Lionel G scale Polar Express review, Not Good

I went a head and bought one of those Lionel G scale Polar Express train sets just to run around the Christmas tree. The Lionel set is battery power, but I figured what could be the harm in buying this just for around the tree.

I took the train out of the box, went thru the trouble of putting the track around the tree and then put all of the 8 batteries that it came with in. I put the train on the track, pushed the button got soounds and the headlight, but no motion. The controller did work since how I goot the bell and horn to work. I could hear this horrible groan however whe I tried to make it go forward. I tried a new fresh set of C batteries to no avail, again just a horrible groan, no motion and the loco shuts off. I tore it down just to see if something was jammed up. I couldn't believe how cheaply and badly the loco was put together. The motor was n crooked and installed incorectly, plastic worm gear on the motor and drive train were just jammed together. The motor itself was junk, I tried running the motor no load with battery power and again you could hear a groan, the armature and / or windings could not be wound correctly cause I could spin the motor as it was groaning, but you could feel something was not right in the armature of the motor. Before anyone ask me something silly, YES the batteries were installed correctly.

By far this was the worst $100 I ever spent and would never recommend a Lionel G scale battery powered set to anyone. A big thumbs down disappointment with no quality control which is surprising from Lionel

 

Lionel's G-Scale Quality is very very subpar. Which makes no sense since their O scale equipment is awesome. Bachmann is the same way, their smaller scale stuff is great, well The new F-Scale Bachmann is awesome.

 

Hi gang. My first time here on the board and I thought I'd throw my thoughts out here. I saw a pile of boxes of the Polar Express at our local Walmart and decided why not for $100. Brought it home and put it around the tree. Put the batteries in, connected it all up and fired it up. Every thing worked perfectly right out of the box. Yeah, the gear box is a little noisy, but it runs super smooth otherwise and all the other sounds are terrific. My little 3 year old boy just loves it. That alone is worth the 100 right there. I guess I am one of the lucky ones to have a winner here.

 

I'm working with a friend at work to metal machine real worm gears so that the units won't break down. We're going to use his Polar Express as a test platform. If all goes well we'll start mass producing and selling them.

 

Welcome to TrainBoard, hill834!

It sounds like there may be something of a quality control issue here, especially given the starkly different results reported just right here.

 

Good Idea, but what good is a metal worm gear with a junky motor. The Lionel eletric motors are crappy chinesse junk. If you could come up with a complete upgraded motor with metal worm gear assembly you would definately have a winner. I would be your first customer actually because then the set would be worth keeping.

 

New update, upset and wanting a train that worked for Christmas, I finally got my Lionel Polar Express working again. I over looked the fact there is resistors on the electric motor. Today I had more time to look at the motor situation and saw the resistors shorting out on the motor base. I moved the resistors away from the motor body and YES it works. Although like hill834 said this thing has so much motor noise you can't hardly hear the sounds over the motor noise, this thing is horrible. A little kid would be scared to play with this thing its so noisy.