Bad luck or state of the hobby?

hello ROBERTEJR.

You not the only one here but just really bad quality control in China these days.   I have a Sunset 3rd S.F. 5011,older model of 2002 era. and didn't have all those problems like yours is having but my engine came from Korea so I guess quality control was better in Korea than in China.   If This was mine engine I will simple DEMAND a FULL refund plus shipping charges RETURNED too as I would NOT put up with that.  I mean WHY should you have to deal with company's problems when they cannot get their act together in doing a better job in CONTROLLING the quality of the products ? Then even after  you get it fix and all the bugs worked out at YOUR expenses, you still won't be happy with it because of what you been going through getting frustrating about it.  I went through that many times and just not worth the stress.  About 2 weeks ago I had a pot controller on my Z4000 go bad and was lucky to be able to fix it at home with new part as it is 5 years old and refused to pay 50 dollars to ship it back and have MTH charge me a arm and leg for the work because the warranty as expired ( not let them do that to me).  The Q.A. problems is going to get worse no doubt about it.  Perhaps get a older model of the 2-8-4 Berkshire and just be happy like I did with my S.F. 2-10-4 with Lionel railsounds 4.0.  I "think" but not sure there is a older model U.S. Hobbies S-2 2-8-4 Berkshire made in 1960's and fix it up.  I was a Q.A mech. inspector for the D.O.D back in 1980's (DCAS) rank of GS-9.  I STOPPED buying trains for this reason but buy older trains as I do not want to deal with problems like that, just not worth the frustrations from it.  I am sorry that could not been more helpful to you sir.

Tiffany

And people just keep buying.

MONON_JIM posted:

And people just keep buying.

 

That was more understandable when folks just bought trains and left them in boxes for years (decades) until they built their dream layout.  Now that more and more folks ARE running their new stuff, you'd think they'd be turned off by the poor quality issues.   

Perhaps a lesser number of people are actually running their stuff than we thought, and there are stacks of new trains still sitting in shipping boxes? 

David

Perhaps a lesser number of people are actually running their stuff than we thought, and there are stacks of new trains still sitting in shipping boxes? 

The OGR forum is a great resource, and I enjoy participating here.
OGR has 19,269 members. But how many of those accounts are inactive?
It would be interesting to know how many members have visited the site in the past thirty days and how many members posted.

I suspect that the numbers aren't all that large, that the folks on OGR are a small, but vocal group.

I seriously doubt there is a large number of people running the high end new stuff. I think there are still plenty of collectors and armchair railroaders stocking up for that "someday layout".

C.W. Burfle wrote:

I seriously doubt there is a large number of people running the high end new stuff. I think there are still plenty of collectors and armchair railroaders stocking up for that "someday layout".

Hi CW,

  I am some where in between, I don't have a permanent layout yet, but my trains do get run during the Holidays, so I just have to watch those magnificent locomotives rolling through exquisite scenery MENTALLY( isn't the train Hobby/Addiction considered to be a Mental Issue by Many anyways?) My trains do get out of their boxes, just not as much as I would like.

 Unfortunately, it does seem like this is the direction the hobby is headed. The POSSIBILITIES of the newer electronics is Amazing, the REALITIES of the new electronics, are FRUSTRATING, I too have had an unreasonable failure rate, with the newer electronics, which are what got me interested in 3 Rail O in the first place. My TMCC Crane car was DOA out of the box, my JLC Big Boy had very little run time on it when the electronics in it failed (out of warranty, by the calendar, but few miles on it) Last Christmas, my Black Lionel Legacy FEF-3 electronically died, again out of warranty but way too few miles of use for this failure. I have also had MTH electronic failures as well.

Since I got married my train budget has decreased, but the BIGGEST reason that I haven't bought the many items, locomotives in particular, that have appealed to me, is that I just can't accept spending over $1,000 on a locomotive knowing that it is likely to fail, especially in my case where the warranty will likely expire before I have a reasonable amount of run time on it. The repairs are too expensive, and the failure rate is just to big of a gamble, and I am even a regular Lottery Player, and I wont take THAT Gamble with the new electronics.

Doug

Another issue that people tend to forget is the Warranty Period  of the item purchased and short cycle inventory of parts, if parts are available, most of the warranty periods are 1 year. I would most certainly read the warranty conditions on high dollar ticket items such as engines after receipt and would do a complete physical inspection and actual run time even if you are adding this item to your inventory for future use or are a collector.

The important factor is what the manufacturer considers the start of the warranty period, date of manufacture, purchase date from train manufacturer,purchase date from vendor or date when you went online to register the warranty of date of mailing of the warranty card. Manufacturing defects or shipping damage with freight/passenger cars if they occur can be repaired in the home workshop, damage to cast/ brass engines, replacement parts and electronic circuit issues are beyond repair in the basement workshop.

The other issue is the cost of many of the engines, steam or diesel, and the quality control issues.  When you spend this amount of money you expect a quality product with years of enjoyment not a product that is defective out of the box or within a month of use.  

My stuff (PS-2) has been somewhat reliable. Simple problems like loose wires.  I just consider occasional repairs as a "fun" (yeah, I know) part of the hobby and don't let it bug me.

We've been really fortunately.  Out of all of the O scale stuff we have that fills the basement less than 1% has had issues right out of the box.  I'm very glad that is the case.  Still, I understand the frustration because I have purchased things unrelated to trains and had issues.  It's part of life.  Mechanical/Manufactured things aren't perfect.  

Good morning and welcome to the "Let's Slam the Forum Sponsors Sunday!!"

Michael,

  I Wish my issues were as simple as a "Loose Wire", that I could fix and forget about.

John C.

"Mechanical/Manufactured things aren't perfect. "

Yes, I realize that, but the failure rate that I myself, and others have experienced are unacceptably high. especially when the price of the product is considered, ironically, the lower end items have been MUCH more reliable.

Casey Jones2,

Nope it's not "Bash Forum Sponsors Sunday" It is tell it LIKE IT IS, and hopefully the MFGR's will get a clue.  I have enough trains that I could enjoy the Hobby, without ever buying another locomotive, yet there are many more that I would enjoy having.

 With the failure rate that I have been having, I choose to spend my disposable income on other hobbies that I enjoy, that have (MUCH) Better reliability rates. Trains aren't my only hobby, so I have been spending my money, where I have gotten better results for what I have spent, Pretty Simple. Change "Build it and they will come" to "Build it RELIABLE, and they will BUY" and you pretty sum up my feelings on the hobby. The quality in the high end items, just has not been justifying the prices in MY OPINION.

Doug

Good morning and welcome to the "Let's Slam the Forum Sponsors Sunday!!"

Not talking about problems and issues doesn't make them go away. The Sponsors must be keenly aware that their products, for good and for bad, will be discussed here and on other forums. If they aren't, then those sponsors don't deserve to be in business.

There is an old customer service saying:

A satisfied customer might tell one person about their experience, and unhappy customer will tell ten.

Sorry to hear of your Quality woes. Yes. I have purchased new and used items that need tinkering to get them to run right. I don't know if this will ever be a true plug and play hobby. 

If the items are new most manufactures stand by their products and will offer repairs when they are under warranty. Lionel and 3 rd rail seem to be on the top of the heap for willing to repair items. 

I think every 3rd rail engine I have seen never really ran right out of the box. Their details seem so fragile, they always need some tweaking. Lionel and MTH items seem to be more robust, 

My biggest frustration is the lack of parts. Especially on items that have know to fail and there seems to be a run on the parts bank. 

Casey Jones2 posted:

Good morning and welcome to the "Let's Slam the Forum Sponsors Sunday!!"

 

 

I agree. This isn't bashing at all. WAAAYYY to many failure rates for WAAAYYY  to much money spent. Why not let the manufacturers hear from everyone what's going on .  It will help them stay in businesses in the long run.

To Rob, gosh, it really does sound like you've had a string of rotten luck!  Sorry to read about it.  In my mere two years of buying and running, I've only had one faulty engine (the most costly one of course) and one faulty car.  The engine had to go back to Atlas twice but it is running properly now. The caboose had negative polarity wiring, which I can live with.  

Now let me offer a recent quality control issue for comparison.  I just bought Dining on the Rails by James Porterfield from Amazon. The "book" that arrived was printed off-center. The cover and all the pages were skewed about 40 degrees so you couldn't read the full topic or find a page number; and the pages were only partially cut on the top edge, so even if the printing had been appropriately centered, you couldn't open the book fully.  My thought was what kind of noodle brain (OK, "idiot" was the real word) would have picked that off a storage shelf and put it in a mailer given its obviously defective condition? (My second thought was, it was probably a robot picker.)  Sort of like some of the OP's cases, the packer should have noticed a defect before it got to me.

I immediately went online to indicate to the seller that the book was defective.  In two seconds, Amazon had emailed me a POSTAGE PAID shipping label for the defective copy and immediately initiated mailing a new one.  (Obviously, the latter may not be possible with limited availability train items, which must be repaired.) Long story short, the replacement arrived yesterday and I am happy.  

The point of this story is two-fold:  1. Quality control is a problem all around  2. making it as easy and inexpensive as possible to get a quality control issue resolved goes a long way toward buying experience and perception.  I still can't believe the condition of that first book, and wondered whether it was a print-on-demand gone wrong, and hope that the printer and in turn Amazon improve their quality control.  But I'm not annoyed as I am when I have to pay for shipping, on top of my lost time repacking and off to the PO before work, to get a high-ticket train item fixed. 

So, no bashing or ranting here, just a simple suggestion that I've made previously. For my $500 (or more dollars for some of you), having the manufacturer pay for the return shipping of their defective item seems reasonable.  Yes, their profit margins may be small but if for some reason manufacturers can't tackle the real issue - quality control and perhaps problems with overseas labor and importantly, getting it right the first time on a repair  - then at least pay for the shipping.  It's a small thing that offers good will, acknowledges where the problem originated, and provides a better customer experience.

Tomlinsn Run Railroad

My "high end" purchases aren't toy train related, I spend my big $$ on good digital cameras and a laptop. The HP laptop failed just out of the warranty period, wasn't  economically  repairable so I now use a $250 Toshiba.  I have sworn never to buy another HP anything.  When I pay for anything costing over $50 I expect t to work. When I sold industrial pumps I had several that failed "out of the box"  and I was on the phone raising H---. On the other hand, my old post war Lionels and Marx are pretty much plug & play. Not all but most ae so I can enjoy the hobby.  Denying these problems don't fix them.

Not bashing,,,,fact. There doesn't seem to be anyone in China checking quality.

State of the Hobby.

Simply look to all the comments complaining about the cost of the Lionel Boxcars that are assembled in the USA to see that many of the the most vocal members of the forum are not willing to pay for any additional measures that may increase the cost of the units. 

Apply that same rough delta (percentage-wise) to large engine purchases (maybe a lot more since there is a lot more labor to assemble an engine than a boxcar), and the cost would immediately rise to the point where most would not pay it.  A lot of people think the costs are increasing too much for the level of quality we have now.  To hear that the cost will go up a lot and the quality might get better would not sit well with many.

Unfortunately the business model is working.  If the market spoke with $$, the poor quality would be reflected in lowered sales, and higher prices would impact the sales even more to the point where the correlation of saying "well, we could do xx to improve the situation, but it means it will cost more" would be laughable. 

As others have said, people keep buying so the status quo will remain the same.

-Dave

Not too sure of your comment " the business model is working".  While reading my collection of older CTT magazines I was stunned  by the number of  advertisers there were about 20 years ago  compared to today. Not only the numbers but the variety offered. Reminds me of the auto industry-the average age of a car on the road today is almost 15 years.  People, me included run the cars to death. Mine has almost 200,000 miles on it but I keep it going.  Talking to some mechanics the other day and they agreed that it is almost impossible to diagnose some problems. One said to run it until it quits that way we will know what is wrong. Expensive to fix, more expensive to buy.  Like the current train market.

Interesting topic. I am not sure why it is that a handful of folks seem to have a disproportionately high rate of problems. We all expect things that we pay good money for to work properly out of the box. And there is huge bad feelings when they don't. Over the last few years most of my new stuff has worked pretty close to as expected. And the stuff that hasn't I would rather fix myself if I can, and avoid the big shipping cost and delay to send it back for repairs. Part of the problem in Canada is that shipping across the border is about double the cost of shipping anywhere in the U.S., so it has to be serious to merit that action. The hobby sure isn't perfect, but hey, it's still great! 

Rod

jim pastorius posted:

 Talking to some mechanics the other day and they agreed that it is almost impossible to diagnose some problems. 

Judging by the constant presence of "Check Engine Light" on my dashboard -- despite multiple Service appointments -- they're probably right.

Jim 1939 posted:

Not bashing,,,,fact. There doesn't seem to be anyone in China checking quality.

Scott Mann of 3rdrail has stated many times he personally tests each engine before they are packed up and shipped to the States.   I would really want to know what and if there's any testing before product from MTH/Lionel is packed and put on a ship.

With that said, I'm wondering if most of the problems we are seeing with defective products is due to shipping?  Being bang around, dropped or what have you. 

My first and only Lionel Legacy engine, was wrongly shipped to two customers from the dealer before it reached my front door.  Luckily it works fine right out of the box but you got to wonder what these engines are seeing in the UPS/FEDEX/USPS trucks, from point A, to B

I have purchased quite a few train items since getting back into the hobby in 2011. For engines and rolling stock I have mostly MTH with a few pieces of Lionel and run them with command control, DCS and Legacy. I have had relatively few problems with anything so far. I have been able to repair all the minor problems myself except for my Legacy base that worked fine, but wouldn't take an update and I have one MTH engine about 4 years old that the ditch light stopped working on last year. I was unable to fix the ditch lights myself, but everything else works just fine so I have not yet sent it off for repair. Will probably send it off to GGG one of these days. He has a very good reputation and good turn around times. He also helps a lot of folks here on the forum. 

To me, it sounds like you are just having a string of bad luck. There are some folks here that seem to have a lot more trouble than others. Maybe it's just the luck of the draw, or the bad batches come in clumps and the dealers getting them are unlucky as well? Having said that, I do have a couple of engines that I have not yet opened up to try out. I think the warranty is probably over by now too as I have had them for a while. If I am going to have problems those will probably be the ones. I consider that my fault for not checking them when I got them and now having more engines than will fit on my layout. 

How many of these problems are due to buying online versus a hobby shop. At a hobby shop you can try the engine. If it fails you can get a different one out of stock. No harm no foul as far as the consumer is concerned.

ChiTown Steve posted:

How many of these problems are due to buying online versus a hobby shop. At a hobby shop you can try the engine. If it fails you can get a different one out of stock. No harm no foul as far as the consumer is concerned.

How many have a local hobby shop near by?  These days I would say not many and with with more and more hobby shop closing the numbers are going down.

I've posted before about my bad experiences.

Of twelve engines, all but one purchased new, five have required repairs over a period of 18 months.

1 Weaver . . . repaired twice. Did not run out of the box.

2 MTH . . . one needed repair after about 7 months of excellent running.

2 Atlas . . . no repairs

7 3-rd Rail . . . three required repair (two new ones and the single one bought used).

I moved into a new home in December 2015,I have been unpacking and testing locomotives over the course of several months. About 1/3 of the locomotives were bought new and the balance are bought new secondhand or gently used. Most everything I have is MTH Premierstarting in 1994-date and Lionel from 1999-date. The most reliable locomotives have been the MTH PS1,Weaver brass and Lionel TMCC locomotives. All were tested before storage (Batteries removed) and I've had ZERO problems with them. The next batch would be the MTH PS2 locomotives - I only had one go bad,a 20-3044 UP 4-8-4. The next batch would be the Lionel Legacy locomotives. All 40+ were working perfectly. Two had fixable issues after sitting for a few years. The worst batch would be the MTH PS3 - I've had issues with the "wireless" tethers on the steam locomotives,they just don't work that well,especially with arthritic hands. I have several of the 3rd rail brass locomotives - I bought two new that had "issues". The balance have been trouble free after lots of breaking in and adjustment. They are built to tighter tolerances,tend to be "fussy" but are well worth it. I also have some vintage two rail steam locomotives from US Hobbies/KTM. They are "robust" and wonderful runners. All in all I have about a 1-2% failure rate. Not bad for artisian or small specialized market items. 

In general, model train manufacturers are minuscule manufacturing operations, even big dog Lionel. There simply isn't the scale or profit margin available to make such a consumer electronic robust and reliable. There is hundreds of millions of $$$ (or more) put into the manufacturing operations and product design of consumer electronics such as a smartphone or TV.

As to 3rd Rail, I had locomotive under evaluation. It was NIB but had problems (mechanical only - missing parts and was thus DOA). After many calls and emails over the course of ~3 months, I got some "we'll get back to you" responses but ultimately they failed to follow through. I had to return the model to the original owner as a result. It was an exquisite (and expensive) model but as a result I will never purchase a 3rd Rail product; new or used.

Rob,

You are not alone.

I have been active in the hobby for the last 19 years. I have had problems with new engines 20% of the time. That's with a mixture of MTH, Lionel, Williams, K-Line, RMT, and Atlas. 

I only buy new items, and from Authorized dealers, so all of the problems I had were either repaired by the manufacturer for free under warranty , or I got a refund, or an exchange in some cases.

Once the initial problem was fixed, normally the engines run fine from then on without any more trouble. As a previous poster said it's important to run the loco right after you receive it, to uncover and defects when it is still under dealer warranty and the manufacturers warranty, so you can get a free repair or exchange if need be.

Always keep your receipts too...many companies today won't do free warranty repairs without one. 

Also when shopping be careful of and how old the new item is, MTH and Lionel both now say their 1 year warranty is good only on items manufactured within the last 4 years. 

Finally, everyone I know that has tried 3rd Rail engines has had problems, and bad service.

Boomer posted:

I moved into a new home in December 2015,I have been unpacking and testing locomotives over the course of several months. About 1/3 of the locomotives were bought new and the balance are bought new secondhand or gently used. Most everything I have is MTH Premierstarting in 1994-date and Lionel from 1999-date. The most reliable locomotives have been the MTH PS1,Weaver brass and Lionel TMCC locomotives. All were tested before storage (Batteries removed) and I've had ZERO problems with them. The next batch would be the MTH PS2 locomotives - I only had one go bad,a 20-3044 UP 4-8-4. The next batch would be the Lionel Legacy locomotives. All 40+ were working perfectly. Two had fixable issues after sitting for a few years. The worst batch would be the MTH PS3 - I've had issues with the "wireless" tethers on the steam locomotives,they just don't work that well,especially with arthritic hands. I have several of the 3rd rail brass locomotives - I bought two new that had "issues". The balance have been trouble free after lots of breaking in and adjustment. They are built to tighter tolerances,tend to be "fussy" but are well worth it. I also have some vintage two rail steam locomotives from US Hobbies/KTM. They are "robust" and wonderful runners. All in all I have about a 1-2% failure rate. Not bad for artisian or small specialized market items. 

Good morning Boomer........I think you summed it up very well.  Will you be at York this fall?

Clem k 

Wow! Some illuminating stuff here!

Most companies the follow a Quality Improvement Process post their failure rate as well as their on time delivery performance. That was always our Big Fat Claim during sales presentations. How bout it manufacturers. Lets see your stats.

Rod Miller

My experience is close to Boomer's with a low failure rate on most items. Two observations though. A lot of Legacy engines work OK out of the box but after some running time something stops working, not just smoke units.

As for 3rd Rail, as a buyer of brass engine going back to the '60s I expect them to have issues out of the box. I can't recall a single HO engine running well when first placed on the track. Now I am pleasantly surprised when many of my 3rd Rail engines do run well from new. That includes both new and previously owned but never run, mint in the box. Quality has varied greatly from them in the last 20 years. At least half have required some sort of repair, usually mechanical.

Pete

romiller49 posted:

Most companies the follow a Quality Improvement Process post their failure rate as well as their on time delivery performance. That was always our Big Fat Claim during sales presentations. How bout it manufacturers. Lets see your stats.

Rod Miller

That's not going to happen... that is proprietary information, however if you study how the products  have changed over the years you can almost read between the lines... Lionel strives to reduce cost by integrating  boards and trying to make items common. Certain things have changed over time...

Smoke motors

Can motors

Smoke unit construction

steam chest smoke was eliminated

Driver boards

elimination of smoke driver boards,

Some products were never made again... a.k.a. Acela set, UP Turbine, NYC Niagara...

Also note when the packaging has change do to shipping issues and damage are all base on previous quality issues...

Thank you for the responses, guess I'm not alone.

My intent wasn't to bash anyone, just vent my frustrations.  I've spent an obscene amount of money on this hobby the past few years and feel like my reward has been headaches.

I keep buying because I love the hobby and find a lot of the new offerings with new features & electronics really cool.  My choices are buy them and deal with these issues or don't buy and have nothing new to run. 

3rd rail is a great example - I love how the engines look and have so much detail and I want to own them, but man 6 months of dealing with the back and forth sending it back etc is discouraging.

I have gotten everything from my local dealer and they have been amazing.  They stand behind everything they sell and they do in house repairs when possible.  Except for the 3rd rail everything that has had issues was fixed by my dealer or by Lionel / MTH.

I was wondering if anyone else has had issues with couplers not staying closed (and solutions), but so far it seems that is limited to me.

Norton posted:

My experience is close to Boomer's with a low failure rate on most items. Two observations though. A lot of Legacy engines work OK out of the box but after some running time something stops working, not just smoke units.

As for 3rd Rail, as a buyer of brass engine going back to the '60s I expect them to have issues out of the box. I can't recall a single HO engine running well when first placed on the track. Now I am pleasantly surprised when many of my 3rd Rail engines do run well from new. That includes both new and previously owned but never run, mint in the box. Quality has varied greatly from them in the last 20 years. At least half have required some sort of repair, usually mechanical.

Pete

Hello Norton

I have the nearly same experiences as you have as I bought many H.O. brass for years and most of them do require motor, drive shaft, gear box replacements as well as siderods straightening, deburring holes, light filing on back sides so on and quartering work to be done before they will run right.  Its worse in "N" scale brass (more slop in mechanicals area). I guess I got lucky in Sunset 3rd Rail engine which didn't need as much mechanical work as I thought but needed some fixing and after that, NO problems after 4 years of ownership and I have put about 25 hours of run time on it.  Mr. Mann of 3rd Rail HAS taken care of issues on it for me but that was 4 years ago.  I do not wish to fool with brass engine problems anymore (expensive, LACK of parts, fragile and often requiring a LOT of work) so this one I have is my LAST brass locomotive purchase but NO regrets.  The Lionel railsounds 4.0 system still works great in my Sunset 3rd Rail engine (it came with it) I can still feel the whistle blows, and chuffing by placing my fingers to "feel" the sounds on the top of the tender body when slowing moving so this has to be my BEST brass engine I ever had not as much mechanical work as needed to fix compared to at least 20 different brass engines (PFM, Westside models, key imports and early Sunset) I had.  The early "O" scale Sunset U.P. 4-12-2 has the WORSE plastic/small brass gear- gearbox of all this one is piece of JUNK !!!!

Tiffany

If these products were the same as they were "back in the day,' I'd never have returned to the hobby. I love the sound! Love the slow crawl capability. The smoke/puff synchronization.  Hate the attendant unreliability though.

Repairs? Being in Canada, one has to decide "is it even worth it to repair?" Shipping costs are horrendous on these heavy and somewhat fragile toys. And "will the repair stick," meaning will it really come back fixed? And stay fixed? Too many times that is a crapshoot.

I am well on the way to becoming adept at replacing ERR electronics. Never wanted or aspired to it, but it seemed the best "self defence" for me. But, for motors and the like, mechanical problems, I am pretty helpless.

All 12 of my engines are now "running." Several have "issues" though.

Despite what I consider a poor track record, I soldier on. My next engine, A Legacy CN F3 ships tomorrow.

clem k posted:

Boomer posted:

I moved into a new home in December 2015,I have been unpacking and testing locomotives over the course of several months. About 1/3 of the locomotives were bought new and the balance are bought new secondhand or gently used. Most everything I have is MTH Premierstarting in 1994-date and Lionel from 1999-date. The most reliable locomotives have been the MTH PS1,Weaver brass and Lionel TMCC locomotives. All were tested before storage (Batteries removed) and I've had ZERO problems with them. The next batch would be the MTH PS2 locomotives - I only had one go bad,a 20-3044 UP 4-8-4. The next batch would be the Lionel Legacy locomotives. All 40+ were working perfectly. Two had fixable issues after sitting for a few years. The worst batch would be the MTH PS3 - I've had issues with the "wireless" tethers on the steam locomotives,they just don't work that well,especially with arthritic hands. I have several of the 3rd rail brass locomotives - I bought two new that had "issues". The balance have been trouble free after lots of breaking in and adjustment. They are built to tighter tolerances,tend to be "fussy" but are well worth it. I also have some vintage two rail steam locomotives from US Hobbies/KTM. They are "robust" and wonderful runners. All in all I have about a 1-2% failure rate. Not bad for artisian or small specialized market items. 

Good morning Boomer........I think you summed it up very well.  Will you be at York this fall?

Clem k 

Clem,I am going to try if work doesn't interfere. I'd love to fill up the truck with trains again!

jim pastorius posted:

Not too sure of your comment " the business model is working".  While reading my collection of older CTT magazines I was stunned  by the number of  advertisers there were about 20 years ago  compared to today. .......................

My comment was directed at the importers, not the hobby shops.  Unless the importers see themselves unable to attract enough orders for the business to be viable (or they see it shrink enough they (or stockholders) say, "Oh, fudge, we need to turn this problem around!"), nothing will change.  In this respect, it's irrelevant where the customer gets the item from (LHS, amazon, Mail order, other internet, etc).

While I will not say that the importers are not doing anything to support LHSs (I am sure to an extent extent they are, but there are probably other areas where they are making things worse too), it's not the primary driving factor for their success.  Adding additional middlemen (many older stores that used to be able to deal direct were forced to distributors a few years ago, IIRC) to the process certainly makes it harder for stores to survive.

ChiTown Steve posted:

How many of these problems are due to buying online versus a hobby shop. At a hobby shop you can try the engine. If it fails you can get a different one out of stock. No harm no foul as far as the consumer is concerned.

That's a nice idea (and it is how I prefer to deal when possible too), but for items that are either BTO or just ordered in sufficient quantities to cover orders that's not always an option these days.  Back when there was a much smaller quantity/variety  of items made each year, I would agree with you, most shops would have spares of many items.  That was before there were many 100's of items in each of multiple catalogs each year though.   This is the bad part about all the variety offered, not a lot of spares available necessarily.  I've had a few items over the years (not too many, but several) where for one reason or another my ordered unit never made it to my dealer.  I had a challenge to pick up a few, because by the time it was obvious the item was not coming, it was hard to find another dealer with stock.

While not strictly a quality issue, there was an item a few years back that I wanted to make sure I got a good example of due to having all previous items in the series/set.  I ordered 2 of this item, figuring at worst case I would have 2 of them if both arrived in acceptable condition.  It turned out that somewhere along the way in shipping from China to my LHS, it almost looked like a forklift was driven into the box for one of the items.  Had I not ordered 2 of them, I would not have been able to just ask for a replacement, it would have been take the one with the destroyed box or nothing.  (I keep many of my trains boxed while not in use, so even though I operate, a functional box is important to me).

-Dave

Re title/post....Sounds like both.

Bad Karma + OTD (Obsessive Technological Disorder)

OTD.....expecting new technologies to be assimilated into the global mass-production (toy) industry without error, disruption, or learning curve on the part of manufacturer and consumer.  

But, of course that's just MHO......nothing more, nothing less.