Another Tinplate Issue...

Don't you just love modern quality in everything anymore.  I can't get a lawn tractor to last 8 years anymore.  Appliances are crap.  What happened to our country?

One thing for sure.....Very, very few items are, "Made in USA" anymore. American quality is a thing of the past.....sigh!

I feel your pain Frank, but MTH is simply trying to find the BOTTOM of your TOLERANCE LEVEL.  They are not there yet...cuz you(and me) are still buying!!!

I got an Ives 3245 Olympian from Western Depot.   I was building my layout and didn't get it on a track until about 4 months after I bought it.   The first time i put it on the track it went POP and blue smoke and it was dead.    Western Depot was great about it, no questions asked, set up the work order and sent me a label to send it to MTH.   MTH repaired it and sent it right back, and it's been fine since.   A little delayed gratification, but really Western Depot was very helpful and MTH did the repair with no hassles.   And of course there are the many other locos and rolling stock that have worked right out of the box.  It would be nice if it was 100%, but I'd say you're in good hands with Western Depot.

<snip> MTH is simply trying to find the BOTTOM of your TOLERANCE LEVEL.  They are not there yet...cuz you(and me) are still buying!!!

Exactly.

I had a 1982 Chevy Celebrity who's quality I certainly don't miss.  Likewise the 1977 Chevy Impala with the Chevette transmission.  Same for my parents Zenith "Handcrafted Quality" 21" Color TV that spent more time in the shop than at home...

Not to mention the Michigan-made Lionel/American Flyer PA that bucks and sounds like a coffee grinder when I run it.

The view in the mirror looks better than it actually was...

Rusty

So very, very true, Rusty!  What's that old saying about "seeing things through rose colored glasses"?

Of course, all of those examples are from the 70's and 80's when American build quality was at its all-time rock bottom, especially in the automotive industry. I went back to American cars in '03 with my pickup, and I love it. Anyone who is following the business press knows that there is a renaissance getting started in American manufacturing for a whole bunch of reasons. I'm waiting to see the new Weaver scale Milwaukee Road ribside boxcars that are now being produced in Pennsylvania. With what is going on in Asia right now, and the increasing cost of oceanic shipping, we could see a lot of "lost" manufacturing business come home in the next ten years. 

What really concerns me is all the stuff I have in storage and have not yet run.  MTH only guarantees the trains from the time of their release, not from the sale date or date it was first used.  In most cases if something bought several years ago or new old stock doesn't work new out of the box it is just too bad for the consumer.  Considering the fact that the new Protosounds equipment has an internal "odometer", it seems like the guarantee could be given in hours of operation.  The lack of quality and the lack of a meaningful guarantee have reduced my purchases of new MTH tinplate considerably.

Kirk

I was a mechanic in the late 80's through early 90's.  American cars were in a sad state by then.  Chevy had bad camshafts that were not heat treated deep enough and the 700R4 transmission had a 100% failure rate its first year out.  Now it has changed into a very reliable 4 speed unit the 4L60E .  The quality of this generation of automobiles has improved 10 fold.  I have a 1953 Willys Jeep that will start and run reliably any time.  Even for a 1953 it gets 18 miles per gallon and can be fixed with all the parts that will fit in a shoe box. 

In the past few years, I have seen tinplate items that I have considered buying the MTH remakes (either Lionel Corporation or Tinplate Traditions), but all the issues scare me away. But I know their are exceptions to every rule, so their might be good ones out there (my Grandpa still has his 1980 Chevette and has used it as a daily driver for the last 32 years without major issue)

I will continue to buy both new MTH/Lionel Corp trains, originals, and repainted originals, going forward, as money and space permit.  Sometimes I like something shiny and new (I was not yet around when these were new and, until the reproductions, never had a new Standard Gauge train), sometimes I like originals (with their worn appearance and wonder what their history was).  I picked up some nicely repainted trains when I had a garden railroad, two decades ago.

I like all of them!

There is nothing in new models as far as "reproductions"  being comparable to   the real thing with it's original fabric ( regardless of condition) , and while the "real thing" has it's own issues due to age and condition, I think an error was made in creating these more complex electronic hybrids, which are not really reproductions unless you do not look past the shell. To call them reproductions is stretching the meaning of the word, as if you bought a 1928 Ford with a 2012 hybrid engine. These "toys' are in a class by themselves and to call them tinplate is also a bit of a stretch, unless you define it by style rather than what the originals actually were.

The fact that the very similar quality issues such as fit and finish, manufacturing defects mimic more contemporary models just reaffirms that these new items are not reproductions, unless you found an original Ives locomotive with a sound board.

If you could take apart the internal mechanisms with common household tools and diagnose the problem and fix it then you have a reproduction of the original.

Different strokes for different folks.  There's certainly nothing wrong with that, and no one perspective is any more valid or legitimate than any other.

I don’t really care to get lost down in the weeds trying to parse what a “reproduction” is,  or isn’t.  And, frankly,  LCT offers most of their reproductions (I am going to use that term) in both traditional and PS2/3-equipped versions. Something for everybody.

I can understand why some don’t want the “new” stuff but I also recognize why others do.

“Buy what you like and like what you buy.”