The AFOL world is a great, global community united by our love of LEGO. Within that greater community, there are many smaller interest groups, from local LUGs to people interested in specific themes like Castle, Space, Mosaics or Microscale. For International Women’s Day, we wanted to take a look at some of those groups through the lens of representation, but as I looked, one of the themes stood out to me the most… a theme where I searched high and low for female builders: trains.

After searching around the globe through my network of AFOLs, I could still only count female LEGO train builders on the fingers of my two hands! (I hope to be proven wrong that there are more!) So let me introduce you to two women from this very select group: Sarah Brennan-Dunn and Ingrid Broeders-Bos, who have very different stories to tell.

Meet Ingrid & Sarah

Ingrid grew up in the Netherlands (like myself). Her earliest memory is receiving set 349 from Saint Nicolas (the saint who gives Dutch children presents and who gave Santa Clause his name) and that started her LEGO hobby and collection. Her LEGO train collection started in the blue era with set 127: "I don't know why, I've always liked LEGO trains ever since I saw the first LEGO catalog back in 1971. I like real-world trains too, but they've never been a hobby as such. I don't know all the names and numbers!"

When I asked about her Dark Age, she said she never lost interest in LEGO: "I never really stopped in the sense that I never lost interest, but there were years when I spent less time and didn't buy any new sets. For a while, I was just happy with my collection. Bus Stop set 696 was the last purchase in my early LEGO years. I was so happy to finally have some people to populate my little LEGO town! However, from 1978 I stopped buying LEGO for a while. I was angry because the new cars were terrible, and those minifigures with arms and legs were a bad Playmobil rip-off!”

So for a while, Ingrid stopped buying LEGO, but she still put out the train tracks every now and then.

Sarah's life started a few years later and on the other side of the world in Melbourne, Australia. Her early LEGO memories include various smaller Pirate, Space and City sets and train set 7710. Her Dark Age was more typical of what most of us experience: "I stopped collecting LEGO in the mid-'90s to early 2000 when I was going through my older teenage and early adult years. I kept looking at LEGO but I wasn't buying any as my focus was pretty much getting through school."

While many of us are brought out of our Dark Ages, for Sarah it was her brother who helped her back into the light: "It was in 2011 when my brother went to Brickvention in Melbourne and he suggested that I should go. So in 2012 I went to Brickvention and got to talk to a few AFOLs, and that got me interested in getting back into building LEGO and being part of the Train club community (M>LTC - Melbourne L-Gauge Train Club) from 2013 onwards."

A Love of Locomotives

With an interest in trains from an early age, joining a LEGO train club seemed inevitable for Sarah:

"My interest in rail transport started when I was young because my Grandfather was an employee (Ticket Inspector and Conductor) of the Victorian Railways and ever since I have been interested in the design, the services and also the infrastructure that helped the rural towns in transporting resources via rail to the city, but also connecting other towns to visit."

And it's not just LEGO trains—Sarah also volunteers for a Historical Rail Group (Steamrail Victoria Inc) in restoring old passenger train carriages as well as working on wiring.

Ingrid's LEGO buying pause ended after ten years when she came across sets 7715 and 7722 in a shop in Germany, and the collection slowly started to grow again. In those days it was all about collecting for her: "A set was a set in my mind. So I had two LEGO collections, sets that were built up and stayed that way, and 'loose' parts from Basic sets and supplementary packs that were for free building."

That changed though when she had children: "The boys would build a set and the next day tear it apart and build something else. It took my autistic brain a long time to make that switch and be brave enough to take sets apart and use the pieces for something else."

As a lot of us know, children are a great excuse for buying LEGO as Ingrid shared: "From the moment I started buying LEGO for the boys, the collection in the house started growing faster. In those days I had no idea about the AFOL community. I thought I was a rare exception, an adult who is still involved with LEGO. It wasn't until 2011 that I found the AFOL community. My son had bought the Emerald Night so I started searching the internet for motor options. Via a Belgian railway forum, I ended up on the site of Lowlug, a Dutch LUG. It was as if a whole new world had opened up! There were more adults and they were building incredible creations!"

Japanese Freight Railways DE-10 built by Sarah

Meanwhile, Sarah had missed out on the Emerald Night and Horizon Express during her Dark Ages. Since then she has bought a number of City trains that she has modified, like the 3677 Red Cargo Train which she turned into a Japanese DE 10. She really likes the current green passenger train because the slope of the nose is like the high-speed trains that run in Japan.

Those Dark Ages ended just at the right time—Sarah has been with M>LTC since it formed in 2013: "I'm part of the collective build members of the Melbourne L-Gauge Train Club. We create trains, rolling stock and landscaping of the Melbourne Metropolitan and rural areas. As I'm one of a few women members of the train club—it has been interesting to compare our different views of the rail industry and how we can create new projects with other members of the group.”

Grain Silos with logging cars, built by Sarah

Sarah continues: "One of those projects is the grain silos. They have seen a few changes from the original build, but people are interested in seeing infrastructure that has a big connection to the rail industry and their communities. Another is the quarry yards along the Kilmore East line in North-East Victoria. I've created these yards because of the rural area connection that not many metropolitan people get to know. The only time you get to see this facility is if you travel to Sydney by train heading to Seymour (a rural town in North-East Victoria)."

Being a member of the train club has clearly worked for Sarah: "I've met a few great train builders in my time and I get inspiration from my fellow train club members and those who exhibit at Brickvention, like Alex McCook, Mike Pianta and Teunis Davey".

For inspiration she'll keep looking at her local Victorian Railways as well as Japan: "For my next projects, I'm looking at doing some Japanese locomotive powered trains like the EF510 as well as Victorian Railways’ cattle/sheep transport wagons."

The inspiration for Ingrid’s first MOC: Dutch ‘Dog-face’ train by the late Eric Brok.

Ingrid also started with modifications: "The first train I designed myself started with a design by Eric Brok. It has changed a lot over the years and I now dare to call it a MOC. For my youngest son, I built a sleeper car for City Passenger Train 7938. It's part of the hobby for me, modifying a set, or building something based on a set, like this fish wagon that's based on set 147 Refrigerated Wagon. When the Harry Potter train set 4841 came out, I had to modify it! The engine was ugly and the cars had no working doors! I don't like minifigs getting on board through the roof. I'm a slow builder—it took years before I was happy with this train".

Ingrid continues: "My style is definitely City. I don't aim for scale models. It has to resemble the original train but it also has to fit in with the City trains, and it has to be playable."

Sometimes Ingrid builds other things than City trains like this lovely microscale Hogwarts Express: "When I saw the Skater Girl in Series 9 of the Collectable Minifigures I immediately thought: train wheels! So I bought five Skater Girls and in one evening I had this little landscape."

Training a New Generation

While Sarah builds with others in the Melbourne LTC, Ingrid’s main collaborator is her eldest son, who is now an AFOL himself (and inspired by the LEGO trains as he is training to be a train driver). Not all Ingrid's children caught the LEGO bug though: "My daughter didn't do much with LEGO although she liked driving the Belville girls around in a Blue Fury Hotrod. I don't mind, we share another hobby—horses. There is more to life than LEGO."

I asked Ingrid about how she views her local LUG: "I am not great with social situations, and I don't feel comfortable in large groups. I went to my first LUG meeting in 2012 but even now I get nervous and excited before a meeting. The atmosphere is always friendly and relaxed though, so I always end up feeling at home again."

I also asked Ingrid if she was impacted by a LEGO train environment seemingly full of men: "I don't have a problem with it. I feel like one of the people, not like a woman surrounded by men. I have only been to two events as an exhibitor and I don't think I received different reactions because I'm a woman. People just like to see LEGO trains going around. At the last event, I brought my Friends train and a lot of children really liked that. I felt like I'd given a lot of girls some inspiration with that. We'll find out in 10 years if there are more women building LEGO trains."

When asked if the local community supports train builders, Sarah got excited: "Right now, we are getting ready to display our LEGO trains at the Sandown Model Train and Hobby Show (March 11-13) which is one of the longer Model Train events we have on our calendar. We display because we love playing and building with LEGO as well as being part of the Model Train hobby. LEGO in Australia is growing, not because of LEGO Masters but because of the interaction we have with young people as well as showing how we can go from a basic LEGO set to something very creative.”

Sarah would also like to see more women joining this select group of train builders: “It would be great to get more women involved in building trains and being part of the hobby. We are seeing more women getting into the railway industry as station staff, train drivers and maintenance crew. We love talking to other women who see our displays and letting them know that LEGO isn't a male-dominated hobby—it's expanding with various ranges from LEGO City to the Friends sets. We like to share how we got involved in the hobby and how we are being creative in our builds."

The next generation being inspired by an M>LTC display.

Through the effort and enthusiasm of Sarah and Ingrid, I hope that many more women and girls get interested in LEGO trains since diversity spurs amazing creativity. If last year’s train contest from the Women’s Brick Initiative is any indication, a whole slew of amazing train designers might be just around the bend.

Winning WBI contest entry from Dawn Upp Sloboda.

Who are some of the female LEGO train builders in your community? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Charlie Stephens, Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, John A. and Lukas Kurth from StoneWars to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.