In defense of some of the perceived negative comments above, I went to the find a dealer part of Lionel's website. In New York state, there are 48 authorized dealers but only 10 of those are authorized service stations. In Massachusetts, there are 16 authorized dealers, but only 1 single authorized service station. I'm sure if you look at all the other various states, the scenario will be much the same.
Compounding the difficulty for local hobby shops, because of the digital complexity of many products now, everything has to go back to Lionel proper for warranty service, provided you're the original purchaser, you have your receipt and it's within one year of purchase. AND that the product was made within the last 3 years. Meaning if you buy a brand new older stock starter set made over 3 years ago, you're out of luck, because Lionel doesn't service anything outside of warranty repair.
This isn't the fault of the small dealer: This is Lionel's policy. I have no idea what the return rate is on starter set products? It may be as a percentage, within an acceptable range for Lionel. BUT if you're the first time buyer of a train set that doesn't work out of the box, it's not exactly the best advertisement. It really pays to inquire before hand, from ANY seller, authorized train dealer or not, what their return policy is on defective merchandise, including shipping charges. And if there are restocking charges. Like it or not, if that's the retailers' policy, they're not going to make an exception. Sometimes the upfront "good deal" price isn't such a good deal when you read the fine print.
Even if you have a local shop that does service today, the question remains can they even get the parts, when so many critical parts for products are listed as unavailable on Lionel's website? It's entirely understandable how some dealers, in response to a return of defective product, tell the customer it has to go back to Lionel. It is also understandable how the customer might not like hearing that.
This is the advantage of Amazon and Walmart, that for a little extra money, you can purchase an extended warranty plan, which in my opinion, is well worth the extra cost. At least it has been for me with Walmart.
The other thing I noticed also, looking at the train sets listed on Amazon, is that many of them are actually available NOT from Amazon, but from established train retailers. Trainworld came up as a seller as did Nicholas Smith and others.
Back in the day before all this new digital train technology, most shops I frequented who did repairs, could fix nearly anything. My shop could. Today, I don't have a local shop... they're all gone. And not necessarily for lack of business. If it were so easy to run a local train shop and make a living, there would be more of them, not less. If I were starting off in the hobby today, I probably wouldn't be in the hobby at all.
And more than 30 years ago, I got back into the hobby by seeing a Lionel train set at K-Mart. I had the money and bought it on the spot. This was before the internet was so pervasive. Interesting how Howard Hitchcock said in an interview on Notch 6, that the retail prices today on starter train sets are no longer a spontaneous spur-of-the-moment purchase for a good many people. Which is too bad, because it wasn't like that with the set I bought, which is still running to this day.
After buying the set at K-Mart, my next step was looking the Yellow Pages (remember those?) for train shops. And then picking up my first copy of CTT, which I didn't know existed. The OGR magazine was next. All my subsequent purchases were made at train shops.
So I won't fault any newcomer to the hobby who purchases their first set from a big discount retailer. It may lead them to look for more specialized train sellers, even if it is by mail order. But like many other consumer products, like I said above, it pays to be a knowledgeable consumer and ask questions first and/or read the fine print.
