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Lego Minifigures and Wooden Trains: Tips and Tricks

May 13, 2014 By Jessica Petersen 2 Comments



This is a great way to combine old favorite toys with awesome new toys as kids grow. While LEGO DUPLO figures are a little big to go with wooden trains, LEGO minifigures are a very compatible size. They fit in the wooden train freight cars — but, more often than not, they fall out as the trains chug around the tracks. Here are a couple of simple tricks to give some lucky LEGO minifigures the chance to ride — and even drive! — your child’s wooden trains without falling out of them.

Simple tricks for Lego minifigures to ride wooden trains without falling off -- from Play Trains!

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LEGO Minifigures + Wooden Trains: Tips and Tricks
Design Your Own LEGO Wooden Train
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Mini Lego Hogwarts Express: The Perfect Train for New Builders

 

First, I’ll show you how to keep minifigures in wooden train freight cars, and then I’ll demonstrate how to give them a place to stand so they can drive wooden engines.

Freight Cars:

LEGO minifigures — especially ones with the normal minifigure legs that allow them to sit — can ride well enough in wooden train freight cars with higher sides. But they tend to fly out of the low-sided freight cars every time the train hits a curve, no matter how carefully we drive our trains.

The easiest solution is to use a flat 2 x 6 stud LEGO brick in the bottom of the freight car. Just attaching the minifigs to that will make them fall out less often, especially if you line up two or three of them on the LEGO in the bottom of the car to weigh it down a bit more.

But if you really want to keep your minifigures on the train, add some poster putty/poster tack to the bottom of the LEGO:

Simple tricks for Lego minifigures to ride wooden trains without falling off -- from Play Trains!

Now you can easily attach and detach the minifigures to the freight car, again and again. And — in our experience — the poster putty doesn’t damage the trains at all, so you don’t have to worry about your modifications becoming permanent.

 

Engines:

You can also have a minifigure drive a wooden train engine. This works especially well with Thomas and his fellow tank engines. Their coal bunkers are the perfect place to put the LEGO for attaching the minifigure.

Simple tricks for Lego minifigures to ride wooden trains without falling off -- from Play Trains!

First put a small lump of the poster putty on top of where Thomas’ coal would be.

Simple tricks for Lego minifigures to ride wooden trains without falling off -- from Play Trains!

Then press a flat 2 x 1 LEGO brick on top of it — preferably black, so you can pretend it’s coal. (I used a bit more poster putty than I had to in this picture. But if you use less, so that it doesn’t stick out from under the LEGO, it looks a lot more like coal.) Now a minifigure can drive Thomas all around the wooden tracks.

In fact, the poster putty works so well, there’s no need for the minifigures to feel constrained by gravity…

Simple tricks for Lego minifigures to ride wooden trains without falling off -- from Play Trains!

As you can see, the Little Engineer thought that was hilarious, and immediately set out to make it “even funnier!!!” by turning Princess Leia sideways and backwards.

Well that’s the simple application of this fun little trick. But, as things go at our house, we didn’t stop at simple. We started covering our entire wooden trains with LEGO, and making some amazing creations…

An easy, temporary way to turn any wooden train into a LEGO train. A fun design project for kids from Play Trains!

Design Your Own LEGO Wooden Train

 

More LEGO fun with trains:

LEGO Ewok Village Wooden Train Layout from Play Trains!

 

LEGO Ewok Village Wooden Train Layout

Play Dough Train Set from Play Trains! put together a train-making set for kids with play dough and Duplo bricks.

Make-Your-Own Play Dough Train Set with Duplo Bricks

 

Recycled Play Dough Molds from Play Trains! A great way to reuse toy packaging after Christmas or birthday presents are unwrapped.

Recycled Toy Packaging Play Dough Molds

Lego Mini Hogwarts Express: the Perfect Train for New Lego Builders

Mini Lego Hogwarts Express: The Perfect Train for New Builders

Filed Under: Featured, Fine Motor Activities, LEGO and DUPLO Train Activities, Making Trains Exciting Again, Preschoolers, School-age Kids, Uncategorized, Wooden Train Play Tagged With: Lego, train play, wooden trains

« Recycled Track Platform: DIY Project for Wooden Train Layouts
Design Your Own LEGO Wooden Train »

Comments

  1. Katy says

    December 16, 2015 at 4:21 pm

    wow!! I wish I’d found your website years ago, but now I know what I’ll be spending tommorow doing!!

    Reply
    • Jessica Petersen says

      December 16, 2015 at 10:39 pm

      Have fun! 🙂

      Reply

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Jessica Petersen, author of Old Tracks, New Tricks
Hi, I'm Jessica! We're so happy you've climbed aboard the Play Trains! express. Next stop: a trainload of fun and learning for your little engineer!

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