Apparently I'm buying only Lionel in the future, but not for the reason you'd think

What did she say about Simple Green. Sorry, someone would have brought it up. 

Such a deal! Lee,you are a lucky man.

Brad

I try to buy made in the USA product.

Here is some info about the US assembled iMacs. Some are in the market place now

http://9to5mac.com/2012/12/05/...ating-in-fremont-ca/

I bought a set, powered and dummy, of Lionel SD-40 diesels mint 1990 vintage. I saw they were made in USA....so it's not like production has been gone from the USA for a LONG time. And these units seem very well built.

I work in the plastic mode hobby....much domestic production went to Mexico in the late 1980's and then to China in the 1990's. But we are seeing production creep back stateside. Right now I don't see production of trains or plastic kits returning 100% to the US unless something big happens....but the fact folks are looking at it and testing the waters is interesting.

The only constant is change....

I have a U.S.-assembled iMac, but really don't much care where the products I buy are made as long as they are what I want and what I can afford.  I'm a vet and I fly the flag at my home just about every day of the year, but I also don't wear blinders when it comes to the products I purchase and recognizing that we live in a world economy.

And I darn sure won't limit my train purchases to U.S.-made items only, even though that sure would enable me to save a whole lot of money because I would be buying very little.

Well, I intend to buy Lionel where I can, and American whereever possible - to live up to the spirit of my promise.  but I'm sort of committed to Atlas track and such and will occasionally have to buy stuff because of that.  And I will make an exception for scratch-building supplies (does anyone even grow balsa and basswood in the US, etc.?)  

As to the 4-12-2, well I have an older TMCC version, so I did pass on the recent Legacy model - just could not see spending the money on the upgrade. But big locos are what got me caught: if it was steam and Vision, Legacy, or Premier, I nearly always bought it unless I had something very similar in a recent model.

My one worry area, after thinking about it, EZ-streets. Only one source:  Bachmann, which is the spawn of the devil in my wife's eyes, a Chinese company (Okay, I think it is Bermuda based, but chinese owner and just about all Chinese manufacturering).  I am way too committed to 'streets.  Lately, I am into making my own roadtrack out of Lionel O-27 and/or Atlas flex-track rather than 'streets road section, and I have stockpiled about 40 K-line and Lionel vehicles for future projects, but I expect sometime in the future I will be in a bind . . . I'll worry about that, then.  I do plan to honor my pledge to her, and to hold her to her end of the agreement.  :-)

LEGACY, Here we come.

Also the way I see it Atlas track is made for Lionel trains to run on.

I'm with Allan on this. If the product is made in the USA and it is want I want then I will buy it. I really don't care where my trains or anything else is made. I will not just confine myself to buying just USA made products because if I did the list would be very,very small. 

Lee, as the track/road surface are relatively low-cost items, you may be able to purchase these locally (Via your LHS) for cash or cheque. That way you will not have broken your pledge, as I  understand from reading the above, that that was limited to credit-card purchases. 

I'd have hidden my credit card statements.

And I agree with Nicole....cash and check purchases may be for other manufacturers.

--Greg

That way you will not have broken your pledge, as I  understand from reading the above, that that was limited to credit-card purchases. 

I am certain that occasionally, that will happen.  I really will try to honor my promise as much as possible, though.

We're just joking    I'm just happy to hear of a happy spouse!

--Greg

If you want to buy from companies that make most or all of their products in the US, you'd buy from:

Ross Custom Switches

Gargraves Track

Weaver Models (most of their freight cars and three of their locomotives)

Circuitron Tortoise Switch Machines

Ameri-Towne Building Kits 

Korber Models 

All of my O-gauge trains are made in USA... 

but I didn't buy any of them new.  And they still work 50+ years later.

I understand and we have two happy spouses at our house.  We're both pleased with the deal. 

I'm with ACE. I don't know about the motor brushes, e-unit fingers, etc that I've replaced over time, but my trains are almost all made in the USA some time ago).

So as of right now, who makes the most O-scale trains (not counting anything but rolling stock) in the USA, Lionel or Weaver?

o as of right now, who makes the most O-scale trains (not counting anything but rolling stock) in the USA, Lionel or Weaver?

Currently Weaver, take a tour of their factory and watch the product being assembled and painted.

Lee, there's a lot of K LIne by LIONEL EZ streets still out there.  Our local Hobby Works {4 stores in the DC area} can't get rid of it.

I would like to buy American-made too.  But it has to be something I am interested in for my layout.

If Weaver or RMT or whoever starts making bnsf ES44DCs in 1:48 scale, I'll buy them, even at a higher price than the recent foreign-made offerings.

Nowadays, the term "made in USA (or Canada, for that matter) is a misnomer.   Even if some sort of processing is restored to this part of the world, you can bet that a good part of the finished product has still been outsourced to either China, Mexico or

some other offshore country.  It would likely be "assembled" more than "made or manufactured" in the US.  The only reason that companies are reconsidering relocating some of their work back here is because of the high cost of shipping from

overseas.  Sounds kind of cynical, I know, but companies only look for one thing...the cheapest place to operate.

initagain is correct, though a lot of factors are involved, not just cost of production (ie the labor to make the products themselves)

-Cost of shipping (if the price of oil spikes, watch what happens with 'cheap' chinese goods, might end up going back to sailing ships or coal fired ships

-Cost of quality (i.e the cost of bad quality).....if the cost of building cheaply is added to the cost of quality (fixing units under warranty,, loss of reputation (ask GM about that one) it can be a lot more expensive to source it to cheap labor. Beancounters have a hard time with that, but anyone who has dealt with products knows what the cost of bad quality is.

-Currency fluctuations (China has gotten away with that one for a long time, but won't be able to for that much longer)

-Political considerations (among other factors, one of the reasons the Japanese car companies built manufacturing capability here was political)

-Local design issues (not applicable to trains per se), like Toyota and Mazda having US based design studios to develop cars for the US market.

I don't think manufacturing is coming back to the US for any one factor, I think the cost of production is going up there, the cost of shipping is going up there, and systemic corruption there is making business hard to do in some or many cases, and there is also a lot of awareness that if we keep shipping jobs based simply on cheap labor, it is not to the benefit of anyone, because those lost jobs means lost sales, pure and simple.

What that  means I don't know, it is likely component like circuit boards and such would be sourced from China, but that assembly and quality control would happen here. Things like circuit boards could return to the US, they lend themselves to highly automated/efficient manufacturing that given the increase in costs in china and the crappy quality of hand building those things, could make that come back, too.

Buying only one manufaturers Loco is the best way to keep the train budget under control. But sometimes it doesn't work. Lionel seems to be on a roll in 2012, at least as far as I am concerned. The Blue Comet, S. Crescent and now thanks to the heads up on another thread a Santa Fe Northern. Thats more than I have spent the last 5 years combined! 

Maybe because most customers are looking for the cheapest way to buy.

I buy Lionel anyway.

IMO they produce the most superior product for me.

MTH products are excellent, just not my cup of java.

Eliot

AMCDave - I too have quite of few of the mid 1990s diesels, some of the first ones that came with TMCC and I still run them. Compared to anything made in the past few years, these things are bulletproof.

That, in itself, may well be enough based on the "Buy American" theme repeatedly preached by a good number on this very forum (and in this thread). 

And firms seeking the cheapest manufacturing are no different than consumers seeking the lowest possible price for goods they buy...again, as evidenced by many, perhaps most, on this forum.

My LHS owner told me the Ameri- towne kits are made in Japan, Only packaged in Ohio by the OGR crew. Is that true?? If it is , they are NOT made in America.

BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!

Your dealer is 100% wrong!  Ameri-Towne buildings are made (molded) right here in Boardman, Ohio...literally just a couple of miles from the OGR offices.  They are packaged at our offices.  They are 100% American made.

Tell your dealer that he would be best advised to get his facts straight before making pronouncements to customers.

I have a U.S.-assembled iMac, but really don't much care where the products I buy are made as long as they are what I want and what I can afford>>

We purchased a new IMac on Sunday .. also states assembled in USA .. guess this is a new trend .. Good for Apple and the country

I;m all lionel as I have to dam much trouble with the dcs signal that I have only two dcs engines left that I really like and put up with them but they are more on the layout to fill up the yard.

I am happy to report no problems with legacy and can jump the outside rail wire from layout to another without all the fancy wireing.

DCS apprears to not be making any revised or new product, it is very outdated since it came out in 2000 and is the same now as it was in 2000 or 12 years old.  I just have my zw, and two z's phased together and run seperate layouts with each dial which gives me10 different layout with only the one legacy ground wire connecting them and it works fantastic. I havent even used the two inside dials of the zw either, and no I do not run them all at the same time.

The sound on my dcs engines sounds like a tin can compared to the legacy steamers I have.

I  will advise him of this, Thanks for the info Allen. Fred

tim cook, being interviewed by brian williams from the Apple store in Grand Central Terminal, made a couple of interesting points regarding made in USA.

1.  the cpu in iPhones and iPads is in fact made in the US (designed and manufactured by Apple).

2. the move with the iMac is just a start.

3. the electronics manufacturing business has NEVER been resident in the US, so it is not about bringing it BACK, but getting it here for the first time.

4. the reason it is hard to bring it here is the lack of manufacturing skills to do this kind of work.

i am certain i may be grossly paraphrasing what he said, but i believe i have the gist of it.

The Apple stuff is interesting.  Drives home the point the decision has less to do with cost and more to do with capability / ability to produce something in N. America today, especially something with electronics.  By ability I'm not referring to people, but rather the lack of a basic infrastructure to support production of something like an iphone.  Even if someone wanted to throw up a factory (or rent one of our many empty ones) and pay a higher labor rate, deal with regulations, etc., you'd still be facing your biggest hurdles.... everything you need to get it going & keep it going is in Asia (i.e., all the suppliers, all the operations & process expertise, the organization that can take a design spec, operationalize it, & start getting product out the door in months....). 

Anything is possible.  If you wanted to start building modular igloo homes in the Sahara, you could, but there are probably other places in the world where it would be much easier. 

Apple seems to be discovering, much as Lionel and others are, that there is a skilled work component to some manufacturing that is more cost-effective in the US. Anyone who owns or who has handled a recent-vintage Apple computer has probably noticed there's a bit more CNC machining and human-managed fit and finish involved in their products. They're made by highly automated processes, but of the sort that aren't entirely "push-the-button-and-walk-away." I'm not saying that there's more skill on either side of the ocean - fact is, there are bright, highly skilled workers all over the globe who can do great things and deserve to earn a good living. It's just that manufacturing that requires a high skill level is often best done closest to home -- where ever the "home" market happens to be, or wherever the "home" office of the designers is. In the article mentioned early in the thread, GE discovered that much was being 'lost in translation' transmitting ideas into finished product overseas. They (re)discovered that building something in their own backyard was more cost-effective and had immediate quality control. They could see the effect of design decisions on build quality and reliability without waiting for potentially sub-standard products to be shipped back to US shores. Risk was reduced and remediation was fast.

Lionel has apparently redoubled the "boots on the ground" approach and is keeping US employees highly involved in the contract operations in China in order to bridge the gap between US-based design and overseas-based manufacturing; that's also a valid method and, given the specialized production of some train assemblies, may still be the most economical. It's good to see more production coming back to the US. Maybe all of it can return someday, but it's a globalized world we live in. It's fine to produce overseas and in the US -- it's best if the work is done where the best and most economical results are realized, and everybody takes home a decent day's wages.