Polar Express, who has one?

I believe Lionel sold a ton of them. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Lionel's number one selling set.

I have the original 6-31960 set and the 6-84328 set. I've always enjoyed operating them during the Holiday season. A while ago, I swapped the locomotive and tender shells from my original set onto my other set. I also added cab interior details, including a flickering fire box, Smokey and Steamer, as well as, paint and detail parts from Precision Scale Co. I also installed a red LED rear marker light on the observation car. I have the add on cars for both sets. This past year, I bought the "Know-It-All" kid Trainworld exclusive boxcar to add to my collection. It is a fun series to both collect and operate.

Rob

Lionel's original Polar Express set from 2005 is what motivated the wife and me to build our current layout. We began with setting it up in the dining room each holiday season, then having to take it down around New Year's Day. So, back in 2011, we decided to build a permanent, winter-themed basement layout for all year-round operation which relieved us of the set up, take down chore each season. The layout includes the wife's many Dept. 56 and Lemax pieces, along with my various modern Lionel trains.

The first photo is of the original layout with the 2005 traditional Polar Express set. The second photo is of the permanent basement layout. The conventional locomotive and tender have been replaced with the Lion Chief version, although both still work. We run the Polar Express set during the holidays, then run other trains which are changed out every few months, during the rest of the year.

We opted to remain with the traditional size Polar Express train and Lion Chief engine and tender, due to the 036 curves. Wanting to stay as close as possible to the train depicted in the movie, we've added 3 additional passenger cars. These include the hot chocolate car, hobo car, and conductor announcement car. The grandkids still love running it.

I have Lionel's Polar Express and a good number of other Lionel and MTH Christmas trains on hand or on order. I am a BIG fan of the Christmas holiday season and I am a firm believer in the long-standing tradition (popularized in America by Joshua Lionel Cowen) of trains around the Christmas tree. The photo here was taken in 2022, with grandson #2, Grant, operating the Polar Express with Nanna (my wife, Wendy). The all-tinplate layout in my basement where the "real" layout and my office is located, will have a year-round Christmas theme, and many of the non-tinplate trains will also likely see action there later this year when Papa gets off his butt and finishes working on that layout.

I have the original Polar Express set and all of the add on cars. I have the upgraded LionChief engine and I have all of the scale engines and cars. I also ordered the black Legacy Polar Express scale Berk in the new catalog.

I have the complete scale set.

I also have the gold PE set with four cars.

I wish I had the scale set

I have the conventional cars and the Lionchief Plus 2.0 engine so I can run it with TMCC.

The Scale Polar Express was the subject of my Christmas Eve video.  You can watch it below.  Incidentally a short video I did when I first got the scale PE in 2018 for some reason has blown up this past holiday season amassing over 25K views.

I also have the Polar Express BiPolar (The Tri-Polar) pulling the Polar Express Freight Cars...

Yes Rod, I have a fairly new Polar Express, the one that uses a LionChief remote and has white ‘snow’ roofs.  I bought an add on car with the hobo skiing.  I see I neglected to take any photographs of it this past Christmas.    I didn't get it out the previous couple of years, so I need to delve into the archives for older photographs.  I had one of the earlier sets that came with the CW80 transformer, but sold it when I got the LC version.  Hopefully I'll find photographs of one or the other sets running. 

My first Polar Express was the LionChief set, which got me into O gauge from N scale. I added a bunch of other cars, Modified the observation car with red tail light and deck lighting. The HoBo car has gotten a flickering campfire and fan driven smoke unit. I purchased a conventional PE engine from eBay and modified that with ERR, Super-Chuffer ll, Chuff Generator and a fan driven smoke unit to top it all off.

My house has 2!  My boys each have one, the older son has the black roof version and the younger has the snowy roof version. 

I've had the LionChief set since 2014.

I have 2 of the scale PE passenger consists and a bunch of the scale PE freight cars.  I run the 2 passenger consists at my club's Kennywood Holiday Lights setup every year (lots of miles on each locomotive!).  I used to double-head the locomotives until the snow-covered roof passenger cars came out.  Here are a few pics and my video of the double-headed PE.

Andy

Maybe the query should have been worded "Who doesn't have a Polar Express set?  For the record, we have two, O gauge under the tree, which stays up all year, and a G scale set.

I have the LionChief Polar Express set from a few years ago with the add on hobo car.   I sure wish Lionel had illuminated the camp fire on that car!  Still, a neat set to run around the tree.  Here it is running a few laps around our Christmas Carpet Central.

Bought my son the original set for Christmas. I added a few cars to the set in later years. Still runs great.

The HO Hudson is a Rivarossi model that is 54 years young and still going strong.

Bob

I've got the second release of the scale set plus the passenger cars. I didn't get the scale hobo car.

Lots of great photos and videos!

@CSXJOE posted:

Maybe the query should have been worded "Who doesn't have a Polar Express set?  For the record, we have two, O gauge under the tree, which stays up all year, and a G scale set.

I might be the only one posting as I don't have one, yet.🤣

I have the original Polar Express set.  It ran around the home Christmas tree for several years and ran around the office Christmas tree in 2022.  However, the set has since been retired in favor of standard gauge trains.  It is certainly an iconic modern Lionel train set, but for my situation and current interests it is taking up a lot of space in a closet as I move out of 027 (or is it 036?) trains for the most part.  I know heresy!

I went in for the traditional PE set and the 10th anniversary set with cars

I have the original set, with several add-ons.  Bought the elf hand car several years ago for my nieces and nephews.

I bought the second run of the original 2004 set and still have it, despite the more advanced features of the newer versions. Rather than duplicating what I had previously bought, I fulfilled my wish to do something more scale oriented in 2023.

I combined my MTH Premier Pere Marquette no. 1225 locomotive with Lionel’s 18-inch heavyweight cars painted in the Polar Express scheme to make my own scale set. (The MTH model was much more reasonably priced, and the cars were too, since I bought decade-old models.)

I had them running at the club in November.

Our family has the original 2004 set, which has had several upgrades since: a crew added to the cab, ERR sounds added, and the observation got an LED treatment. Hard to believe it will be 20 years old this Christmas. It’s had a motor and a heating element for the smoke unit replaced- otherwise it’s still full steam ahead every Christmas morning!

@MartyE posted:

The Scale Polar Express was the subject of my Christmas Eve video.  You can watch it below.  Incidentally a short video I did when I first got the scale PE in 2018 for some reason has blown up this past holiday season amassing over 25K views.

Out of curiosity, I just checked the views on my PE video.  I hadn't been really paying attention, but sometime in the past 5 years, my video really blew up and is now over 112k views!   I suspect it is because I have shared that video on numerous O gauge FaceBook groups around Christmas time on several occasions.  The last time I did this was during the pandemic, so that may have also helped.

To add to the general conversation, my brother bought each of his 3 kids a set.  It makes me wonder how many people out there have a PE set as their only train?  I once heard an employee of Lionel say that the PE was Lionel's best-selling set of all time -- including the Postwar era!  And considering that they continue to offer it in both traditional form and in more and more varieties of configurations of trains and accessories, I don't think there will ever be another train that will de-throne this king of the hill.

As for myself, I ordered the newly-tooled observation cars and a couple more scale PE items out of the latest catalog, so my collection continues to grow!

Andy

@Andy Hummell posted:

Out of curiosity, I just checked the views on my PE video.  I hadn't been really paying attention, but sometime in the past 5 years, my video really blew up and is now over 112k views!   I suspect it is because I have shared that video on numerous O gauge FaceBook groups around Christmas time on several occasions.  The last time I did this was during the pandemic, so that may have also helped.

Andy

I've given up on what gets views and what doesn't.  I just put out content that I think is worth while and hopefully appeals to my subscribers and anyone that comes across my channel.

Back to the OP, I also had 2 PE Ready to Run sets.  One I gave to my brother along with all the passenger cars and my son has the other.  I used it around the tree and installed an ERR in one of them.  Personally I think Lionel put out too many cars but they know what sells and has the sales figures.  I had more cars that I could pull.

@MartyE posted:

Personally I think Lionel put out too many cars but they know what sells and has the sales figures.  I had more cars that I could pull.

As long as we keep buying, they will keep making.  Once you factor in the scale PE freight cars, I probably have more than I can pull, although the scale Berks are pretty powerful (this past season, each pulled 11-13 scale cars for 6-7 hours straight each night I ran and were barely warm at the end of the night) -- that is why I say "probably."  Maybe this means I need a third PE locomotive.

Andy

I just have the RTR Lionel Bluetooth smaller version. Still provides a lot of enjoyment around the christmas tree.

Mike

Here is a video of my Polar Railroad K4 that later I had re-painted to PRR K4 #3880 so I could double head it with my # 1330 K4. At that time you could not find a regular PRR K4 either pre-war or post-war anywhere. So my friend said why not buy a Polar RR K4 and have it painted over. The Polar K4 were selling at rock bottom prices (not a great marketing by Lionel) so thats what I did. I will not give you the name of my friend whose house I picked up the engine from. See if you can guess who it is by his voice while he blows down the stack.

I would think that Lionel would be smart if they rerun the K4s pre-war and post war with their normal tenders not the coast to coast long tenders. They were quite popular and sold great so I think they would again sell like hot cakes.

JohnB