City

Cargo Train

The set that dragged LEGO trains into the Bluetooth age, and mostly nailed it.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 60198 · 2018

Pieces1,226

Minifigs6

Year2018

Set number60198

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The verdict

This is the one that swapped the old infrared for the Powered Up app, and honestly it's a lovely thing to watch loop around a table at speed.

You get a full circle of track, six minifigures, and a locomotive that pulls three wagons plus an armored truck without breaking a sweat. It runs a touch pricey for what's in the box, and it'll hop the rails if you get greedy with the throttle, but as a first proper motorized train it's hard not to grin at it.

Best for: Anyone who wants a real running motorized train, not just a static model

The full review

What it is

The Cargo Train is the LEGO® set that finally retired the old infrared train controllers and moved everything over to Bluetooth and the Powered Up app. That sounds like a dry technical footnote, but it genuinely changes how the thing feels. You build a chunky diesel-style locomotive, hook it up to a crane wagon, a double container wagon, and a log wagon, drop the whole train on a full oval of track, and it just goes. Ten speed settings, instant response, and enough torque to haul the entire consist around without any wheel spin or hesitation. For a lot of people this was their first train that actually moved under its own power, and there's a specific kind of joy in that first lap that no static display model can match.

The catch

There are a few things worth flagging, though. The train derails. Specifically, anything above speed setting five will send it skating off the curves, so you learn pretty quickly to keep it in the lower half of the dial, which feels like a design compromise rather than a feature. Then there's the battery situation. The Powered Up box wants a fistful of AAA cells and LEGO didn't include any kind of rechargeable pack, so at a retail price that hovered around 230 dollars you're still trotting off to buy batteries. And the track. You get sixteen curved and sixteen straight rails, which makes a tidy circle, but the older 60052 cargo train shipped with twenty four curves. So if you dreamed of a big sweeping loop across the living room floor, you're topping up your track order almost immediately.

Who it's for

So who's this for? If you want a train that runs, that you can drive from your phone, and that comes with everything you need to see it move on day one, this is a genuinely satisfying pick and the reason it holds a warm 4.2 on Brickset. The play features are real too, not just decoration, with an armored truck, a forklift, and that lovely extending crane arm. If you're a display builder who wants a museum-piece locomotive to admire on a shelf, this isn't quite that, and the derailing quirk will nag at you. But for a working City railway that a whole family can actually play with, it earns its keep. It retired at the end of 2025, so if you've been circling it, the window to grab one at retail has closed and the aftermarket is where you'll find it now.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this one splits neatly into chunks, which keeps it from ever feeling like a slog across its 1,226 pieces. You start with the locomotive, which has the most going on, an accessible driver's cab and all the internals to seat the motor and the battery box cleanly. Then you rattle through the wagons, and each has its own little hook. The crane wagon is the highlight, with a boom that both rotates and telescopes out, and the container and log wagons are quicker, more repetitive builds that give your hands a rest. The armored truck and the forklift are proper small side builds on top of the train itself, so there's genuine variety in the session rather than one long identical grind.

The parts value story here is really the Powered Up gear. Inside the box you get the train motor, the Bluetooth battery hub, and the remote handset, and buying those three pieces separately would eat a big chunk of the set's price on their own, so a lot of the value is baked into electronics rather than plain bricks. On top of that you get a full loop of track, which is a pricey commodity part, plus the always useful magnetic train couplings. It isn't a set stuffed with rare recolors or exotic new molds, it's a set where the expensive, hard-to-source functional parts are the draw, and for anyone building out a City rail network that's exactly the stuff you want to accumulate.

Fun facts

01This was the first LEGO train to ship with the Powered Up system, swapping the old infrared remotes for a Bluetooth handset that also pairs with a free phone app.
02Coupled together, the locomotive and its three wagons stretch to about 83cm, roughly two and a half feet of rolling stock.
03It came with six minifigures, four rail workers plus a security officer and a crook, hinting at a little cargo-heist story on the tracks.
04Its predecessor, the 60052 Cargo Train, actually included more curved track pieces, so longtime train fans noticed the smaller default loop right away.