Overview
Year of release: 1980
Last year in catalog: 1984
Set type: single wagon (compact size)
Generation (within grey era): 1.0
Predecessor (within grey era): none
Successor (within grey era): none

Description
A neat little passenger car, intended as a supplement to the passenger train 7710. Funny fact, this wagon is often referred to as a supplement to 7715. But 7715 was released in 1985, when 7818 has already been dropped from the line-up.

Variants and alternate parts
No variants are known for this set.

Personal opinion
This is largely a copy of the passenger cars from 7710, just using a different color scheme. It can be regarded as the link to set 7715.

Oddly, this was the only train set I ever owned. I never had tracks, nor even an engine to pull this car, so it was something of an aberration in my collection as a child. I don't remember much about the set because it didn't stay assembled for long; its seats, windows and roof bricks found life in other creations of my own! Someday I'd like to fish through the old parts I have stored away, rebuild the set, acquire some tracks and finally see it ride the rails.

It gets a 5-rating from me. I never had much fun with it as a train car, but it provided me with some new and interesting pieces I hadn't had before.

Part of the 12v ‘Grey’ era, this small standalone set was available in the first wave of releases and was perfectly pitched to allow any lucky child to expand their train collection without having to buy multiples of the larger ‘complete’ sets.

Box/Instructions

The box is a fairly small affair, with a standard picture of the set and minifigures, surrounded by the silver-grey boarder that marks it out as a 12v era set. The instructions are of the folded sheet variety common to vintage sets this size. It packs the build into a reasonably concise 13 steps and even finds room for a 9 step ‘alternative build’, as well as a panel showing a snapshot of a layout containing many of the sets from the early years of the 12v train era.

Parts

There is nothing particularly spectacular about the part selection, containing as it does all the features common to the 12v era sets that you would expect to find – red wheel sets, magnetic coupling assemblies, train doors and windows and the 3x4 sloped bricks that make up the roof. A few basic bricks and plates round out the selection.

Minifigures

There are two passengers who come with the set and are fairly standard ‘Town’ minifigures. The man has made a curious style choice, sporting a red police hat that was surely never fashionable even in the 1980s, while the lady has gone for extravagant (for the time) pigtail hair.

The build

There is nothing earth-shattering in the build, it’s very much the standard brick-on-brick approach. The build pace is surprising leisurely for the time – where larger models were usually a breathtakingly ambitious game of spot the difference, this smaller model takes a relatively low piece-per-step approach. As the windows take up more than half the height of the carriage, it isn’t until they are added in step 11 (along with the doors) that the final model really takes shape. The roof is then a quick mini-build of its own to top it off.

The completed model

The final result is a fantastic little train carriage with a distinctive and striking colour scheme. The blue and red really look great together, being bright without looking too cartoonish, and printing on the doors carries the colour scheme along the length of the carriage. The use of tiles along the top of the windows and doors means that the roof is only held on by a single row of studs at either end, so is easily removable for play.

There is an alternative build option which uses around half the bricks to make an open sided carriage, maybe for a tram or an amusement park train. It’s not particularly spectacular in itself, but certainly acted as a fire to the imagination of my seven year old self and reinforced the point that, though there was a model included, I could do whatever I liked with the bricks.

Overall opinion

Not wishing to repeat the conclusion to my review of 7821 too much, but this is another perfect example of an inexpensive ‘extra’ tailor made to expand any child’s train setup, and it’s a shame that similar stand-alones are not made available to supplement the modern train sets. The colour scheme of the wagon fits in best when accompanying 7715, though bizarrely this set actually predates 7715 by five years! Personally, I had it tacked on the end of my 7710 quite happily as the carriages are of identical design. If any child was lucky enough to get multiples, then they combine to make an impressive rake behind any of the smaller engines that were available at the time. All in all, this is a great little set.