Disappointing Lionel Parts Order

$70 doesn't buy what it used to. Have you contacted Lionel?

Just took it out of the plastic bag. I'm going to send them an email.

@J.Dooley posted:

This is a $70 "new" replacement smoke unit I just purchased direct from LionelSupport.com. 🫤

Disappointing, to say the least.

Perhaps it was from one of the factory sample units.  Was it the last one they had?

@Sean's Train Depot posted:

Perhaps it was from one of the factory sample units.  Was it the last one they had?

I just put 50 in my cart and it was ready to let me check out, so I'm guessing there are plenty in stock. 😂 Clearly, it's been powered on, probably for a good bit of time. It came in the little plastic bag just like everything else from the Lionel Parts Store, so no idea.

It's not at all uncommon to get used parts from Lionel.  Most of the parts come from teardowns of returned or damaged locomotives.  I have a second RCMC that I'm going to return again, the original and this one both had HS compound on the bridge, so clearly they were used.  The first one was really wonky in the motor drive, this replacement just zorches the smoke unit with double power all the time!  It's binary, on or off, no smoke volume control from the CAB2.  I must admit it was impressive, but since this is a diesel, I don't want quite that impressive.

Lionel is not the company it once was.