Review: 60098 Heavy-Haul Train
Posted by Huw,
You wait ages for a decent LEGO freight train set to arrive and then two come along together...
Just a year after the release of 60052 Cargo Train, it's been complemented with another freight train set release, 60098 Heavy-Haul Train.
I didn't buy 60052 because I didn't find it very appealing: the US-style locomotive and the cattle truck in particular, the likes of which haven't existed for around 100 years in the UK, just didn't do it for me. However when photos of 60098 emerged, it looked like a much better proposition so I took the plunge and forked out for one. Like last year's set, this new one contains a loco, three wagons, a trackside structure and track, and costs £139.99. It does not appear to be available in the USA just yet, at least not from shop.LEGO.com, although US-based video reviewers have been inspecting it so presumably it's available elsewhere.
Anyway, on with the review...
Rather than bore you with pictures of the box and bags of parts, I'll cut to the chase and get stuck into the interesting aspects of it.
Minifigures
Five are provided and they are all excellent. The fellow on the left operates the grab-crane. The two in olive green tops with hi-vis vests are the train crew. I'm not sure what the guy in the blue dungarees does but he's packed in the grab-crane bags. On the right, the female construction worker appears to be the backhoe driver.
The torsos are printed front and back with an impressive level of detail. A one-piece hard-hat ponytail piece is fitted to the female figure, which looks great. The set hasn't been inventoried at BrickLink yet so I don't know if any of them are new although the olive green/hi-vis vest torso appeared in last year's freight train set.
Locomotive
Superficially, the locomotive is a red version of the yellow one that featured in 2010's 7939 Cargo Train. There are certainly a lot of similarities, the most obvious being the use of the same canopy piece, but this one makes use of new curved slopes for the roof and is a diesel, rather than overhead electric.
The rails down the side imply that there's some sort of walkway between the cabs on the outside, and the photo on the loco's instruction manual shows a minifig standing behind it. The walkway however is about a plate wide, so certainly is not wide enough for the purpose. I suspect one of the first modifications I will do is to remove it and make the side flush with the rest of the body by replacing the 6x16 tiles with a plate and adding some greebling/grills etc. to it.
Once again the handrails stick out far too much and do not look right. On previous locos with this issue, I bring them in half a stud using jumper plates which keeps them roughly aligned with the side of the body. The top of it looks good, though.
The Power Functions battery box and IR receiver are packed tightly inside the body. Although PF lights can be fitted to the nose pieces so they illuminate the 1x1 round tiles, they are are not provided. It is however possible -- and in fact it's relatively easy -- to add them because the designers have thought about where the cables need to run and rather than use 1x4 bricks, they have used 1x4 arches to allow the wires to be placed underneath.
I fitted them, front and back, to mine: just one minor modification needs to be made and there's just about enough room to squeeze the additional wires and connectors in.
Bogie flat and backhoe
This is a relatively basic bogie wagon, built upon the 6x28 train plate.
There's not really much to be said about it other than it's been designed to securely hold the backhoe in place.
The backhoe is really quite good, and would fit in well with existing City construction/demolition sets. It's a little juniorised in terms of the chunky hinge bricks used for the back hoe, but that's to be expected nowadays.
Hopper
The hopper is what attracted me to the set more than anything else because I've built similar wagons myself in the past. It looks good in brown, the colour of many German wagons of this type, but I believe 4-wheel hoppers are something of a rarity these days, most now being bogie vehicles.
The sleek and realistic look of the wagon is totally spoiled by the hinged flap: it's the wrong colour for starters and the studs look very out of place. Of course it's necessary for play, to enable the hopper to be discharged, but it looks terrible. I will be removing it from mine ASAP.
The inside is sloped so that the load (1x1 round bricks) drops to the bottom.
4-wheel flat and helicopter
I've never seen a helicopter on a train, they probably wouldn't fit within the UK's loading gauge, but it does make for an interesting wagon load, and provides playability too.
Again, the flat wagon is very simple and designed to hold the load securely in place.
The helicopter looks great, much like old Town ones. To prevent the rotors spinning when on the train, a 1x2 plate with 2 handles is provided at the back mounted on a hinge, which when raised, holds them in place. The chain is just for show.
Loading and discharging station
The trackside structure in this set provides facilities for loading and unloading the hopper wagon. The crane is well designed and is good fun to play with, for 5 minutes at least. It can slide back and forth within the grey frame.
I guess the main design flaw with the structure is that the wagon is loaded and discharged at the same place, with the same product -- 1x1 round bricks. So, why bother loading it onto the train in the first place? :)
Level crossing
The final part of the set is a simple level crossing of which there's not much to say.
Verdict
Aesthetically, this set is a vast improvement over last year's in my opinion. It's not without its faults though, so train fans will have fun improving on it and making it more realistic.
It's very playable, with all three wagons and the grab-crane providing a different play experience, which is probably of little consequence to AFOLs, but it obviously is for kids.
There's a relatively generous amount of track, 16 curves and 12 straights, which is enough for an oval, but more would obviously have been better. I suspect kids would soon get bored running it round and round, and AFOLs certainly will, so if this is your first train set, expect to have to buy a lot more track.
The inclusion of a track crossing is rather strange given the set doesn't come with a separate road vehicle; perhaps the budget would have been better spent on providing one to be used with the grab-crane.
£140 is a lot of money but train sets do provide an unrivalled level of playability, so it's money well spent. However if you're thinking of taking the plunge and buying your first one, you might want to look at getting last year's first given it can be had for a 20-25% discount at the moment.
I appreciate I haven't gone into a lot of detail about the loco internals and adding lights to it, so if you have any questions, please ask.
You will also notice I haven't applied the stickers: I always modify my train sets so I wait until I've finished doing so before adding the stickers. You can see where they go on this image :-)
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34 comments on this article
I've never bought a train set before due to the expense of the set as well as buying more track. I found 60052 on eBay for a decent price and went for that over 60098 because, hopper aside, I found the carriages and cargo on this one a little uninspiring. With 60052 most of the cargo and carriages are interesting and you get a forklift, a truck and a depot with gantry crane. Being from the UK I also found the US-style engine compelling. The only thing lacking was a level crossing since it has the truck but that was easily added.
I already had the crane and truck from 7939 and have since added its container carriage and container as well as the track repair plant from 7936 and 3677 to go with additional track.
Your first train set is always a bit of a plunge, but it's the most efficient way of getting started. Once done, there are plenty of opportunities to expand, so long as you're willing to buy parts (wheels, magnetic couplings, long bases, track) and make your own MOCs.
Regularly buying further train sets to expand your collection can be expensive though, as LEGO simply don't make wagon accessory sets. The most you can hope for is track packs and the occasional station.
I quite like the look of this set, but I feel £140 is an awful lot to fork over for one set, even if it is one I would like to purchase. (IMO, the new square seems to be of better value at that price point.)
I think the Loco might be modeled after a class 60 Locomotive, though I might be wrong in thinking that.
Personally I prefer the design of last year's cargo train - although it's American, I just don't like the cab on this one (or on the previous yellow version). That said, I'll probably pick it up at some point.
Thanks for the review Huw
It looks like the grab crane can swivel 360, so it might take from a truck, and load the hopper car (hence the sliding along the platform, so able to load more than stationary hopper cars), and when a hopper discharges into the pit, it loads from there into a truck... Pity there isn't one there to use (as you said)...
60052 sits in my pile of shame, and before I've even thought of building it here's a replacement!
60052 has a cow so that's got to make it better though.
I suspect I'll be picking this one up once it hits £100-ish but not before. Hopefully 60052 will have been built by then too!
I see we're still stuck with that ridiculous way of attaching the front digger bucket to the JCB.
Why bother loading it onto the train in the first place? Because it is absolutely necessary that those 1x1s move a few studs to the left :P
The level crossing is good for the back hoe.
I've been looking for an excuse to stop collecting trains and this might be it.
That is an amazingly uninspired set. Not bad, but not very original... the grain hopper is just hideous, the crane and level crossing seem too small and afterthoughts, and why the heck does anyone need a HELICOPTER CAR?! LEGO really is obsessed with helicopters in the City line. I remember when they were actually different from another, instead of having essentially two different heli designs and putting them everywhere.
As a train enthousiast I like the set better that the 60052, just for basicly the same reasons Huw metioned. Watching the reviews in Youtube of Jangbricks and Brickbuilder, the set is well designed.
Some extra info about this set. The crane can rotate 360 degrees. On the right side of the cabine there is a storage for the hook. The clambshell can be replaced by the hook with balljoint. This can lift the helicopter on the chain. The chain sits a bit far to back so it tilts to the front, which isn't great. Also, the crane has a very limited range. This can easily be fixed by moving the axle on the yellow link higher, by edding a 1x2 or 1x3 Technic liftarm (2x 3L cross axles and 2x halve bushes). This tilts the crane arm more forewards, giving it more range.
The Hopper can unload on both sides, which is nice, but it has no benifit in this set. Also the hopper doesn't unload all the round bricks, because some sit on the wrong side of the threshold and can only be removed by opening the other flap or by holding the hopper up-side-down.
In the cranes collecting bin, the door can be opend so the backhoe can scoop the round bricks out of the bin. Just an extra play function.
I don't know if this is a high price. Reading the comments it properly is. In Euro's it is always expencive because of the low value of the Euro right now. But due consider that there is electronics involved, which makes the set have a higher price tag. Normal Lego train have only round tracks or very small ovals, so the 12 straights are a very nice extra. Yes I know set 60052 had extra straights and 2 switchs... ;P
We need more criticism of that stupid bucket LEGO keeps using for the backhoe part of their backhoes. It's fine for small skid steer loaders or other small front loaders, but for a backhoe or power shovel it's completely wrong, and completely ridiculous.
They need a real bucket part like, yesterday.
^^ All good points, thank you. I hadn't cottoned on to lifting the helicopter odd via its chain using the hook on the crane!
^ I nearly mentioned that, it's far too big, isn't it, but then I figured that maybe backhoes can be fitted with a huge bucket like that if the job demands it.
Why is TLG so obsessed with helicopters? When do you ever see helicopters on trains?
I'm undecided on this set, but if I do get it, mine won't have a stupid helicopter.
PS Please post what your modified version looks like. :o)
the locomotive does not have doors. i hate it when it doesn't have doors.
I agree with everything except the helicopter. I personally prefer the helicopter design in 60047: Police Station. Also, I would've rather had a different sort of vehicle than a helicopter... Maybe a flat bed truck? Haven't seen one of those in a while! :D
Thanks for the in depth review. I'll probably end up passing, unless there's some kind of awesome deal in a year. 2 of the 3 cargo carriers are pretty ridiculous IMO. It seems like they are grasping for ideas things trains can haul.
I think if the best thing people seem to say about it is it does not look 'American' like 60052 then it is not a good set IMO.
Nothing really astounding to me about this set. While I think 60052 was not a great design (more due to only one cow for a 'cattle car' and no tanker) I think having a bad rehash of 7939's loco with a bunch of uninteresting cars is not much better.
If I get one of these will will be on a heavy clearance which I'm guessing if this train is received like 3677 then I will get my wish
Want it!
I will probably buy one of these, if I can find a decent discount.
The Brown cargo truck is probably the part that I like most so I may have to build or buy a few more of them.
They are making it easy for me not to buy one, since its probably not going to be for sale here till the Fall, I read somewhere..I think they said November. I will also probably wait for a discount somewhere too.
I've even talked myself out of the City Square set, for now. I need to throttle back on my Lego budget ;-)
60052 is a better set with better play features and builds. I like the cattle wagon the loads and the diesel engine but they are all weird loads. I appreciate the new weird loads in this set although it doesn't look as good and the juniorisation has increased. My freight train though is now several metres of weird load, while its fun to look at its not great from a modelling point of view.
Personally, I prefer the design of 60052, the blue engine looks better than the red one in this set, the cattle car is nice (and I like cows and want more) and it comes with switch tracks. That combined with the fact that I already own a pair of 60052s and a bunch of other train stuff and the pricing of the 60098 here in Australia means I have no interest in one :)
As for the backhoe, what LEGO needs is a new click-hinge version of this piece http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=4626 :)
Purchasing this for sure, as I've only recently started buying Lego trains... the more the merrier!
I'm still holding out for the next Creator Expert level train. We got Emerald Night in '09, Maersk in '11, and Horizon in '13... I really thought we'd be getting one this year, but I think we'd have heard roumors by now.
Anyway, I'm hoping for a steam loco since the last two were more modern. I'd love to have Emerald Night but missed out and it's a fortune now.
"I guess the main design flaw with the structure is that the wagon is loaded and discharged at the same place, with the same product"
I'm assuming it's meant to dump the product, go around a few times, then pick the product up again, simulating vast distances traveled between stations. :P
Hey Huw! Awesome review as always. I have one request. Please do post pictures of the modifications you make to the locomotive. I am really interested in seeing out how all the mods that you have talked about look on the locomotive. Thank you!
I like the engine and the hopper, but I'm always somewhat underwhelmed by small helicopters - looks like something from a polybag than a 140 quid set. The digger isn't much better.
I definitely prefer the blue American-style engine from 60052 (mostly because at least that engine has doors. I can't stand Lego trains without doors, and they've been terrible at this for years now). And I quite liked the carriages from 60052. I liked the cattle truck (maybe it's not terribly realistic, but I think it makes for a lovely talking point on your train), and I loved the flatbed with the cable drums.
Now, onto 60098. Like I said, I'm not keen on the locomotive (the changes seem superficial at best, and it really does look like a red version of an engine they put out already, and not long ago) ... but I really like the backhoe-and-flatbed, and the helicopter carrier! I do understand that Lego's obsession with helicopters can sometimes get a bit out of control, but I customed a helicopter-flatbed for one of my own trains (4563, for the record), and I really like this one. It's different and interesting. So that's a thumbs-up from me, definitely.
I agree with Joefish. It's a shame that Lego doesn't sell train specific parts.
The hopper unloading into the same bay it got loaded from does seem a little arbitrary... Guess I'll just have to get two so they have somewhere to transport goods to and from. :D
"expect to have to to buy a lot more track."
Well, yes ? This sort of set is based on the razor blades profit modal, right ?
This inspired me to make a futuristic train for the Empire for some reason.