The box art is weird. The train is in a cave, there’s a platform in the cave, people are riding bikes in the cave, and the guy on the platform with the cowboy hat is staring into my soul. He reminds me of the Cowboy from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

Accounting for inflation, this set was priced at about $300

We often speak about how modern sets look so much better than older ones. They are not wrong except when it comes to this set.

I do not think a regular city train has ever surpassed this beauty.

That's quite the step off the train to the platform. That's a liability.
Considering that minifigs have no knees that bend to cushion the landing, I imagine there are a lot of lawsuits from broken legs, or everyone that ever uses a train has permanent casts and that's why their legs don't bend. They must have wicked upper body strength, too, in order to board.
The mysteries of the minifig are all making sense now...

@kinggregus said:
"We often speak about how modern sets look so much better than older ones. They are not wrong except when it comes to this set.

I do not think a regular city train has ever surpassed this beauty."

Agreed. We need more like this one.

Did someone just give Hubot all the Clikits sets? Two legendary sets in a row now!

By the way, the Green Grocer is number 2 all-time for comments for the RSOTD, and would have gotten away with number 1 too if it wasn't for that meddling Scala set! (3220)

Two of the best sets in a row for rsotd!

It’s enough to make a grown AFOL weep tears of joy.

@Mr__Thrawn said:
"The box art is weird. The train is in a cave, there’s a platform in the cave, people are riding bikes in the cave, and the guy on the platform with the cowboy hat is staring into my soul. He reminds me of the Cowboy from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive."

So true. The cave also appears to be made of snow. And the previous stop was apparently the Earth’s molten core.

A re-released set that actually deserves its double RSotD feature, nice. If I had 9V trains, this was the one I would've had.

Remember when kids could be trusted to play with electrical outlets and loose magnets? Good times...

@MCLegoboy:

"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."
— J.B.S. Haldane, biologist

I think the minifigs will be fine...

This is the one I had hunted for many, many years. After briefly glimpsing it in catalogs in the mid-90s, I thought it forever beyond my reach until coming upon it at a toy store in Bolivia in 1999. I held it in my hands, amazed beyond words at all the wondrous elements inside the plastic tray and visible in the bags. Even in Bolivian pesos, it was expensive, but my parents were more worried about somehow getting it home in our limited luggage space. In the end, I left the store without it. It would be the last time I touched the Metroliner for a long, long time...

I never forgot the Metroliner. Perhaps acquiring the Emerald Night in 2011 reminded me of the glories of LEGO Trains past, or perhaps my steady income as a full-time member of the workforce suggested to me, "it's time". In a five year campaign of acquiring all the great LEGO System sets I missed out on, I finally came across the Metroliner again in July 2015 on eBay of all places. One seller had it, the Metro Station, Load N Haul Railroad, and two extra sets of straight and curved rails, plus switching track, all NIB (there was damage to several of the boxes, but the pieces inside had never been liberated from their plastic baggies). The price was high, but not too high. I could've bought maybe two Metroliners MISB for the price I eventually haggled down to, but it seemed fair with all the other sets instead. I paid, and I waited.

Sure enough, a little over a week later, a large box awaited me at my apartment. The 9V Train treasure horde of my dreams had arrived, and there, protected at the bottom of the box and in great shape, was 4558 at last. I held it again, lovingly admiring the display panel underneath the flap as I did seventeen years earlier. It's mine now, and it is one of the few standard LEGO sets I treasure as much as some of the actual rarities that I own in my collection. Words do not do it justice, but no one who says this set eclipses even modern-day LEGO passenger trains is ever wrong. In the pantheon of Great (capital "G" intended) LEGO sets, the Metroliner is secure as an exemplar of what LEGO Trains were and could be again.

There is some irony in using the period's Amtrak colors on this engine since Amtrak's real electric operations are limited to just a small corridor from Boston to DC. But the simplicity of the scheme translates well to Lego, and the addition of a double decker Club Car expansion make this such a nice set. Wish I had one, it's always looked good to me.

I wonder what the box art designers at LEGO were thinking when they designed these old train boxes. A volcano? Maybe a mineshaft of some sort? Or perhaps the Hoth base from Star Wars?

LEGENDARY!

This came out just as I was entering my first Dark Age. I was graduating high school in 1991...so obviously I was too "grown up" for Lego. Plus, I had no other Lego trains. I had always longed for them when I saw them in the catalog, but ended up doing all my begging for space sets.

Emerging from my Dark Age in late 1995 (once I got an apartment on my own and could spend money however I wanted), I had missed out on this and never saw it in any store...but dating a fellow AFOL in 1996, it was one of her top sets of all time. (I don't recall if she actually had it.)

It was re-released as a "Legend" set 10001 ten years later in 2001...but I was in the middle of my my SECOND Dark Age at that point (partly due to the break-up with the above-mentioned AFOL and a shift in my interests over to anime)...so I missed out again.

Maybe this is due for a SECOND re-release 30 years later? Hmmmm?

Imagine that: 12 train sets in A year! If we exclude the power supply and the extra tracks, all these sets are pretty much legendary on their own (except maybe the level crossing). I owned this and the merchandise train as well at one point - sold them during my second dark age. Still love it (as I do all the 9v electrified track trains) but it is not my main focus nowadays so I guess I can live without - But I do dearly regret selling my Emerald Night.

I always enjoy the jokes about the 9V train box art. It was the 90s, guys. This is just the sort of thing that happened.

Anyway.

Bless the Metroliner. As a kid (I was 8 when the 9V range came out), I never quite understood the appeal of the Metroliner. Fast forward to my college years, when I could afford to buy one (the re-release)?

Yep. I got it. Once I owned a copy, I understood.

This train is AMAZING. It has all the functionality and play value of trains from the 80s (I love the sleeping compartment in the rear locomotive. That's such a clever way of doing it), while all the beauty and style of a train from the 90s using new pieces. And there has been very few trains to even come close to matching the Metroliner.

The set that brought me to Brickset! I remember someone had linked to the set details page in a Craigslist ad years ago.

I was wary of going to new websites at the time, and I well should have been! I've spent far too much time on this site almost every day since!

Wow, 2 legends in a row.

But I prefer this one :p

So I only got this one a few months ago (and for a very nice price).

Being a mega 12V trains fan kid, there were two things that took me off getting new Lego and it was the transition to 9V (which felt like a stab in the back then, as a kid), and the cave box art. We were (still are) invested too much with the 12V system to start from scratch, and this cave sombre art didn't make me take the box off the shelf. It was nothing like the nice and colourful 12V packages. It just put me off, and that started my dark ages to be honest.

Fast forward to 2020, I have now three 9V train sets, this included, and it's a marvelous set. It felt like building a new 12V train, only more refined. The only 9V set I did get back then was the sleeper car for this train, and it was nice to see them together, after about 30 years. Highly recommend this one.

Still the best train ever, rivalled only by 10233 Horizon Express.

How about doing some classic reviews once the first wave of 2021 sets has settled?

My dad actually was the lead designer of this set (and the 9V train product line) in the late 80s.

Read more about this set and see some old photos of some 9V prototypes here: (in German - or use Google Translate)
https://www.promobricks.de/lego-9v-30-jahre-4558-metroliner-review/114271/

@MPlagborg your dad is a genius, my friend. He and the rest of the 9V team created some legends in their own time with these sets from the initial 9V Train wave in 1991/1992. He, Niels Pedersen, John (Yon?) Thompson (Thompson worked at LEGO for 30 years designing the sets for legendary themes like M-TRON, Unitron, and Blacktron: Future Generation) and more that I am forgetting to mention defined the LEGO System in the early 1990s. If it wasn't for those guys, I might not have become so enamored with the sets LEGO had to offer and fallen for some other type of toy.

So thank your dad for me, not just for the interview, but because even today, when I build MOCs with pieces he probably could only dream of back in the 1980s and 1990s, I still keep sets like the Metroliner at the back of my mind as the standard to which I aspire in my designs. Like, when I designed a small steam locomotive with Power Functions, I still thought to myself, "This is great and all, but is it in the same league as the Metroliner???" I'm sure I'm not alone in my gratitude, either!

I love Lego train sets. Lego can really shine in that theme.

Boy, I hope the budget for new train sets isn’t eaten by themes like Vidiyo... I mean times change and all but trains... who doesn’t love them. So I call upon Lego for a yearly tradition like the Modulars, to release an expert trainset. I’ll buy two of each, I promise!

@Mr__Thrawn said:
"The box art is weird. The train is in a cave, there’s a platform in the cave, people are riding bikes in the cave, and the guy on the platform with the cowboy hat is staring into my soul. He reminds me of the Cowboy from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive."
That’s not a cave entrance it’s a vortex or possibly a wormhole they are emerging from. Unfortunately they have arrived inside a mountain, where they shall remain for eternity silently screaming for help, but will never be answered.

@MPlagborg said:
"My dad actually was the lead designer of this set (and the 9V train product line) in the late 80s.

Read more about this set and see some old photos of some 9V prototypes here: (in German - or use Google Translate)
https://www.promobricks.de/lego-9v-30-jahre-4558-metroliner-review/114271/

"

First congratulate your dad on those trains - they are my favourites. I still run them.
It would be good to ask him:
1. What other features of the 9V trains did he plan but never came to fruition?
2. Were there any other ideas of track geometry?
3. What did he think of the 9V trains that came after his designs?
4. What does he think of the current train range?
Thank you.