LEGO Creator 40518 High-Speed Train Review: A $20 Set Built to Combine

Up for review is the LEGO Creator High-Speed Train (40518), a scaled-down bullet train that LEGO released on January 1, 2022 as a LEGO.com exclusive. It's a small, inexpensive one — 284 pieces, two connected carriages, $19.99 at retail. But the end product is surprisingly solid. We've had several young children playing with it, and the only thing that has broken off is the pantograph (missing in action, as seen in the pictures).

What you get in the box

The 40518 is a two-piece production: an engine car with the driver's compartment and a sloped, aerodynamic nose, plus a matching passenger carriage that couples behind it. There are no minifigures, no motor, and no lights — this is a straightforward display-and-push build aimed at kids 7 and up, decorated with a sticker sheet rather than printed parts. For a $20 impulse set, though, it captures the look of a modern high-speed train pretty well.

• Set number: 40518
• Theme: LEGO Creator
• Pieces: 284
• Price: $19.99 (LEGO.com exclusive; roughly $26 on the secondary market now)
• Age: 7+
• Minifigures: 0
• Released: January 1, 2022
• Dimensions: ~2.5 in (6.5 cm) high, 14 in (36 cm) long, 1 in (3 cm) wide
• Motor / lights: None

The build

It's not a tough build. A kid can handle most of it without much help, and that's the whole point. You work through the engine car first, then the second carriage, and the two clip together with a simple connector so the train can take corners when it's pushed along.

Once it's together it's robust — which is why it has survived a rotation of small kids with only that lost pantograph to show for it. If you like small, cheap builds, it sits in the same easy-and-affordable bracket as the LEGO City 60312 Police Car.

Make it a four-car mega-train

Here's the fun trick, and it lines up with what we'd heard from other builders: the sticker sheet actually includes decals for four carriages, not two. So if you buy two copies of the 40518, you can combine and re-decorate them into a longer four-car train. It's a smart bit of value engineering — at $20 a box, doubling up to a mega-train is still cheaper than most single LEGO train sets, and it's exactly the kind of thing people combine multiple sets to do.

Is the LEGO 40518 High-Speed Train worth it?

For twenty bucks, yeah. The look is a little so-so and nothing about the build is groundbreaking, but it's robust, it's cheap, and it has a bit of a cult following among people who like small trains and the mega-train combining gimmick. It has also quietly held its value — copies now trade for a few dollars over the original $19.99 on the secondary market over on eBay, where you'll also spot sealed two-box lots ready to make into a mega-train — so it's an easy, low-risk pickup. If you're after another inexpensive, collectible little LEGO set, our LEGO Space 1785 Crater Critters review scratches a similar itch.