Ice Lake

Ice Lake
Type	Lake
Location	The Polar Express route
Visitors	Hero Boy, Hero Girl, Conductor, Hobo, Smokey and Steamer
The Polar Express Route
Previous	Glacier Gulch
Next	Corkscrew Mountain

"Jiminy Christmas! The ice has frozen over the tracks!"
— The Conductor before the train slides onto the Ice Lake.

The Ice Lake is a location in the film, The Polar Express.

Role in the film

The Ice Lake is a frozen-over lake that the Polar Express train slides onto after speeding along Glacier Gulch. While on the lake, Smokey hits Steamer's back with a coal shovel to get the cotter pin out of him, which he accidentally swallowed after it broke loose from the throttle. However, it flies out through the cab window and pierces the ice, causing it to fracture. Meanwhile, the train smashes into an iceberg, causing the locomotive to lean sideways. Hero Girl almost falls off the train, but is grabbed by the Conductor and Hero Boy. However, they are unable to pull her to safety, so the Hobo appears and helps them, but disappears before anyone other than Hero Boy could see him. The train is quickly stopped after Smokey uses the pin from his hair to fix the throttle.

The Conductor checks on Smokey and Steamer when Hero Boy notices the cracking ice, so Smokey and Steamer drive the train away, speeding it in reverse and then letting it slide across the ice to turn it around. Once the train is facing forward, Steamer speeds the train ahead with the cracking ice in pursuit. Hero Boy sees the tracks on the other side of the lake and the Conductor gives orders to Steamer to steer the train right and left to align with them. Meanwhile, Hero Girl's ticket, which Hero Boy put in his slipper during his first encounter with the Hobo, is blown out, so Hero Girl and Hero Boy try to catch it. They grab it, but the ice catches up with the train and cracks under it. Luckily, the engine reaches the frozen-over tracks and the train is saved. The train then surfaces from the other side of the lake.

When Hero Boy, Hero Girl, and the Conductor make their way back to the passenger cars, Know-It-All, who had experienced the events from inside the train, tries telling them to Hero Boy. He claims the train being on the ice was simply an optical illusion, as it would be impossible for the train to really be on the ice. However, Hero Boy is more interested in what is going on the observation car and goes there without saying anything.

With the ice cracked and the tracks flooded, it is unknown how the train did the return journey. It is possible the lake refroze or the train went a different route around the lake.

Trivia

• The book does not feature the Ice Lake, though a line in a book says that the Polar Express never stopped and it ran along peaks and valleys like a roller coaster train, which could refer to the dangers the train faced in the actual film, including Glacier Gulch.
• The Polar Express drifting on the lake has become a meme, and was the basis for 'The Dank Express,' 'The Drift Express,' 'Deja Vu on the Drift Express,' and other similar video edits of the ice lake sequence.
• In real life, it’s basically impossible for an engineer to seemingly control and drift a locomotive when it goes out of control in the ice. This is because the coordinates the conductor gives to Steamer to align the train until it reaches the tracks is impossible to do in real life, as you must need the right controls to control the train over the frozen railroad tracks. While this factor applies to steam locomotives, especially the Polar Express, since it uses complex controls and manuals to help the train get to safety, it is impossible to do so for diesel locomotives.

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