lego 4558 9v amtrak

my brother has had this for years, though barely used it. i was the last one to set up about 13 years ago. its about 95% complete, with some small pieces missing, like a suitcase and a bike. those are easily replaced, and should be in amongst our childhood lot.

with the upcoming winter village train, i have plans to take the 9v motor from this set and transplant it into the other. to do that, i had to get it down and test it. to my surprise, it worked perfectly after a little re-breaking in.

in a way, im not looking forward to breaking the lead car down, but will have to, as i dont want to spend more on another 9v unit. as it is, i will need to buy more straight track, at an average price of $10NZD/length.

Hi Sun,

It might be a better investment to bite the bullet and buy a new motor/battery unit. Older Lego sets are constantly gaining in value as the collectors go nuts for anything that is out of production. Although they obviously prefer mint/boxed examples something like this is likely to go for a good price seeing as it is mostly complete and I've never seen one for sale on eBay yet...

[Ucwepn]

Yeah would be a shame to break it down as it's such a rare old set, I'd say go with the new power functions especially so I can see how it works etc haha.

We take Amtrak donations

Do consider looking over http://www.bricklink.com , outside of getting lucky on a bulk ebay lot it will be your best source for motors and track.

[ripley802]

I agree with the other guys, but honestly I know nothing about the Lego trains. That said I saw a huge Lego layout at a train show and was pretty fascinated by it. Judging by the cost of regular Lego sets I can only assume these are quite pricey brand new so the older more rare sets would be as valuable and likely more?

so the older more rare sets would be as valuable and likely more?

The main problem with 9v is the components have not be manufactured for a very long time, LEGO switched over to battery powered trains to keep the cost down and simplicity up. Sadly while you can get decent clone rails they are all plastic just like the current official ones, no one has cloned the 9v rails yet (why I dont know, alot of money to be made there). There are some tricks you can still do though like metal foil tape applied to the plastic rails, the gauge etc didn't change.

thanks for the replies. it has the box, original instruction book and such.

dont worry guys, if i break down the lead car, it will be to extract the motorised parts. the rest of it will remain as seen, and will still be essentially complete. its not going anywhere, so no risk of being seperated permanently.

i cant afford to go the power functions route, and i want something i can turn on and "ignore" during displays. plus, being an older set, many people at our shows wouldnt have been this system before.

we have had a lego guy with a huge train display at our shows, he goes with power functions i think.

This train is actually called the Metroliner (not to be confused with this, though the livery is still reminiscent of Amtrak).

This train also appeared in a (very old) stop motion web series called The Trouble With Trains, which used LEGO as well as clay figures and a few other items. About ten years after it came out (during which time I would've been 7 if it were ten years), I was able to get in touch with its creator, TurboJUK (on Deviantart), and ask him how he could celebrate its tenth anniversary.

The advantage of the new power sets are that they are remote control and without wires. Basically you get a battery box, an IR receiver and the motor. It also supports multiple channels so you can with a big layout control multiple loco's independently. Of course the one downside is its battery powered, but hey you can't have everything

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While we're on the subject of Lego, here's one for Super and his Disney themed new layout for his grand-daughter; Disney Castle

Now if you think the train sets are expensive make sure to take a breath after looking at the above, although I suspect AC probably has 5 on pre-order already