Myadultlegoworld

I realize this topic is really really old! But 10173 has been the ONLY train I use in my winter village. I have the one from 2016. Never opened it. I may pick up the newest one just so I can have the polar bear. Anyway, this year I wanted to motorize my train. I couldn't find any instructions to do this. I watched multiple youtube videos and came across two that gives you an idea of how to use power functions for this train. I'm not a big MOC builder. But I had to figure out how to do this on my own. After a couple of hours of fiddeling, something clicked. My brain caught up to what I was trying to do. And it just happened. I got it done. The motor makes the engine sit slightly higher. The receiver sits nicely inside the back. I don't have a lot of extra train parts so I had to figure out a way to add one of the original wheel carriages to the back of the engine. I only added ONE brick height (an extra green 1x8 on each side) to the second car (I don't know the names of these things), put a 1x8 black plate on each side on top, the two bricks (1x2 with hook & the four 1x1 bricks to hold the garnish on the sides) I turned the hook side from inside to outside, I turned the four garnish bricks right side up. This allows the battery box to sit in the second car. Because I put the 1x8 plates on top, that allowed me to take all the extra ribbon and lay it flat on top of the battery box and I used a black 1x6 plate to stretch across the battery box to hold the ribbon down. I didn't have to change anything in the front of the 2nd car but the brown wood "log" pieces there just isn't room unless I pile them on the battery box. And I don't like how that looks. I found this subject here only after I had already done what I wrote. There is a caveat though. I'm using the regular battery box. It doesn't seem powerful enough to pull the entire train. I loaded up the gift car and put presents in the car for the trees. The weight was too much. I took the gift car off (it's sitting in my North Pole behind Santa's workshop) and took the gifts off the tree car and it works great now! I'm confident the bigger battery box would easily pull this train loaded down, but I don't see how it could go anywhere other than the passenger car. So you would need an extended power line to go from the receiver in the engine to reach the passenger car area. Or put the receiver in the second car and the regular length cable would reach the box in the passenger car. This is all to say yes, you can add power functions to this train!

No backlog. Just never opened the train set, I'll have to hit up one of my Lego stores and see the little gingerbread house in person. I've decided to open the school house from Hidden Side and winterize it for my village since there isn't a new set for me to put together this year.

I got the Holiday catalog in the mail today and there was NO Enterprise-D in it! I'm so bummed

I have yet to even open the Christmas train from 2016 as I still use the ORIGINAL Christmas Holiday Train from 2006. Unless I can find this years train at a discount I won't be purchasing it. Especially since folks seem to have trouble with the tree from 2016 and the polar bear arm from this years. Plus I don't like the color. The Family Christmas tree isn't something for the Winter Village. I'm considering the small gingerbread shop. Depends if it will clash with the original gingerbread house. As much as like the rest of you, I'd like others to be able to have a Winter Village, I don't like when they do repeats and not give us original collectors something new. Lego did a repeat of the toy shop in 2015 that I didn't get because I had the original from 2009. I use winnter items from the Friends, Harry Potter and a few Disney sets. Plus I have MOCS from other Lego creators (I love my church that we will never get from Lego), MOCS of my own, though not very good. And I have sets from other brands. So when Lego doesn't cater to us long time fans I spend my money on those sets. Plus I'm not too keen on the price increase either.