Brio World Bringing New Trains this Holiday Season

If there is one thing we enjoy at the Roffel house it’s the Christmas season. Friends and family visiting, stockings, and of course, the tree. We always put up two trees each year – one ‘adult’ tree with beautiful ornaments and an obvious theme, and one ‘kids’ tree, which is just a mishmash of gifted ornaments and other cool little trinkets. We’ve always wanted to get a Christmas train to run around the base of the kids tree, but the plastic ones you find at the story were always to cheaply made and would break easily. Then we saw the winter train from Brio, and were instantly excited about it.

Wooden trains use to be insanely expensive, but as more and more companies have released wooden train products over the past half decade, the cost of these trains has drastically decreased. The winter train from Brio comes in at $24.99, and includes enough track to create a wide circle that would be great for any tree, or just for playing. The set includes a few plastic decorative pieces with snowscapes, a crane for loading goods onto the train, and a train station platform for people to wait.

But what sets this set aside from other wooden train sets is the actual engine. Now, it is worth noting that the engine in this set is made of plastic, not wood. While initially disappointed by this fact, and thought about two things. One was the price. But the second wasn’t as obvious until I opened the instuctions. This train actually lets off ‘steam’ and is battery powered so it runs around the track on it’s own. After filling up the internal resivoire with water, it became instantly obvious why this was a plastic train, as opposed to a wooden one.

I was really impressed with the steam element built into this set. While not overpowering – there are times when you need to do a double take to make sure something is coming out – it is still a really neat feature. We cannot wait to get this train setup this holiday season around the tree. It’s going to be a great addition. But even when the season is over and it feels like the train should be put away with the rest of the decorations, don’t fret! The pieces interlock with other wooden train sets we own (from different companies) so the fun doesn’t need to stop when the holiday does!