I’m here to review the Kazi 98220 “Cargo Rail Train”. I haven’t seen many photos apart from the stock ones on the internet, so hopefully this will help some folks who are considering adding this set to their collection.
The set includes a locomotive, passenger car, boxcar, oval of track with 2 switches and a siding, cargo truck, and a small platform. Five minifigures are also included – an engineer, two cargo delivery people, and two passengers.
The set came in a tightly wrapped bubble wrap bag, and arrived in about 2 weeks from China to Baltimore. Retails for $55-60 on AliExpress. I paid $48.93, which included coupon from AliExpress during the 11/11 promotion.
It’s worth noting that all of the bricks are screen printed! No stickers! I wish some other brick companies would learn from this …
Below, I’ll review in the individual parts.
Bricks: Great clutch, maybe even a little too strong. There is a brick separator included, and was needed for sure. The pieces were just ok in quality however. Many of them look used and just lack the shine of Lego, and even Lepin. Some of the translucent pieces are either cloudy or scratched, and some of the larger smooth pieces also had surface scratches, although I was able to remove most surface scratches on the non-translucent pieces with a Mr Clean Magic Eraser.
Instructions: Came with a paper instruction manual. Many of the instructions are combined into a single step, so this may be a little bit challenging for younger kids. I found the shading out of the pieces in previous step to be a bit confusing as well, as there are some light bluish grey pieces, which look identical to the shaded out parts. If you've built anything before though, you should be fine.
Track: a whole oval of track is included in the set, with 2 switches that are connected with a siding comprised of flexible tracks. It’s a fair amount of track. The track clips together with Lego track just fine, and it’s color matched very well, but there is a slight texture to the Kazi track.
Unfortunately, a couple pieces of track arrived broken, and one of the switches is broken as well. I have 3 pieces of straight track with at least one of the 1-stud ties snapped off. And the switch is broken where the throw is attached, making it impossible to flip the switch using the throw. Best guess is this was caused by the packaging method. Nonetheless, all the track still snaps together just fine.
Platform thing: It’s a platform thing. Not much to say about this. The bottom of it is a tile (facing down) so you can’t snap it to a baseplate or anything.
Cargo truck: The cargo truck is pretty cool. The back opens up to store a few packages and a handtruck. Note: I rotated the mirrors 90 degrees from the instructions.
Minifigures: The minifigures are pretty weird. The facial expressions are bizarre, and the hair (not the hats though) are made of a rubbery material that is very flexible. One of the cargo delivery people has a head that is a strange brownish greyish color, unlike the other 4, which are flesh colored. The worst part is that the weird-colored delivery guy and the engineer are supposed to have white hands, but the hands are very loose and do not clip in to the arms at all. The flesh colored ones are fine, so my engineer gets those for now.
Boxcar: The boxcar features two hinged doors on each side which open to reveal various stacked packages. I wish there was some sort of undercarriage on the car, but the boxcar included in Lego 4512 doesn’t have an undercarriage either, and is the same length and size, so I guess it’s not that weird. The roof is removable.
Passenger car: The passenger car is a 3-seat coach with a hinged door on each side. I think it could have had a slightly improved interior, especially given the detail on the roof. The roof is removable. This is the first knockoff set I've bought that had chairs that were identical to the Lego ones. (The ones in all my Lepin sets are shorter in height.)
Locomotive: This is why I bought the set. I think the locomotive is very cool, and doesn’t look like much of anything else out there from various brick manufacturers. The locomotive is loosely based on the DF11Z, a Chinese diesel locomotive. The real locomotive is not a dual-cab type however, and is dark green as opposed to the dark blue featured in this set.
It comes with a motor, light kit (for the front headlights), and a battery box, which are housed between the two cabs. The battery box takes 5 AAA batteries for power, and the box screws together much like the Lego one, however uses four screws instead of two – and the screws fall out when it’s right side up unless tightened. (I found this out the hard way.) Speed is controlled by the beige knob on top, while the green button is for power. This means no IR receiver, and no remote control. My only real gripe with this setup is the knob, which has no indication where “stop” is between forward and reverse. It doesn’t click on the battery box, so it’s kind of a crapshoot when fully assembled.
The electronics use the same connector as Lego. I used the Kazi lights on the Lego battery box with no issues.
The only other problem worth nothing is that the cheese wedge piece on the front (and back) with the locomotive number was screen printed upside down. It’s a total shame, given that the screen printing on the sides and on the front plow looks fantastic. I will probably just replace this with an non-printed Lego piece. These pieces can be flipped over with some minor modification, but the flow of the design is interrupted in my opinion, and I think it looks better to just replace the improperly printed piece with a blank one.
Final thoughts: I think the set as a whole looks fantastic. There’s obviously a bit of a quality-control issue, given the upside down screen print and the scratched up and broken blocks, but I am not dissatisfied, and will probably order a second set down the road so that an extra passenger car can be built. Actually, you could probably build two passenger cars, but you would need to source the windows from Bricklink or something.
And there were no missing pieces! There were a fair handful of extras.
Also, it's worth noting that the wheels/axles are excellent in this set. Many of my Lepin sets have required replacement of the entire wheel assembly with a Lego part in order to simply roll downhill. No such issue here. The wheels slide onto the axles with ease, snap into the clip assembly, and roll freely. The magnets seem fine as well, although I haven't tried using them to pull anything longer than what's included in this set.
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