Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published October 21, 2022.
As months pass and seasons change, the year ends with winter… well at least for the population living in the Northern Hemisphere. The days get shorter, temperatures drop, and with that comes the arrival of snow. For many, especially the young (and the young-at-heart), this is a magical time of the year. Fond memories of playing in the snow, ice skating and sitting around the fireplace are cherished in our minds.
People decorate their homes for the holidays and for many, building a mini Winter Village inside of their home goes back generations. LEGO is no stranger to this seasonal tradition. With the popularity of the Winter Village Collection theme that started it all in 2009, people young and old look forward to the unveiling of the new set to be revealed. I too got hooked early on at around 2012 and started collecting and building up my LEGO Winter Village.
In the early years, there were only a handful of official Winter Village sets available, so naturally many people either built their own MOCs or looked online for custom instructions. Even LEGO-related online communities began having winter-themed MOCing contests, such as on Eurobricks (which is excitingly coming back this year after a few years off). Fast forward a few years, and the joy of sharing LEGO Winter Villages has spread to other larger platforms such as on Facebook and Instagram. It seems that everywhere you look, white snow is adorning LEGO builds in some way or another.
Before I get ahead of myself, let us go back to 2015. If you look at the Winter Village Collection theme on BrickLink, you will notice that LEGO did not release a new set that year. Instead, they made a curious choice to re-release the Winter Village Toy Shop, the first-ever set in the Winter Village lineup. Many speculated about the reason why. I recall discussing it with some fellow Winter Village fans as well. Maybe LEGO wanted people to have access to the older set, though slightly updated? Maybe a new unique design was deprioritized that year? We may never know.
Toys for Trams
Instead of foregoing having a new addition to my Winter Village in 2015 since I already owned the Toy Shop, I took it upon myself to design my own addition to the snowy lineup. After all, that is the point of LEGO, right? Get creative and build! I pondered what addition that I and others would enjoy. Display space being a big limitation in my home, I knew I could not fit a proper train layout around my village. So that got me thinking, what if I built a tram instead? Having lived in Europe during my youth and having ridden trams as a kid, the nostalgia of having one in my Winter Village solidified my plan.
The styling of the tram had to be of an older era to match the styling of the existing LEGO Winter Village. I drew on inspiration from my visits to San Francisco and the tram booths within the Old Spaghetti Factory restaurants for old-timey tram designs. My tram design needed to encompass some basic criteria such as an open-side concept with seating facing to the sides, a detachable roof for ease of placing figures inside, a built-on train wheel chassis so it could be motorizable by 9-volt track or Power Functions motor, and lastly, it needed to be adorned in deep and rich styling and colors.
After I was finished, the final product proved to be so successful with others that I shared my design and created 20 kits that sold out within a week. I knew I could not build more kits as the effort of sourcing the parts was daunting of a task, so I created instructions with the help of a good friend.
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You could say that this became a pivotal moment in my LEGO Winter Village MOCing, and I have since followed up on the success of my tram with additional Winter Village builds: a train station in 2016, a cider mill in 2018, a couple of trucks in 2016 and 2021, and most recently a lodge in 2022.
A Winter Village with Wheels
When LEGO offered the 10308 Winter Village Holiday Main Street set to BrickNerd, our Nerd-in-Chief Dave saw the tram, remembered my history with it, and immediately knew I had to take a deep look at it. I quickly started to compare and contrast my 2015 version with LEGO’s version from 2022.
There are a lot of similarities for sure. Both have an open-concept design with dual-sided benches and a detachable roof. The overall look of old styling trams is similar, so I was actually expecting a lot of similarities. I was pleasantly delighted to see the thought that went into the design of the motorized conversion without requiring full disassembly of the tram. I really like the brick-built bench design (which is my favorite build of the tram) and the compactness of the whole thing that just speaks to the talent of the designers.
While I waited for the set to be delivered, I digitally built the new set version next to my 2015 MOC. I also swapped some colors to see how it would look in my classic color scheme.
Building a Better Tram
The tram from this year’s Winter Village set is closely proportioned to my 2015 MOC version. The overall difference is that it feels more slender mainly due to its 2-stud narrower body shape. Although I am quite pleased with the set’s tram, I did find three issues that I felt needed addressing: the wreath being too simple, the large window panes being a bit too wide, and the boxy front and back.
Addressing the first two issues are simple with the addition of some leaf parts (part 32607) on the wreath and swapping out the two 3-stud wide windows with three 2-stud-wide window panes on the side. The third issue of the boxy shape required a bit more reworking and the usage of additional parts to angle the outer narrow window panes and move the middle pane forward.
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The modifications can be done without much disassembly and the conversion PDF instructions can be downloaded here. The tan side window panes can also be swapped out for other colors. I had some sand green ones on hand and tried them out as well.
I will continue to experiment with swapping out colors to see what combinations are possible and look the best for my taste. In the side-by-side photos below, you can see what a difference the curved ends do for the tram. I hope I have inspired you to try your hand at building and modifying your Winter Village because modifying sets to your liking is part of a longstanding AFOL tradition.
Alt-Builds and Bookends
I’m always inspired by what other people envision with a set to make it their own. To see many of these interpretations, visit Rebrickable for alternate builds of the Winter Village Holiday Main Street set 10308. The alternate builds tab contains some incredible modifications to the set. Other builders have added depth as well as total rebuilds. At the time of writing this article, here are a few designs that have been already shared.
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I personally thought the buildings would look great as bookends due to their narrow depth profile. I pulled out some Christmas books and had a photoshoot to show off the possibilites.
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The LEGO Winter Village Community
I have always enjoyed that the holidays never quite end online. In several Winter Village groups, people plan out their displays months ahead of time, sharing techniques and ideas to help improve each of our villages. If you would like to join, I’d suggest the Fans of LEGO Winter Village or the LEGO Winter Village group, both on Facebook.
I recently shared some custom instructions for a Christmas Tree truck there or you can find all of my Winter Village designs over at HumbleBricks.com/winter-village.
I look forward to seeing all of your LEGO Winter Villages! And if you will be expanding your village this year, please consider purchasing your seasonal sets through BrickNerd’s link so we can help raise funds for Fairy Bricks this holiday season.
Happy Building and Happy Holidays!
Do you build a LEGO Winter Village every year? Let us know in the comments below.
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