The Polar Express: All Aboard for the North Pole!

5,000. Folks... I am absolutely floored. In around a year's time, we've managed to reach our halfway point (over halfway at the time of writing this! I've been busy, so I haven't had too much time to keep track of stuff with this project), but knowing y'all have wholeheartedly continued to support my project continues to blow me away, so thank you! As promised, here is the final piece in the Mini Polar Express puzzle: The Observation car! With this, you can now build the full train in mini scale! The instructions for the observation car are now available to download on Rebrickable: https://reb.li/m/165944

With that, here are a couple renders of the Miniature Polar Express (including a size reference to L-Gauge version for comparison.)

Before I go, I wanna give a special thanks to all of y'all for keeping this project going. With us now being well on our way to 6k, I will be releasing instructions for the Hot Chocolate Cart, and showing off the first of four minifigures! Thank y'all so much, and let's keep steaming towards 10k and beyond!

Hello everyone! Before I go any further, I want to thank you for your continued support with this project! We've finally begun picking up some steam again, and I'm extremely grateful for it! Recently, I rewatched The Polar Express (first time I had watched it at a time other than Christmas in a long time), and it recently got me thinking as to some tweaks I could make to make the locomotive more accurate to the film, which, surprisingly, wasn't super difficult. There are definitely further tweaks I'd like to possibly make in the future, but here's the slightly updated Polar Express locomotive.

The changes made here aren't much in the grand scheme of things, but I think they improve the model's look a lot. For one thing, the smokestack has been shortened, making it appear more squat. Alongside this, the sandbox was given a rounder shape, which, I think, makes it look far cleaner than the original, more square-shaped sandbox that had previously been on the locomotive. Ultimately, I think this simply proves that even the smallest changes can go a long way. Before I end this update, here are a couple extra renders of the slightly updated locomotive.

Once again, thank you so much for your continued support, and let's keep steaming towards 10k!

Well, would you look at that! We've reached another 4,000 supporters (Or 4,009 at the time of writing this), which means we officially have less than 1,000 supporters to go before we reach the next major milestone at 5k, and less than 6,000 before reaching the big 10k! Although support has slowed down during the summer months, your continued support of this project means a lot to me, so thank you. As promised, I would like to now present the Mini Polar Express Coach, with Instructions now available on Rebrickable, to go with the Mini Polar Express locomotive & tender that was released last month.

Instructions for it are available on Rebrickable now: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-155569/Tweetsie12/mini-polar-express-coach/

Sitting at just 103 pieces, 4 studs wide, and 16 studs long, you can now build a full Polar Express train, well... almost.

I also initially promised that starting at 6k and above, I will showcase one new minifigure. However, I think we can do one better. I recognize there's a limited number of characters to make minifigures of, so while I will still be making 4 unique minifigures, I think we can do even better.

Once again, thank you so much for your continued support! Off we go to 5k and beyond!

July 9th marks a pretty special day for Polar Express fans: the film's star, the legendary Tom Hanks, is celebrating his 67th birthday today! Tom Hanks did the Motion Capture for 5 of the film's characters, including the Hero Boy, his father, the Conductor, the Hobo, and Santa Claus himself, and provided the voices for the latter 4. Aside from The Polar Express, Hanks had collaborated with the film's director, Robert Zemeckis, on a number of other projects, including 1994's Forrest Gump, 2000's Cast Away, and most recently, Disney's live action remake of Pinocchio in 2022. Hanks has also starred in a number of other beloved film franchises, such as playing Woody in Disney and Pixar's Toy Story franchise, Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, and Josh in the 1988 Comedy, Big. So Happy Birthday Tom Hanks! May the bell still ring for you!

While Christmas is still a while off, today still marks a pretty important day for Polar Express fans! The star of the movie, the one and only Tom Hanks, turns the ripe age of 67 today! To celebrate, I present a render of every character (Well... almost every character) Tom Hanks performed in the movie: The Hero Boy (he provided the MoCap for him), Santa, the Hobo, and of course, the conductor! The only character not present here is the Boy's father, who was also performed by Tom Hanks. So Happy Birthday Tom Hanks, and thank you for the memories!

Hello Friends! It's definitely been awhile! I hope you all have been having an excellent year so far. Before I go any further, I want to thank all of you for your continued support on this project. We are now under 200 supporters away from reaching 4,000 supporters, which will put us just 1,000 supporters away from the next big milestone of 5k, and although progress has slowed significantly, we've still been steadily climbing up, and I want to thank everyone who has provided their support for this project!

Anyway, as a little "Christmas in July" gift, I have something special I would like to give to you: I am now releasing instructions for you to build your own Mini Polar Express locomotive and tender!

Sitting at approximately half the size of her big sister, at 4 studs wide and approximately 36 studs long, and with a piece count of just 171 parts, this build makes for a great display piece, or even, with a little bit of tweaking, an ornament for your Christmas tree!

To help provide additional incentive, I am going to sweeten the deal:

So friends, let's keep this project steaming towards 10k and above! All Aboard!

"Hey! Hey you! Yeah, you! It's me again! And I'm here to share with you some more cool facts about The Polar Express! After all, I know everything there is to know about the movie! And this time, I've got some things I bet you've never heard of!"

"Now here's a fact that I bet you've never thought of! It's a little hard to spot, but pay attention to the Hero Boy's Slippers in the film. You'll notice what looks to be a knitted pattern on them. It's a little hard to spot, but you look closely, you can spot the name and image of Western music legend Roy Rogers!"

"Now you weren't expecting to hear that, now were ya? For some context, Roy Rogers was a Western Music singer and Hollywood Star, best known for songs like "Don't Fence Me In" and "Happy Trails", and appearing in over 100 films over his lifetime! Guys like him and Gene Autry were all the rage in the 50's, which is when The Polar Express takes place! Now, if you want a better look at Hero Boy's slippers, here you go!"

"See? I told you I could give you a fact you never knew about! Now, did I?"

"You know, I've given you all these facts about the other characters, but I've never given you a fact about me! Ever wondered what my shirt is all about? It features the Jupiter C Rocket, which was a real rocket developed by ABMA, and the Satelite attached to it, the Explorer 1, would be the first satellite ever launched by the United States, on February 1st, 1958, just slightly less than 5 months before NASA was founded! This even clues us in to when The Polar Express may have taken place! Depending on when my shirt was made, this means the film must've taken place either in 1957, or 1958! Bet you didn't you didn't know that! Well, Did ya?"

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

"I've got plenty more facts to share with you, so why not share this project with your friends if you haven't already! It's a great way to help out! Now, I've got to run, but I'll be back with more facts soon! Well, see ya!"

Folks, we've managed to gather another 1,000 passengers for our journey to the North Pole, and we've now reached over 3,000 passengers, with less than 7,000 passengers to go before we reach the big 10k! Folks, the support I've been getting on this project has absolutely blown me away, and I can't thank y'all enough for the continued support! It's clear to me, that even past the Holiday season, The Polar Express is still something many of us want to see in LEGO form. Considering how many Polar Express models I've designed, seeing this one go the farthest honestly moves me! Let's keep this train a rollin' to 5k and beyond!

Folks, the support I've been getting on this project continues to blow me away. A couple days ago, specifically, January 2nd, the project managed to gather it's most supporters in a single day with a whopping total of 116! I have no idea how that happened, but I can't thank each and every single one of you enough for your continued support and enthusiasm with this project! So... how about we take a bit of an evolutionary journey. I recently found my very first iterations of The Polar Express project on my old LEGO Ideas account (before creating a new one when I changed my email), so this post will show how far we've come in terms of building skill and presentation. Starting with the earliest take on the train, all the way back in the far off year of... 2016.

Without a doubt, the original take on the project is, easily, the weakest one. While the coaches are somewhat passable, the locomotive is by far the poorest part of this project, with elements like the big gaps in the boiler and oversized cab doesn't do this model any favors. However, considering it was my very first take on The Polar Express, and I was only 13 when I designed it, I can't give myself too much flack. Up until 2019, I primarily used LEGO Digital Designer, as that was what I was most familiar with, and certain aspects, like the minifigures, were me trying to use the limited resources LDD offered me.

We see here my original takes on the characters, which, admittedly, are very poor compared to what I would eventually concoct later. The standouts to me are Hero Girl and Billy, with the former having a ponytail instead of pigtails, a plain pink dress (which, to be fair, was seen on several other versions of this project), and the latter has grey hair and Jedi robes. They grey hair was actually a result of the rendering program I used at the time, Bluerender, rendering the natural blonde color as such.

This version of the project was published three separate times, with each version having the same design. By this time, I was getting more skilled, having managed to clean up the look of the boiler somewhat (though a massive gash still remained in the middle of it) the coaches were longer and proper "doors" had been created through the use of jumper plates providing an indent between the doors and coach body. However, the model was still rather poor, with, again, the cab being the biggest culprit here. The cab here just looked incredibly long and unnatural.

In addition, the project's scope was much bigger, with a larger selection of minifigures. In addition to the 8 I originally included, 4 new minifigures, in the form of a hot chocolate waiter and elf were included.

There was also a massive layout as part of this project, with a big, snowy mountain, and a little handcar driven by the two elves. While definitely ambitious, I'll be the first to admit that this was poorly executed, leading to me scaling the project back significantly.

Version 3: Published to LEGO Ideas 10/3/2019

By the third version of this project, some refinement was evident. with a more proportional cab, a more detailed locomotive, and, in general, a cleaner appearance. However, the coaches were, without a shadow of a doubt, a step backwards. The passenger cars were reverted to the design seen in the first version of this project, a pretty poor decision, all things considered.

The minifigures saw a bit of further refinement, with Hero Girl gaining pigtails, and the elves receiving proper hats.

The mountain too recieved refinements, becoming larger, with a far better shape. This, however, would be the final time this mountain would feature in this project.

We're finally getting to a point where the groundwork for the current take was being formed. This was the first Polar Express I built in 8-wide, with proportions far closer to the current version of the train. While the coaches and tender would be redone completely from scratch, the locomotive was, fairly close to its final form by this point.

This is made even more evident by this version, which I dub version 4.5. The engine here is essentially identical, with the only difference being the gray running board, and it being a stud or 2 shorter.

Minifigures were also close to their final designs, with the one 2 that saw significant changes being Hero Girl and Billy.

This brings us to modern-day. In the course of 7 years, I managed to improved my presentation, design ability, pretty much everything. This Polar Express is, in a sense, my magnum opus: A result of 7+ years of design and refinement, bringing us to modern day. Folks, for everyone who's supported thus far, thank you for bringing this project thus far, and let us continue rolling towards 10k and beyond!

My goodness... clearly, the end of the Christmas Season hasn't slowed down The Polar Express one bit! In fact, it seems like we're picking up speed! The fact we've managed to get over 2,000 supporters this quickly absolutely blows me away, and I can't thank each and every one of you for your support and generosity. As the new year dawns, I hope we can continue to gain momentum, and hopefully, get this project all the way to 10k! As another token of my thanks, I have a couple new renders for you below.

Once again folks, your support is appreciated more than you will ever know. I look forward to continuing this journey with you, and let's keep steaming to 10k!