Disney Christmas Train Improvements
This year (2023) Aldi are selling cheap Lionel-branded plastic train sets celebrating 100 years of Disney. The trains are battery powered and are presented in nursery pastel colours with cartoon character decorations as in the box photo above. The supplied track is about the right size to go around a Christmas tree. The track is genuine 0-gauge (32mm) and the wheels do roll easily, so time for some improvements so kids can play with them on our existing tracks (wood, blue plastic Plarail, OS Railway and other toy and heritage systems as well as the supplied pieces of track.
Improvements:
- Make a track joiner to connect the supplied rails to OS Railway. You can use OS railway switches or just use one of the other adapters at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5024058 to connect to many other systems. For example, the old blue plastic Plarail tracks are quite toddler-proof and will carry the Disney train very well.
- Make new couplers to suit your existing rolling stock. We have provided three:
- Atlas type knuckle couplers,
- OS Railway, and
- Rotating magnet couplers.
- Dismantle the trains and spray the parts in a uniform colour scheme; e.g. loco and tender deep brunswick green rather than pastel blue, freight cars and brake van grey, and all bogie frames black rather than yellow. You might prefer to change the roof colour from blue to grey or something else.
Note that although the couplers look similar to those elsewhere in my designs, these have a larger diameter mounting hole to suit the snap-in pins in these toys.
Once you have made the track joiner you can extend your layout using any of the OS-Railway track elements here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4408535 .
P.S. This year (2025) Aldi were selling not-so-cheap Lionel-branded plastic train sets with a Harry Potter theme. These are are also 0-gauge and use the same track and a similar loco mechanism. However in this case the existing colour scheme is almost perfect so there is no need to dismantle for repainting. The track adapter here allows extension of the layout. The couplers are similar to the Christmas train but if you have other rolling stock then the alternatives here might be useful.