Choo! Choo! All aboard this magical Hornby Santa’s Express festive train to the most magical place! This Christmas, Mr C has been treated with this awesome train set. Owning a Hornby train set has always been his childhood dream and so he was so pleased when he saw this set. Both children were ecstatic too!
Santa’s special train includes his very own steam engine 0-4-0 locomotive, a plank open wagon full of presents and a closed Reindeer Box van in which he keeps his reindeer. The train and carriages are very well made and with superb attention to detail. All carriages come with a hook on the front and back to hook onto the next carriage. The presents on the wagon are removable. It comes with two small plastic characters: one for the coal and one is a passenger sitting on a box.
Inside this train set, it has 1 straight power track R600, 1 straight track R600, 8x 3rd radius starter oval tracks R609, 1 R8250 train controller, P9000 transformer and Hornby paper MidiMat.
Setting up the train track is fairly straightforward. The tracks are well made and it’s worth taking additional time to make sure you slot them in correctly.
This is the basic oval track layout but it would not sit nicely on the paper MidiMat provided. The paper MidiMat is massive and has too many folds. Instead, I think it is best to sit the train track directly on a flat table or floor to ensure the track is nice and level. The overall track is 1600mm by 1180 mm.
To operate the train, you would need to set up the track near a power source as this is run off the mains. Once the tracks are connected, you are ready to go. My son loves the train controller as he can adjust the speed and see it go around the track. The controller is lightweight and comes with one dial for the speed and a switch for changing the direction. The trains does not make any noises so you might want to put some festive music on while the train runs!
The beauty of this set is that it’s easily expandable. At the moment, our Santa’s Express is only going around the oval track but I think in no time we will be getting more accessories and tracks to develop the set into an even better scene!
This is definitely a great starter set for this Christmas and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with its quality. Of course, you would need a fairly big floor space for the track.
Hornby’s Santa’s Express RRP is £69.99 and is available to buy now from all good toy retailers, www.Hornby.com and Amazon.
Check out my Instagram video here:
Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review however all thoughts and opinions remain our own. Contains Amazon affiliate link.
