LEGO® 3D-printed elements: 10361 Holiday Express Train has one you can buy

The LEGO Group have announced the inclusion of a 3D-printed blue train element in the October 2025 LEGO® Icons set 10361 Holiday Express Train, and sent us a copy. 

While this is not the first LEGO 3D element by any means, it will be the first time one has appeared in a regular retail set with wide availability. This seems like a good opportunity to take a look at the LEGO 3D-printed parts we have encountered so far, and where they might take us.

Products in this article were gifted by The LEGO Group; the author's opinions are their own.
This article contains affiliate links to LEGO.com; we may get a small commission if you purchase.

10361 Holiday Express Train

• Release date: 1 October 2025 early access for LEGO® Insiders; 4 October for all
• Pieces: 956

Price: 

• US$ 129.99 on LEGO.com US
• CA$ 149.99 on LEGO.com Canada
• GB£ 99.99 on LEGO.com UK
• AU$ 199.99 on LEGO.com Australia
• NZ$ 219.99 on LEGO.com New Zealand
• DE€ 119,99 on LEGO.com Deutschland
• NL€ 119,99 on LEGO.com Nederland
• FR€ 119,99 on LEGO.com France
• PLN 539.99 on LEGO.com Polska
• NOK 1649,90 on LEGO.com Norge
• DKK 999.95 on LEGO.com Danmark

Other countries click here

  

Before we take a look at the latest 3D-printed LEGO offering, it seems logical to start with some of the earlier work we have encountered.

Product development

The LEGO Group have been using additive manufacturing (AM) technology in-house for prototypes as part of their product development for many years. We have seen 3D-printed elements used as prototypes in products before their final release fairly regularly, usually on display or when visiting Billund for the LEGO Fan Media Days.

A couple of specific instances come to mind, but there are many more examples to be found.

These examples were on display at Brick 2015, a LEGO event which took place in London. LEGO Senior Designer Mark Stafford revealed some of the thinking and the work behind LEGO® NEXO Knights™ theme, including the display of several development prototypes of 70315 Clay's Rumble Blade. You might enjoy reading our article about the development of LEGO Nexo Knights.

During Fan Media Days 2022, we had the opportunity to chat with LEGO® Speed Champions Design Manager Christopher Leslie Stamp about the new sets to be released in 2023. This included showing us many 3D-printed prototypes of the new elements designed originally for use in these sets. You can read our interviews and see more images in our interview with Chris Stamp discussing new parts 3385 and 3387 and Chris Stamp discusses new part 3386.

Here are some more 3D-printed prototypes that were used to develop the shooter elements Brick 2X6X1 1/3 W/ Shooter (6296378 | 49743) and Arrow W/ 3.2 Shaft (6307940 | 46537). If you want to learn more about how these elements were designed, tested and developed,  read our 2016 interview with Karsten Juel Bunch, Design Director of the Element Design Team.

Production and Qualifying

The 3D-printed elements that have become officially available in sets or via public events are on a whole other level of 3D printing when compared to the ones used for prototyping in-house. The LEGO Group clearly have different types of 3D printers for different purposes. This can be seen when comparing the prototype elements to the more complex 3D printed functional elements that have appeared in more recent years. 

The 3D team is a part of a special internal prototype department called the Technology Department housed in KOM, which stands for Kornmarken – the factory in Billund built in the 1980s.

The gear keychain pictured above was given exclusively to LEGO employees in Billund in late 2022, to celebrate the Production and Qualifying development departments that are creating these new products. They were available in a range of colours; red, blue, green and silvery grey, as can be seen in Rylie Howerter's overview of 3D-printed parts. 

As is common among this element and the others we are about to discuss, it has a function (turning the exposed gear makes the other gear rotate) and, despite comprising more than one component, was printed in one go – literally no assembly required! They have been produced using an additive manufacturing technique known as selective laser sintering (SLS). 

We don't know exactly what techniques and materials The LEGO Group are using for these elements; the only reference we found was from other industry experts who thought the elements had been produced by SLS, in a material called nylon 12, and probably coloured via DyeMansion. DyeMansion is a company that supplies machinery for a post-processing for 3D-printed parts; in this case, the post processing is adding colour during the printing cycle. The base colour is white.

This is certainly a likely answer when examining the 3D-printed parts close up and comparing them to similar nylon 12 SLS printed products, plus there's evidence of The LEGO Group and DyeMansion collaborating.

Ronen Hadar is the current Head of Additive Manufacturing at The LEGO Group. He posted this comment on his Linked-in profile following the announcement of 10361 Holiday Express Train:

I am very excited to share the next step in our Additive Manufacturing (AM) journey. As part of the LEGO® Icons set - Holiday Express Train - we are featuring our first large-scale AM produced element. The element is a functional train combining several LEGO® connectors and an internal functionality, only possible with AM. The elements were produced using a Fine Detail Resolution platform, giving high accuracy and quality to the element, on par with our standard quality and safety requirements.

– Ronen Hadar, Head of Additive Manufacturing at The LEGO Group

3D-printed elements not in sets

There have been two previous 3D-printed LEGO elements that have been available, albeit in a highly limited fashion, to the public: the duck and the pogo stick.

The first duck was dark red and initially available to attendees at AFOL Day at LEGO House in September 2022, and was then available for purchase at the LEGO House for 3 weekends in November 2022, as part of a wider opportunity for the company to get feedback. It represents the iconic wooden LEGO duck toy from the company's early years. Pressing down and pushing it along makes the beak quack! 

The next 3D-printed element came as part of a tier reward from the crowdfunded book The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks, which is now publicly available, but without the exclusive element. The book was launched on the former crowdfunding platform Unbound in 2020 and was fully funded by May 2021. 

Books went out to all the supporters at the end of 2022 and around 500 LEGO pogo sticks, either red or blue in colour, were distributed to those who pledged for that reward tier. The 3D-printed pogo stick had an integrated spring mechanism, something that would never be possible with injection moulding.

3D-printed elements in sets

4000034 System House

The first 3D-printed element to appear in a set was the drafting machine arm (6286866 | 66237) that came in the limited availability set 4000034 System House from the LEGO® Inside Tour 2019; you can read all about it and the set in our article LEGO® Inside Tour 2019: new and exclusive parts. It's functionality is to spring back into place when the arm is moved. At the time, this was the first 3D-printed element most fans had seen beyond the prototyping level of printing.

 4000042 The Vault – Memory Lane 

The second 3D printed element to appear in a set was also a LEGO Inside Tour exclusive. A dark green version of the 2022 duck was included in 4000042 The Vault – Memory Lane from the LEGO® Inside Tour 2024. 

It seems that white, red and green ducks have been produced although so far only green and red have been found in the wild. The likely explanation for the above photo is that white is the base colour.

10361 Holiday Express Train

Now we reach the latest 3D-printed element to be produced by The LEGO Group.

The October 2025 LEGO® Icons set 10361 Holiday Express Train contains a 3D-printed blue train (6535273 | 112073), marking the first 3D-printed element in a commercially available set. 

Aside from the functional mechanism, the interesting thing about this new 3D-printed element is that it has even more connection points than previous ones. The element has a paper-like texture on the surface, but is of course much more solid and robust than paper. In fact, trying to snap these elements would require a surprising amount of force. 

I find the train's texture to be smoother and finer than the duck and pogo stick. Nevertheless, my hands are so used to the feel of regular LEGO ABS/MABS elements, the texture here is reminiscent of 'fake LEGO bricks', whatever they might be! But really, it's just that this feels different. When I touch the rubbery LEGO® Friends hair we used to see in sets, or vintage cellulose acetate bricks, they too have the same 'wrong' feel, so it just shows how strongly I associate feel with genuine LEGO bricks.

There are three 3.18mm bar connections and one 1.5mm accessory pin connection. The windows are not in LEGO® System.

The moving pin within the funnel is 3.18mm in size so any hollow stud can connect, but the smoke stack itself is larger than a stud, so it is not in LEGO System.

As the wheels go round, the coupling rod moves round and there's a little crankshaft that moves the funnel up and down. There's a lot going on in this little 3D- printed model. With the duck, you have to push down a little with your finger to get the wheels to engage and the little crankshaft to function to open the duck's mouth. The train crankshaft is at the front rather than the rear but the wheels and crankshaft move freely, and it can be tugged along with a little thread – which is what I did in the video. 

Here you can see it in action; it's a cute little element and I was rather taken with it. 

The train in the set has a puff of smoke, a couple of Plate Round 1 x 1 with Underside Clip in Warm Gold/ Pearl Gold (6520665 | 5264) and a roof added to complete the little model. 

Final thoughts

I have seen a lot of negative thoughts posted whenever The LEGO Group have shown a 3D-printed element, often stating that it just doesn't look like LEGO bricks.  This is true, as they really do not look like the regular injection-moulded elements. Having said that, I don't think that anyone could print this standard of 3D-printed part in their own home.  

Just as The LEGO Group have been at the forefront of injection moulding, this new generation of elements are obviously pushing engineering and design processes in the 3D-printing world, and that is commendable for a toy company.  I appreciate there will be innovation for aviation, military, marine, sport and technology engineering all the time, and additive manufacturing is involved with all of these areas and more, but as someone who loves LEGO bricks, Im pleased to see these novel elements appearing more widely.  

It does seem like The LEGO Group have been encouraging feedback, building support and trying to increase their consumers level of comfort with 3D-printed products.  I really don't think that this is a replacement mass-manufacturing process to replace injection moulding, but there's no denying that the internal functionality of the duck, pogo stick and train are only possible with additive manufacturing. 

The LEGO Group has a strong reputation for research, design and innovation so it makes sense that they are in the 3D-printing market, and building their processes to achieve parts that meet their standard quality and safety requirements.

They don't look like LEGO elements, they don't feel like LEGO elements, but they are quite fun little LEGO elements.

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