Polar Express Layout

Great layout! I love how you recreated the North Pole!

Thank you, Phil!

That is fantastic, please continue to post updates.

Nice.  Very nice.

Mike

It looks great.  Looking forward to seeing updates down the road.  

Wow! You have a super layout.

@prrm1b posted:

I sold 2/3 of my layout I spent the better part of 20 years accumulating and building to create this. I started rebuilding tables in July and close to finishing.  Snow pine trees and other landscaping to be added eventually.  The first video is on Thanksgiving and the second is yesterday 12/24.  Controlling the engine and video at the same time was not fun, however this will do for now.  The engine is the 2018 Lionel release with whistle steam.  Merry Christmas!  Hope you enjoy!

https://youtu.be/OzZAuHZua1w

https://youtu.be/7TMAtr021Pw

I added Santa and Reindeer, Billy's house including Billy and gift, a Christmas tree lot, an illuminated Christmas tree on the ice for the ice skaters to go around and a bridge with two towers to overlook the North Pole Christmas tree. The majority of the bridge is made out of Mat Board. The beginning are some of the sounds from both the engine and hot chocolate car.

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Really nice

And.......from the looks of your room , there sure is a lot of room for expansion .

Really like the North Pole Santa factory.    My wife spent many hours making the YARN model that Santa appeared at.

I made 100 elves out of inexpensive figures for our small area.               Judging from the size of your area , I would guess you need about 500 to 600 elves.

Wow!  Excellent job on the Santa Factory as well as the elves!  They look great!  Your tree looks just like  mine.  I used the Lemax Majestic tree.

Looks great.  I am impressed with your buildings.  I would think that someone would have made a Polar Express backdrop after 16? years.  I am thinking of making my own.

Art

Thanks, Art!  I agree on the backdrop.  I simply repainted my existing backdrop from my old layout. 

Update to original video posted late December.  Sorry it took me so long.  Finished a lot of this last month.  Added 8 streetlights and a lot of trees.  If you look close I used Woodland Scenic snow around the JTT snow pine trees, the houses, tree lot and brick mats.  I used "snow fluff" as my wife calls it under the trees on the corner piece.   I feel it worked fine for what I was looking for, but definitely not something I wanted to use elsewhere.  The reason I painted the tables white.  The woodland scenic snow I mentioned above I felt added a little more realism for those areas and nothing that needed to be all over the place.  Nothing I am doing is looking for awards.  My goal was to keep everything simple while still providing a great experience and I love it.  Hope it generates ideas for others.  If anyone is wondering about the bridge I made it out of Owens Corning Foam boards you buy at Home Depot.  I hand carved the brick and stones.  I have better pictures of it if anyone would like me to post them.  I worked with Shelly at Evan Designs to provide the led light strings.  The sleigh and reindeer hung from the ceiling are Hallmark ornaments I purchased and connected together.

All I can say is wow! I started a thread a few weeks ago about combining scale and fantasy, and you've achieved it. I love how you separated the scale city from the North Pole via a frozen river. I can envision another forest in the foreground.

How did you make the North Pole structures, or are they commercially available? Lionel should be all over making such buildings as well as your custom viaduct bridges. I've been painting and customizing some generic Railking structures for my Christmas City, and along with some Lemax and Dept. 56 structures I may be able to pull off a fantasy North Pole, but it won't look the PE version, unfortunately.

Thanks for sharing. You've got lots of fun ahead implementing additions and details.

Very nice !!

Thanks guys!  I scratch built the bridge and towers.  The larger buildings are built by TW Trainworx in Texas.  One set is 6 buildings, so I bought 2 sets.  I spent years building and had no interest in doing so again, especially the time constraint I was under to have it mostly done by Christmas 2021.  I sold 2/3 of my existing layout to build this one, so everything I have done has been paid for using that money.  They are expensive, but very nice.

Spectacular.

Great layout! JohnA

Great job!!! I love the Polar Express.

Absolutely Magical !!!  Wonderful Polar Express layout. Please keep us updated. Thanks for all the pictures and videos. Very inspirational.

Tom

Wow stunning great work!  Good progress and love your concept and design looks great. Gives some great ideas.

A couple of things folks might want to try. Is you can mount Santa and reindeer on a Lionel Airplane Pylon to fly. Or I have used a rotisserie motor to slowly turn and fly Santa and reindeer.  You could mount it on roof above the layout and hang Santa with clear thread. Mounted on a large metal arm they can fly around most of your layout.

I have found a cheap way to get brick is buy the rolls of brick or stones that Lemax makes;

https://www.lemaxcollection.co...arge-brick-mat-34916

https://www.lemaxcollection.co...rge-pebble-mat-34920

You can also print out brick patterns on your printer from some modeling or on line programs! I would love to build a large Polar Express Village like you have done. Wonder if someone ? Lionel could produce a backdrop of the North Pole Buildings as seen in the movie that would look great behind a few 3d Polar Express north pole buildings.