FINALLY!
I have been asking for over a year: Does anybody own a Lionel HO trains set? And I have never gotten an answer.
Yesterday I found customer reviews for Lionel's HO Christmas train.
The reviews were about 50/50, and that is all you need to know. Lionel's HO tracks are connected by magnets, and they come apart easily. This causes the train to derail frequently, because the tracks can be loose, even without separating.
A few critics reported that the locomotives locks up after two hours of use. Most folks only run their trains for a few minutes at a time, so it will take a lot of buyers a few months or more to hit two hours of use.