It can, and the era appropriate trick is that Outlook Express imports from Outlook directly when both live on the same machine, riding the old MAPI interface. Since your Outlook is elsewhere, the job becomes moving the mail to that PC in a form OE ingests.

Same machine case first, for anyone finding this thread with both installed together: in Outlook Express, File, Import, Messages, choose Microsoft Outlook and it pulls folders straight across through MAPI, the simplest path there ever was.

Your split machine case: OE's native message format is EML, so convert the reference folder from your Outlook to EML files, a PST converter with EML output such as SysTools PST Converter does it while keeping the folder as a directory. Copy the directory to the workshop PC.

On the OE side the import needs one intermediate step since OE lacks a plain import EML directory option: drag and drop works instead. Open the EML directory in Explorer beside an open OE window, create a folder in OE, select the EML files and drag them into OE's message list. They land as normal messages, readable and searchable within OE's abilities.