BEHIND THE SCENES: Trains connect cities. Bricks connect people.

Wh at happens when a designer’s childhood dream collides with a team’s obsession for perfection? A story of invisible battles, stubborn corrections, and the quiet joy of getting every tiny detail just right. Chapter 1: A Boy, a Train, and a Promise Kevin Smith never outgrew trains. As a kid, he’d build makeshift locomotives from Lego-compatible bricks, pretending his bedroom floor was the Union Pacific’s endless rails. Decades later, when tasked with recreating the DDA40X Centennial—a diesel titan born for America’s railroad centennial—he found himself asking: Could a model honor history and still spark the playful wonder he felt as a child? “This wasn’t just about accuracy,” Kevin says. “It was about bridging generations. I wanted retirees who rode these trains and teens who love building bricks to find common ground.” Chapter 2: Form Follows Function The colossal silhouette of the DDA40X locomotive demanded precise translation into LEGO's geometric lexicon. Kevin immersed himse...