Well over a month ago I bought a NIB Santa Fe Passenger Anniversary Set (6-21786, 2000 Vol II catalog) from the owner of my LHS. More urgent projects got in the way of enjoying it until today. I'm a sucker the the Super Chief - I have two other sets including a Lionel ABA with silhouette cars from around 1992 or so, but this is far and away my best and my favorite. Today was the first time any of the pieces had ever been out of the box. Still factory packed. Unmarked wheels, etc.
I figured everything would be pretty dry after twelve years in the box so I lubed every bearing in the whole train and even opened the two powered units open to lube the four Pullmor motors, and inspected it all very carefully. The ABBA set and all seven passenger cars were perfect, and they all worked perfectly, too!! I was impressed that the sound was pretty good, particularly for 12 year old technology. One thing definately identifies it as "old school" with four Pullmor motors and seven cars with incandescent lights, it draws 8.2 amps at 14 volts --115 watts, when running at a scale 80 mph - making it the hungriest train I have and one of the few times when I figure my Z4000 has to even work work up a mild sweat!
Sorry the video is so short. My camera has some sort of memory problem.