Help Restoring the Polar Express Conventional Locomotive 6-28649

Lionel service has the bell and bell cradle available for purchase from their web site.  if you need a whistle, that is available also:

https://www.lionelsupport.com/...41-9eb8-7468eb82d2fa

Dennis that bell cradle will come off and just wiggle with sharp nose pliers to work glue lose and the front boiler won't come off its molded into shell and i would put led's in headlight and class lights but if this not TMCC your best is to upgrade with ERR and cruise and for painting i would get you a saint black paint pen from craft shop or wal-mart and use it. Thats what i use matches very well.  

I did a full ERR Cruise, sound, fan driven smoke, and Super-Chuffer upgrade to a Polar Express locomotive.  Sadly, I haven't done a video, it's pretty impressive with fan driven smoke.   For the sound clips, I added a RF remote controlled sound board in one of the passenger cars and filled it with clips from the movie.

GRJ,

Can you give the specific product numbers that you used for your upgrade of the PE? Do you like the fan driven smoke unit over the "puff" smoke generator? Also, did you consider putting a chuff generator in the locomotive? I didn't know if that was the right type of motor. Mine is the series 1 type. There seems to be quite a bit of room in there - a lot more than in the 3-truck shays

Your way out of my league with the sound board and movie clips but it sound pretty cool!

dennis

I used the MTH AA-0000070 smoke unit in my upgrade.  Of course, controlling it was my Super-Chuffer, and that also runs the cab light and Rule-17 lighting.  I used the ERR stuff for the command control and sound as I stated.  When I did my upgrade, I hadn't done the Chuff-Generator yet, so it doesn't have one.  Anything I do nowadays that it'll work in gets one.

IMO, there's simply no comparison between fan driven smoke and the mechanical puffers.  I'm sad to say I don't have any videos of my Polar Express, but I did the same upgrade to my Hogwarts locomotive, and I did shoot a video of the smoke performance, you be the judge.

Some of the newer polar express locos had the front of the boiler attached as a separate piece held in with 2 screws

From the looks of his pictures, I believe that boiler front should be removable.

If this is the Berkshire Jr, the boiler plate is not removable. I have a Berkshire Jr from the same time frame that had the same problem. I had the pieces and using JB weld was able to reattach the cradle. I used Krylon high temp flat black and it looks pretty good.

Corey,

What did you do with the "1225" decals on the side of the cab? Did you cover them or remove them and reapply different ones? Also, did you just tape over the hand rails or remove them?

I thought about JB Weld but with Lionel's 50% on parts, I couldn't pass that up

dennis

I just painted the bell area. I taped off the rest of the engine.