My review of LIONEL 6-31750 New York Central Hot Box Reefer Train Set

[luther_stanton]

Deputy,

 The Lionel Hot Box Reefers are "da bomb" in my opinion.  I run the heck out of mine. I have an older one from last year.

You really need to run that car with the smoke - that really sets the atmosphere.

 I was surprised to hear that your sounds are garbled.  Mine are rather clear.  I am running in a TMCC environment at 16V so that may be a difference?  One thing that I have noticed with some Lionel sounds is that if they are left a full volume there is a lot of distortion.  Did you try at different volumes??

Thanks for taking the time to write up your thoughts on the set.  I have been interested in the NYC Mike in that set, as I already have a reefer and the Lionel Lines version of the animated caboose.

[Deputy]

I bought this set to run under the tree for Christmas. It comes with nothing but the loco, tender, and 2 cars. Lionel lists it as a "Premium Train Set" in their 2006 Vol2 catalog. At $529.99 retail I can't argue with that. Of course, I didn't pay that price.

In the set is Lionel's new NYC 2-8-2 Mikado steam loco and tender, a REA Express "hot box reefer" and a NYC animated caboose. Let me start with the loco and tender. The loco is a real beauty. Not sure if it's scale size or not (I think not), but it has some nice details on it that make it stand out. It operates quite nicely on 042 turns, although it's advertised to go on 031 turns too. It has a nice "heft" to it and I suspect it can pull a good number of cars behind it. 

Now for it's operation... I was REAL curious to hear the Railsounds. I had heard a lot of discussion about how great Lionel's audio system was, so I was curious to hear it in action. I am using the MTH Z-4000 transformer in conventional mode to run this loco. I eased the voltage up, and in Neutral, the light came on immediately and I heard the sounds of the loco sitting at idel blowing off excess pressure. EXCELLENT! Sounds really great! I dropped the power to 0 and then brought it up again. I wanted to see low speed performance so I brought it up nice and slow. While the light came on on the loco immediately, when it first started moving (at about 7.6 on the transformer readout), all I heard was a clack-clack-clack sound from the tender!!!! At first I thought this was some kind of "clack-clack" from the Railsounds setup to immitate the sound of metal wheels going over connections in the track. But at about 8.8 on the transformer, the clacking immediately disappeared and the chuff-chuff sound replaced it. Only thing I can figure is the chuff sounds needs a certain amount of power to make it operate. Perhaps using TMCC with the power cranked up to 17-18, this problem would disappear. But that would kinda screw the guys using conventional mode to hear low speed sounds. Oh well.
I'm not a big fan of smoke, so I have no feedback on how much it smokes. The power rods on the wheels are VERY polished, so they look really good in operation.

Next I will talk about the caboose. I'll save the hot box reefer for last. The caboose is pretty cool. It has a train crewman on the back of it holding a lantern. After a certain period of time, the lantern lights up and the crewman leans out the side of the caboose to eyeball the hotbox situation. VERY cool...especially with all the house lights off at night. That lantern is REAL bright! The caboose is nicely detailed and well made. Color is tuscan red. I hope the motor that moves the guy in and out has a long lifespan. There is an off switch to disable the action, so you can run it with just the interior lights lit and no crewman action. I suspect that is probably how I will run it most of the time.

Lastly, we have the car that this whole trainset was named for. The hotbox reefer. First off, if you read a recent issue of Classic Toy Trains, you will know that Lionel "goofed" in their modelling of the trucks on the hot box reefer. The trucks they have do NOT get hot and spark. They are a more modern version that is made to NOT do that. Oh well...I can live with that. It IS a toy train after all. Now for then nitty gritty...the hot box reefer has 4 different "effects".

#1 After making a loop and 1/2 around my 4X8 board, the little light located uner one of the trucks lights up. This is the first sign that the bearing are going in the car. If you continue to go the light gets brighter and brighter and starts flickering. A pretty neat effect. To turn off this effect you have two options. Stop the train. This resets the program and you have to make another 1 1/2 circuits of my 4X8 and it will start again. The other option is a small switch uner the car that turns the light effect off. Again, at night with all the lights off...pretty cool.

#2 Next is the smoke effect. Again, I am not a big fan of smoke, so I didn't use this effect. According to Lionel, the longer you go without stopping, the more the smoke pours out. I'll take their word for it

#3 The third effect is the bearings screeching. At randon times after the light starts flickering, you get the "bearing screech effect". It was nice, but I wouldn't want to hear it for a long period of time.

#4 Finally, the train crewman effect. This was the WORST effect of any of them. When my wife first heard it she thought I had bought a "turkey car" with simulated live turkeys going gobbel-gobble-gobble. I was NOT amused. The crewman are SUPPOSED to be saying things like "Cool that spindle", "Something's burning!" and "We've got a blazer!". Well they must be speaking Chinese, because I couldn't decipher ANY of that from the garbled junk coming out of the car.

When I heard this mumbo jumbo I stopped the train and took all of it off the track. I had to find out if MTH stuff sounded like that too. So I popped open a brand new MTH GP-9 and put it on the tracks. After activating it on the DCS controller, I was greeted by what sounded like REAL communication going on. A SQUELCH BREAK(!) on the radio and then intelligible reports about a clear track. And another squelch break and reply. WOW!!!! Truly impressive!!!!
I HOPE the Lionel locos with crew talk are better than this hot box reefer. Maybe Lionel just had to jam too much stuff in too small a space.

Overall I give this trainset a 3-star rating out of 5 stars. The loco looks great as does the tender. Heck, the whole train LOOKS great...although a bit "dark" for those who prefer a colorful consist. I suspect I will be using this trainset as a "demo" for what Lionel can do with electronics. Otherwise, I'll have everything turned OFF. Stopping every minute or so to solve the overheating problem gets pretty tedious after a while. LOL....maybe they should rename this the "turkey express".

Dep