The Polar Express is turning out (so far) to be a bigger hit for Lionel than it is for Tom Hanks. Dealers are sold out and the sets are turning up on Ebay, usually with asking prices $100-$200 higher than the suggested retail price. It's not as hot as Tickle Me Elmo, but since the words "hot selling" and "train set" haven't appeared together since the late 1950s, well...
So what should you do if you (or someone in your household) wants The Polar Express and can't get one? Hint: Ebay shouldn't be your first resort.
I'm not going to write up a comprehensive tutorial on troubleshooting old Lionel, American Flyer, Marx, and Ives trains just yet. But I'm going to present a hard-learned lesson.
When troubleshooting a locomotive, set it up on the floor, not on a table.
It's time to come out of the closet. I'm sick of hi-rail.
Hi-rail, for the uninitiated, is the practice of "serious" model railroading in 1:48 or 1:64 scale using Lionel or American Flyer trains, respectively.
I find two things annoying about it: the snobbery and the price. If I'm gonna pay $100 for a train car, it'd better be older than me and it'd better still be worth that next week. But I found my way out.
I think I just missed a pretty nice Lionel prewar set today. I spotted it on my way out the door. Unfortunately, a guy was hovering over it, talking on a cell phone.
There's always a discussion about the cost of O gauge/O scale somewhere, mostly because it's hard to find new locomotives for less than $500 and new train cars for under $75. You'd think this was a hobby for trial lawyers and brain surgeons.
One guy pointed out how much bang for the buck he's getting when he buys On30.
I've seen some old tin 6-inch Marx cars in nice condition, but I sure seem to have a talent for finding Marx rustbuckets too. I also have a set of very nice Lionel tinplate--nice except for their rusty couplers.
Professional restorers remove rust by bead blasting. How do you deal with rust if you don't happen to have a sandblaster laying around?
So I picked up this oddball car at Marty's Model Railroads a couple of weeks ago. It's a Lionel/American Flyer hybrid: A Lionel 807 cattle car on a prewar American Flyer 8-wheel frame. It has the awful prewar Lionel latch coupler on one side and the oddball AF hook coupler (with the funny-shaped tab) on the other. It's compatible with everyone else's hook coupler, fortunately. The Lionel coupler is compatible with nothing.
It was intended as a conversion car, but it rides too high, so the Lionel coupler won't connect with a Lionel car. Bummer.
I saw someone get up in front of a crowd with his new O gauge model trolley, based on a prototype from St. Louis, manufactured by MTH Electric Trains, that he had ordered a couple of years ago and had finally arrived this year.
He proceeded to tell us everything that was wrong with it. It was a long, long list. I started wondering if he regretted buying it.
And I started wondering what difference any of it made anyway, seeing as the biggest detail was already wrong: It runs on non-prototypical track with three rails and the outer rails a 5 scale feet apart!
