I really like to hang on to or purchase if possible anything well made or over engineered, and made in the USA. I have retractable cord reels, Baldor bench grinders, and a large Emerson Electric fan, which date from the late 40's or 50's-- and I think even the belt is original on the fan. We made some GOOD stuff here in the good ole US of A. These old trains fall into that category. Made by people who cared that they made a quality product built to last. Now it is all about "increasing share holder value", and long term planning is four years at most, and cost cutting by laying off all the folks who knew what they were doing. Brain drain has already happened, manufacturing expertise, things like "rules of thumb" are lost, and we can't even go back if we wanted to. Look at Eastman Kodak. Really bothers me....
Rant over... (for now...)
Without getting into a thread offline, we also made a lot of crap in the USA back in the day, shortsightedness, shareholder value, were all alive and well back then, too , and not everything modern is crap, modern cars by any measure are infinitely superior to what was made back in the 1950's, the peak of the post war Lionel period, for example. I don't even know how reliable Lionel trains were per se, when you make as many as they did, the ones that survive are the ones that were the best built; we don't know how many were DOA back then, we don't know how many fell apart. The fact that they were simple means they were a lot more tolerant, that is for sure, and could be repaired easily.
Post war lionel trains were built as toys, they were rugged technology designed to take what kids could dish out. The open frame motors could take a short, and outside that everything was relatively simple, operating accessories were delightful rube goldbergs, the whistles and horns were simple electro-mechanical gizmos. They had little detail on them, most of what was on there was relatively tough and could easily be replaced (among other things, thanks to the fact that the units were made in large numbers, and they used the same technology on a wide variety of cars, because these were not scale detail units, they could use the same mechanicals across a wide variety of models, and parts were therefore available, too (not to mention over the years third party firms making parts).
Modern Lionel and others trains tend to be more scale like or scale, they are not rugged toys. They have sophisticated electronic controls, they have tiny scale details, scale paint jobs, and it shows in the price and also the frailty of them. They are also made in small numbers, and as a result they are more akin to customized building, which tends to be a lot less reliable, despite what people think. Modern cars are sophisticated, more sophisticated then toy trains, yet they last a lot longer. Part of this is that quality is something expected of cars, because of competition and the fact that quality became something people wanted/looked for (if you keep car for a couple of years, you don't care it will fall apart at 30k miles, if you want to keep it a long time, you want it to last 200k miles). With the 3 rail O trains these days, we are in the position where it is a small market, the items are sophisticated, and there is not the economic reasons to build them with quality, no one competes on quality. Because the order size is so small for these, it also means parts are not exactly out there in abundance, and unlike the old post war they aren't interchangeable, a board that works in one vision engine won't work in another one likely. Because these boards are custom, and rely on custom code, it isn't like a third party can easily fix them or duplicate them. Not necessarily uncaring or where they are built, it is simply the dynamics of this market, as upsetting as it can be.
As far as the prices between 1985 and today, some of that needs to be looked at in terms of inflation (ie what 100 in 1985 was worth today), some of it reflects dropping demand as the baby boomers have moved on who were the big clients, but there is another reason. In 1985 the collecting mania for 'old things' had hit Lionel, post war prices went through the roof because collector mania decided Lionel post war was another 'hot' market (it was a collecting bubble in other words), and that like most bubbles it burst. Post war has returned like most things, where collectability is based on condition (ie not retouched, in mint shape in the original box) and being rare/scarce, like any other collectible. It means that the post war we buy to run them only have value as much as we want to pay, and that causes prices to be more realistic (well, at least what they should be, now you know why you see things like someone wanting a ridiculous amount for a common post war train, someone still seeing 'gold in them thar hills). Over time some of the stuff we run might become more valuable as time passes and there simply are less and less of them available, but likely down the road it is going to be the rare and untouched examples that have the real value, same as today, it is how collectibles work in general. With that said, best to enjoy the trains, run them, have fun with them, and hope in the end that the joy you got out of them was worth whatever you paid for it, and whatever they are worth in the end, is a plus .
