though they would argue they are providing a "service")

In the recent announcement video for set 10256 (Taj Mahal re-release) - the designer states that "it's for the fans - they've been requesting re-releases for years". Following hot on the heels of the UCS Falcon re-release (and recent trend of UCS and winter village revamps), it would seem we may be in for regular re-releases of iconic sets going forward. If that is the case and this becomes a regular "thing" - which iconic sets would you like to see re-released? For me, my top five would be: 1-10030 - UCS Imperial Star Destroyer 2-6399 - Airport Shuttle 3-6762 - Fort Legoredo 4-10182 - Cafe Corner 5-10210 - Imperial Flagship

Anything which helps deflate the frankly ridiculous prices out there for some of the old iconic sets is a very good thing in my book. I don't normally indulge in schadenfreude - but if some hard core scalpers and knock off merchants like Lepin get caught out as a result - tough! Now don't get me wrong- I think a healthy resale market is a very useful thing for AFOLs and I personally don't mind paying reasonable mark ups for sets I missed out on but when you are talking many multiples of the original sale price, it's just pure greed

There's nothing quite like opening up and preparing to build a new modular building- it's an annual ritual for me now and long may it continue :) Btw - I hope you do your photoshop XL / XXL / XXXL mock ups again when the official set images are released - I love seeing those

Are you kidding? This is the trains forum :) A modular scale train station with a decent part count and modular level of detail would be awesome. I'd be surprised if it *were* true though - simply because they just released the Winter Village station. I don't think they'd release another station so soon. Happy to be proved wrong though

Ha - good question! The boat (coast guard) and plane (recent blue passenger plane) were bought for them by their parents at their request. The two trains they have (60051 passenger train and 60052 cargo train) were bought for them by me for Christmas after I saw them playing with a few of my train sets. I must admit I was also shamelessly trying to get them into Lego trains but they do genuinely seem to enjoy them.