They may be stepping up to work, but this set's a bit of a letdown from yesterday's greatness... :P

Why is he drilling? And what are those megaphone pieces for. Are they headlights, torches, speakers or something else?

I wonder, this type of railway semaphores where an arm is moving, are they still used? Isn’t everything nowadays using colour lights?

Rail *and* road? I simply must know how they can pull that off.

$109.20! that price is crazy. It's got no exclusive figures or parts, so i'm not sure why the price is so high. But to be fair lots of the trains sets have high prices so this isn't the only one.

Huh. I just added this to my wanted list within the last couple of days after coming across it in the random Sets feature.

@Randomness<: It drives onto the track, then the rail wheels hinge down so it can use those instead of the road wheels.

Love this set. My favorite childhood set

Love this set. My favorite childhood set

Actually looks pretty good for a Town Jr set.

The black and yellow colour scheme helps immensely. Just needs a proper coloured windscreen, and it's now a Blacktron railroad service vehicle!

@Maxbricks14 said:
" @leetshoe said:
"Love this set. My favorite childhood set"

It's so good you repeated it three times!"

The comment form sometimes glitches and posts your comment couple times without you knowing. Happened to me last spring

That jackhammer actually works! Oh that it would be me.

@myth said:
" @Maxbricks14 said:
" @leetshoe said:
"Love this set. My favorite childhood set"

It's so good you repeated it three times!"

The comment form sometimes glitches and posts your comment couple times without you knowing. Happened to me last spring

"

Also happened to me, just before. Luckily i noticed it so i could delete the duplicates.

@leetshoe said:
"Love this set. My favorite childhood set"

Same! I used to unbuild and rebuild it from memory over and over… I just adored it.

Even now, nothing about it feels “Town Jr.” to me… it has essentially no specialized pieces, and it was one of my first sets that included mechanisms and technic parts (albeit very simple ones).

Nice and Classic, just the way I like it.

It's (almost) everything I wanted from Lego in the 90s.

holy crap he is vibrating so hard

The only Train set I ever owned!

Are they...stealing that signalbox?

I feel some cognitive dissonance seeing those technic liftarms on a Trains set from the 90s with those small wheels with thick tires. It's so modern yet so classic. I know where technic was in '99, but still...

That sad, this looks like a good one. Lots of accessories too!

@chrisaw said:
"People keep mentioning Town Jr but in reality it was far from it. If it was Jr, it would be made of about 6 pieces all up."

'Town Jr' is jut a name AFOLs came up with years later to describe the shift from Town in 1997-2000 to lower age range sets.
In reality it was just that the 'standard' Town sets were changed into that style while themes like Divers, Res-Q, Xtreme Team and Trains continued to chug along. However, due to internal changes in the company some of those themes started to be designed differently. The old guard was being replaced with new people, some of which had little experience designing for lego. The idea was that kids didn't like having to go through a long building process anymore and wanted instant play. Hence the more dramatic split in age range styles.
That's why those themes might still feel a bit different.

Tl;dr: this is set is not directly hit with juniorization, just by related changing design sensibilities

Cool set!

It's an interesting signal construction though, I wonder if anything like this has ever been used in the real world. Sure, semaphore signals often did have lights too, or actually just a fixed one and colored lenses that moved in front of it, in addition to the signal arm.

But for a Lego world, a construction like this makes total sense, I actually like it! It does need some maintenance though, it should never stop halfway....

This was probably the last appearance of those '80s truck wheels.

The late '90s were a strange time for Lego Trains (ok, the late '80s were as well...).

Folks, that's not a semaphore; the loose half of the hinge plate just swings down to reveal red or up to reveal green. It's in the position it's in to show this function off; it were fully covering either light, you wouldn't really be able to see why there was a hinge-plate there. Sure, there are simpler ways to do things, but that would mean depriving the model of a play feature.

@TheOtherMike said:
"Folks, that's not a semaphore; the loose half of the hinge plate just swings down to reveal red or up to reveal green. It's in the position it's in to show this function off; it were fully covering either light, you wouldn't really be able to see why there was a hinge-plate there. Sure, there are simpler ways to do things, but that would mean depriving the model of a play feature."

Good catch! I didn’t notice that . And I love play features like that :-)

@SolidState said:
"Man, the CG backgrounds and perfectly composited photos of today really don't hit like the box art of yesteryear. This feels more like an actual playable toy model and less like a product on a webpage."

Exactly the words for it! The classic backgrounds are such a key to looking at the old sets: providing a distinct feeling all their own. Some of that is just the contrast with "white background" of the digital press release era, but it's a bit more than that.

One thing I enjoy about RSOTD is (re)encountering sets I've never thought about much before--and, sometimes, thinking "I've got the parts to that..." In related news, I've got the parts to that.

EDIT: Oh! And I forgot to write: I was surprised to discover that those tires were still in use in 1999! Another rabbit-hole to go down, I guess--I always associate them with the earliest 90s and the 80s.

Pretty sure my dad had this set

@Maxbricks14 said:
"And what are those megaphone pieces for. Are they headlights, torches, speakers or something else?"
Air horns?

@phi13 said:
" @chrisaw said:
"People keep mentioning Town Jr but in reality it was far from it. If it was Jr, it would be made of about 6 pieces all up."

Yeah, this isn't Town Jr. at all; it's a lot more like the pre-1997 Town sets."

This is likely coming from the general aesthetic of 1999 Trains being dominated by set 4560 in many people's minds. Some other sets of that year did use some parts that are strongly connected with Town Junior, like 30180, so people instantly put these sets in that category.

The same is sort of true of practically all sets of 1998-2002. As long as the set contain one of the dreaded 'pre-formed pieces', it would instantly be classified as 'juniorized', no matter the actual build. Also notice that there is a heavy bias against that era in the common fanbase. Whenever the late '90s are mentioned, all that people can think of is Znap, Scala and Town Junior, everything released alongside those must be bad as well in their eyes it seems.

Also people would have been way less upset about Town Junior, if Lego had communicated it's introduction better. TLG tried to just sneak it in there in 1997, hoping that nobody would notice, it seems. If they had been way more clear that it is in fact a separate theme, deliberately aimed at a younger audience in the same manner as Fabuland was, things would have fared better I guess. Of cause, it also didn't help that it fully replaced regular Town in 1998.

He could have just used a ladder, but not half as fun as trying to drive on an invisible railroad.

@Atuin said:
"Also people would have been way less upset about Town Junior, if Lego had communicated it's introduction better. TLG tried to just sneak it in there in 1997, hoping that nobody would notice, it seems. If they had been way more clear that it is in fact a separate theme, deliberately aimed at a younger audience in the same manner as Fabuland was, things would have fared better I guess. Of cause, it also didn't help that it fully replaced regular Town in 1998."

They did announce it in the UK. See page 28 of this catalog: https://images.brickset.com/library/Catalogues/c97uk.pdf

@myth said:
"I wonder, this type of railway semaphores where an arm is moving, are they still used? Isn’t everything nowadays using colour lights?"

Were they ever? Seems it would be a lot easier to turn lights on and off than to move a physical cover that could freeze up in the winter. But in terms of a LEGO set from this era, that doesn't translate well without actual electronics. This kinda works. I can't remember any offhand, but I'm sure this isn't the only time they've had to invent a new solution to something that can't be accurately represented in this scale.

@myth:
If it seems like it's taking an abnormally long time, and you've clicked Submit more than once, all you have to do is refresh the page once it does post and any duplicates should show up. Catch it early, and you can delete your own. Catch it late, and you have to use the Report button to ask site staff to do it, or leave the duplicates for all eternity.

@phi13 said:
" @Atuin said:
"Also people would have been way less upset about Town Junior, if Lego had communicated it's introduction better. TLG tried to just sneak it in there in 1997, hoping that nobody would notice, it seems. If they had been way more clear that it is in fact a separate theme, deliberately aimed at a younger audience in the same manner as Fabuland was, things would have fared better I guess. Of cause, it also didn't help that it fully replaced regular Town in 1998."

They did announce it in the UK. See page 28 of this catalog: https://images.brickset.com/library/Catalogues/c97uk.pdf"

Interesting that the ‘Divers’ sets had ‘Diving’ branding in the catalog instead. Never seen that before.

Love how every Lego set before 2000 had the exact same aesthetic for close to 30 years