A Christmas Train Nine Years in the Making!

[Snapdragon]

I totally forgot to post this last year, when I actually finally completed it, and told myself around January that I would definitely post it this December! So, without further ado - the G4 Custom Christmas Train!

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And here's more closeups of the individual cars with what their "before" would have looked like, AKA the stock, unpainted trains:

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And I'll put some WIP pics behind a cut, in case you're curious to see some of the painting detail shots!

Spoiler

Here's how I rediscovered the train in 2022, with a base coat and not much else! Oh, I did stick on the peppermint wheel for the locomotive, LOL! (It's the same photo mirrored twice, only because the photo wasn't cropping properly.)
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Here was my attempt to make a blue and silver train... which just looked dirty! So then I tried to put down an orange base to make it gold instead, and it looked like a mac n cheese train! But the mac n cheese prevailed, and it came out much nicer!
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Mac n cheese vindicated!
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Here's the ice cream train, getting all those little lattice lines straight was tough for sure!
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And I guess I didn't get any WIP shots of the locomotive or caboose, because they weren't as paint-heavy! Oops!)

I originally bought this train on clearance at Toys R Us, which should tell you how long ago I originally planned to customize this! In 2016, I referenced on my blog that I had been trying to work on this train every December 'for three years', which would make my start date around 2013, which makes this train a decade old! But while the train got shelved and put aside for many (many... many...) years, I continued tracking down various little Christmas decor bits, and I even took a photo of the MASSIVE amount of Christmas doodads and gee-gaws I had been collecting for it in the decade intervening!

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The train, like many toys, has a lot of sculpted details in the plastic that don't really show up because they're not painted! So I tried to highlight as many of the fun little sculpt details as I could (and hide the screw holes), while still changing it enough to feel Christmas-y. For example, I changed the ice cream cone train car into a car with wooden lattice and a snowy mountaintop, complete with glitter and snowmen! I had originally planned to use faux-frosting, but I feared it might just look too chunky and thick, and even more like ice cream. Using glitter made it look more gritty, like ice!

I didn't want to do a full repaint with a full white basecoat, since I worried it might turn out chunky, and also because I also wanted to highlight the original sculpting and color scheme. So that meant I had to get a bit creative with how I would turn each train car into more 'festive' colors! It's still very bright and colorful, but I figure that's more like how MLP would do the holidays anyway! I love to see how much the sculpting work of the original pops with just a little bit of paint to highlight it!

Phew! That's a lot of typing, but it was a lot of work!! I originally got the drive to finish it in time for a 'custom winter collab' last year, and I can proudly say that mine was the only train included, LOL! Thanks for reading!

[BlackCurtains]

omg this is the cutest thing ever! I absolutely love it All the detail is amazing.

[pandabear_chan]

You did a phenomenal job on this super cute train and I don't like G4s at all. But the work and detail that went into it is outstanding. You can be very proud on yourself!

[lovesbabysquirmy]

how fun!

[shockponie]

Wow, this is incredible! What a lovely job. 

[brightberry]

Love it! So detailed and cheerful.  Amazing!

[Gator]

You did an amazing job!  This is awesome!

[Snapdragon]

omg this is the cutest thing ever! I absolutely love it All the detail is amazing.

You did a phenomenal job on this super cute train and I don't like G4s at all. But the work and detail that went into it is outstanding. You can be very proud on yourself!

how fun!

Wow, this is incredible! What a lovely job. 

Love it! So detailed and cheerful.  Amazing!

You did an amazing job!  This is awesome!

Thank you all so very much!!! I'm glad you guys got a kick out of it too! It may not have taken nine years of consecutive painting/gluing work, but it sure felt like it last December! I kept thinking, okay, ONE more night and it'll be done ... and then it would take another week!

I'm not sure how to attach videos here, but I'll see if I can get my video linked somehow! I took a cute little shot of it rolling along the floor, it still somehow moves even with all of the doodads weighing it down!

[Griffin]

That looks amazing, well worth the time invested! Congrats on finally finishing the project! 

[Starflashbaby]

the Christmas Train is Beautiful - You did a Wonderful Job at creating it!

[Ponybookworm]

This is adorable!!!

[Heart Of Midnight]

Wow, incredibly beautiful and great! Lots of lovely and interesting details!

[ChocolateStarfire]

This is amazing! The details and colors are wonderful!

[Annie]

It's absolutely amazing! 
Loving all the details!

[Moonbreeze]

Aw, so cool! It's neat to see a playset customized. The colours are amazing <3