LEGO says Orient Express’s fan designer was ‘very happy’ with the finished product

The LEGO Ideas team says 21344 The Orient Express Train’s fan designer Thomas Lajon was ‘very happy’ with how the set turned out – despite the sweeping changes made to his original submission.

It doesn’t take an engineer to spot the differences between The Orient Express, A Legendary Train and 21344 The Orient Express Train: the finished model has overhauled the initial idea’s scale, colour scheme, locomotive and number of carriages, so that the primary link between the two builds is that they are essentially both trains, and both hooked to the iconic Orient Express.

Changes of this magnitude are not completely unprecedented for LEGO Ideas, but 21344 The Orient Express Train has stoked much more controversy than, say, 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay or even 21325 Medieval Blacksmith. Critics have chiefly called out the undersized engine, which was apparently a switch made at the behest of the Orient Express company itself.

But how does fan designer Thomas Lajon feel about the changes made to his original pitch, and just how involved was he in the process of bringing it to shelves?

“Very involved,” LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott tells Brick Fanatics and other LEGO Fan Media. “We actually went to Paris to meet with the Orient Express partner, and Thomas joined us. So we got to meet him first-hand, which was really nice, and he got to see the model physically, which was really cool. We kept talking with him – I think we were doing [calls] every few weeks, or whenever there was a big update to the model, checking in with him on details that we wanted to include.

“So he was involved from the very beginning. We said, ‘We want to change the scale,’ and he was like, ‘Great, that’s fine. I’ve been wanting to make it work on the track system.’ So that was really nice that he was on board with that. No pun intended.”

According to Jordan, the shift in scale wasn’t the only thing Thomas was happy for the LEGO designers (in tandem with the Orient Express company) to change.

“We took him through all the colours, and he was very understanding,” Jordan says, referring to the move away from dark green in Thomas’s pitch to dark blue as the primary colour for the final product. “We got to see all the archives of the Orient Express, and we were seeing the evolution of the darker blue trains, so they made a lot of sense. Thomas was very happy with how it turned out.”

LEGO Ideas’ fan designers are often heavily involved in the journey from 10,000 votes to store shelves, during which time official LEGO designers tweak, refine and – occasionally – completely transform submissions to make them ready for mass production. That’s a deliberate move on the part of the LEGO Group to ensure that the original creator is pleased with the set’s progress.

“It’s a very conscious decision,” LEGO Ideas Engagement Manager Hasan Jensen confirms. “We want our fan designers to be part of that journey, not just to have the idea given to us and then we develop it into whatever it becomes, and then [them] being surprised when it turns out differently. It’s important for us to take them on that journey so that they understand the many restrictions that we work with, or the trade-offs that we have to make for quality or licensing reasons.”

“We’re always very upfront with them in the beginning,” Jordan adds. “Like, ‘How involved do you want to be? If you want to have weekly calls with me, that’s fine. If you want to do it once a month…’ It’s really up to them so they feel comfortable.”

The ‘trade-offs’ to which Hasan refers were seemingly the culprit for the changes to 21344 The Orient Express Train. So while the Ideas team did run scale and colour alterations past Thomas, it doesn’t sound like there were many (if any) alternative options on the table – but the fan designer was at least on board with the situation. (Pun very much intended.)

Click here to learn more about the design process behind 21344 The Orient Express Train, including exactly why the LEGO Ideas team changed the scale of Thomas’s original submission, or head over to our YouTube channel for even more insights into the luxury LEGO train.

21344 The Orient Express Train launches December 1 for £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99. While you’re waiting for it to arrive at the platform, read our review of the 52nd LEGO Ideas model.

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