Lionel Polar Express Highballing with CW-80

Here is my son's Polar Express powered by a revised CW-80 pulling 6 passenger cars at full speed. The layout is 12X6 with O48 on the outside curves. Even on the inside curves of O36, there is no danger of derailment and noise is acceptable thanks to the carpet and the Celotex. This Polar Express is an earlier version with the smaller engine.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Lionel
• MTH
• Polar Express
• Fastrack
• ogauge
• O-gauge
• O gauge
• O-Scale
• train layout
• toy trains
• train
• CW-80
• layout
• 3-rail
• NAOGRRC

[thecoolhatdude]

I like how the rest of the house is completely unfinished but the train table is done and looks great! Ya gotta have your priorities...

[pjmilazzo]

@thecoolhatdude The "house" is of course finished. The basement is not and that's where the trains are when they are not on Christmas duty upstairs around the Christmas tree. One day I may finish the basement and put in a permanent layout...for now, it is what it is.

[Blogengezer]

If you live in Wisconsin, do not finish the ceiling, the tax inspectors (they like to visit) will get you for a greater share of the cost of unionized 'gummint'. :>) Like the layout btw. My grand sons love trains. We packed away Polar and replaced it with diesel freight for the next 10 months. Norscot makes some 1/64 scale model heavy equipment in die cast that seem to be pretty close for realism. Chk Hobby Lobby. They also have Ertl that works well. If you do the PE Caribou, HL Mayberry street.

[bradstrains]

I'd like to race my Hudson VS your Berk let me warn you though my Hudson has magne traction and a pullmor motor I know it'll out pull a twin motor diesel of mine and it certainly will out pull a modern can motor steamer but as for speed it has huge wheels so it'll pull fast. Awesome video!

[grizzleybearz282004]

i use a cw-80 which your realy only useing 40 watts of power with the one set of hook up thats one of the things about the modern lionel trains you can run them almost or as fast as they can go and they will not fly into the next room the older trains are fast the standerd postwar motors i can run them at low volts with the cw-80 now my engines with a single pollmor motor uses alittle more but not much more but the engines with dual pullmor motors i notice has a much bigger draw on th cw-80s

[Bbittner5857]

Great display of the power of the Berkshire. I have had mine pulling 10 Polar Express passenger cars with no trouble. On the subject of the CW-80s,I have three CW-80's and luckily have not had any problems with them. It is my understanding that there is only one batch number which represents all of the faulty CW-80's that have gone out in the past six years or so.

[pjmilazzo]

@CallMeTonyG I have have 3 of them (all the newer revised ones) with no incidents so far after 3 plus years. If you set is new (not new old stock), it should also be a newer revised one as well. Lionel will make good on the warranty if you bring it back to the Lionel dealer or just call Lionel tech support since it's still under 1 year warranty from the day you purchased it.

[CallMeTonyG]

@pjmilazzo I just got my PE for christmas this year and the CW-80 blew out in the first 15 mins and I was reading that the CW-80 is hit or miss some of them work well some just break . A course I read all this after I got the set hopefully my local Lionel dealer will switch it out for me.

[pjmilazzo]

@CookiesAndGuns95

No Magne-Traction here on the modern Lionel Polar Express. Instead, it has traction tires and a less powerful / geared down motor. When pulling it's consist of several cars will not fly off O36 Fastrack curves (At lease mine won't),

[CookiesAndGuns95]

@pjmilazzo It stays on the track from the innovation in the 60's called Magne-Traction, it's basically the wheels are magnitized so the train can travel at higher speeds and traverse the curves better. It's available on most or all Lionel trains.