Lionel Polar Express 6-28649

Hi Kris,

I have that same engine, it was my first.

Unfortunately you are probably going to have to take the engine apart.

Lets start with the Smoke issue. The PE came with a plunger type smoke unit which puts out a weak amount of smoke to begin with. You should check to see if the smoke unit is clean inside and that the wick material is new or in decent shape. Also, because the engine runs in conventional mode (By varying track voltage) when you are running the locomotive slowly, the smoke unit does not get hot enough to produce smoke. Many times, I have to run the engine quite hard in order to see if smoke.

As per the light, it is an old incandescent type bulb, more than likely the filament is burnt. You can simply replace with a new bulb and you are good to go.

The engine can be placed upside down of a soft towel and under the cab you will see two screws as well as another two under the front driver piston castings. Don't confuse the front screws with backs as they are different, once all 4 screws are removed, flip back on wheels being careful not to drop the body and then remove the body once right side up.

The bulb can easily be replaced with shell of as it can be seen in front of the smoke unit. The smoke unit requires you to de-solder the ground terminal of the resistor in order to remove the round cap over the wick material. All of these parts are easily had on Lionel's Parts site.

I do recommend you search "Lionel Polar Express Bulb" or "Lionel Polar Express Smoke Unit", you will be surprised how many before you have shared videos and pictures on how to do what you need to do.

Hope this helps!

Hi Daniel

I replaced the old Smoke unit with a brand new one from Lionel and it does not work so I think the problem is somewhere else. Does anyone have a wiring diagram of this steam engine?

I had multiple issues with my new PE, had a loose wire on the smoke unit, loose bulb and the side rods bound up and broke off, oh and I had a loose ground wire.  After some tinkering I got it running though. Your going to have to take the shell off and dig through it.  You'll also find there is very little grease on the gears and the PE is notorious for premature gear box failures.

I gutted the older conventional model and upgraded it to TMCC/RailSounds with fan driven smoke.  I added a custom audio board with Polar Express clips to the baggage car to have the PE specific sounds.

I am at my wits end with this loco. I am going to try one or two more things with it and if not I am going to ripping everything out and start new with an ERR board as John stated. John which ERR product did you use and which MTH smoke unit? Does have space for one of your super duper mods?

RCARD86 thanks for the info. I have other post on the forum about the gear failure and other issues.

This is part of a surprise layout around the Christmas tree for my younger son. It only taken two years to get to it.

I used the Cruise Commander Lite in mine, I could fit that and the RailSounds Commander in the tender with no issue.  I put the MTH PS/2 standard smoke unit in, and of course my Super-Chuffer and Chuff-Generator as well.  Having great smoke and cruise is nice.

Hi John

Would a MTH AA-0000070 do the trick or something else?

Kris, that's the one I used.

Thanks John

Thanks John