Is Lionel Winning You Over...?

Bachmann is winning me over....

Nope.

 

3rd Rail will if the Seaboard E7 is actually delivered, then try to obtain a 3rd Rail K2a.

I've been won over, with the Legacy remote, Lionel sounds and features, i just dont see a reason why i would buy any other product.

My last three engines have all been Lionel Legacy models. I think their sounds are beyond what anyone else is offering. My last engine, a Legacy GP7 had a severe wobbling issue. It was sent back to Lionel, but that didn't fix the problem. They refunded my money. I will likely use it on one of the newly announced NW2 models. I wouldn't say they've won me over, but they are putting points on the board.

Lionel has always been number 1 in my book. I own almost every brand of loco but MTH. Lionel is, was, and always will be the king of 3 rail.

Competition is great. First MTH out does Lionel.  Then Lionel ups their game and eventually out does MTH.  MTH will come back with a better product.  We the consumers win and have more choices.  Weaver is doing great right now with their new products.  Bachmann  is starting to get Williams in gear with some interesting product.  Atlas will soon be back also.

I buy from whom ever builds what I am personally interested in.  I have bought from all of them.

Dan

MUEagle, I would think you would have a bunch of those Weaver Milwaukee Rib-side box cars on order.

Agreed.  Who ever makes the best toy I'm interested in wins! Competition is good.

I'm the ultimate equal opportunity purchaser as most of what I buy is tinplate stuff from the joint Lionel-MTH venture producing Lionel Corporation Tinplate.

 

However, I will say that I think the latest Lionel catalog is one of their best in recent years. They seem to have stepped up their game.

I'm with you Chris,
That's why I'm so excited Bachmann is now in bed with Soundtraxx. This could have the potential to be industry changing news. When it come to competition those guys don't play.

David

Lionel won me over when I was 6...58 years ago.

 

Doug

I'm with BucksCo, Bachmann is the company that has won me over  I just got the new Lionel catalogs and they offer nothing I want in my price range, Bachmann does.  Lionel sells some really nice high end trains!

MU EAGLE  you couldn't of said it better, the same thing happened

to me first it was all Lionel then MTH came into the picture and I

started with them and now I'm totally back to Lionel. There sounds

are just incredible, and legacy is fantastic. I still like MTH also but

I'm into steam engine's and they haven't had any thing to offer

for quite a while, not only that I had so much on order with MTH

and I waited for almost 2 years, sorry I can't wait anymore.

MTH is a great company but I think there focus is in other area's

 

THANKS, ALEX

I don't have a 50 year perspective to share, nor did I have a loyalty to Lionel fostered during my childhood.  I purchased my first engine, a Lionel Vision Line engine, 3 years ago for the features.  The sounds, the "bells and whistles", the Legacy OS-specifically the unbelievable realism of the engine under acceleration and braking really impressed me. 

 

But, what won me over and has made me a loyal Lionel customer has been the customer service.  I have not always had the best of luck with brand new engines.  Each time I received a problematic engine either a refund or speedy service was provided to me.  If not for Mike R. and his dept, I don't know that I would have hung in there with Lionel.  He does not make the problems but he sure does fix them.  This means a lot to me, and that is why I will continue to buy Lionel engines.

My last six engines have been 4 Lionel and two 3rd rail. To put it simply The other manufactures are giving me what I want and MTH has not. I have four engines on order with MTH some as much as 3 years old. Lionel will get anther engine ordered shortly and I will order the Harbor belt Genset from MTH if it looks good, I have not seen it as of now, I went to a local hobby shop here in DC but they did not have the new catalog, The owner was very upset about it.

In this small apartment in DC there is no room for a layout so I no place to run trains other then a small loop of track so I do not spend time on trains as I have had  in the past. I recently decided to build a model of the Arizona to kill some time and I found I am enjoying it. MTH got me back into the o Gauge market with the scale trains and the lack of fair priced trains. Now the pricing and availability of them and the trains I like to see is put me on a hiadouse of sorts on O gauge. I went back to model building to fit the gap  until this O gauge hobby get it act together again. 

I am glade to see Williams back in the scale trains again, hopefully they will be a major player here in the future of O gauge.

What I am trying to say is there is a lot of other hobbies out there to take my money. I will still be involved in O gauge and still will build my big layout when the new house is finished but I am not waiting on MTH or any other manufactures whims. I have more then enough trains to last two life times so I am good with what I got.

John

Although I own more high end Lionel steamers  by more than 4 to 1 than any other make in my collection, Lionel is now one of my last choices. Their lack of quality control leads the pack as I see it. Post after post on this form makes it obvious they have work to do. Repeatedly having to send back high end engines to get them right and then posting what great service Lionel has does not leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling. New Vision features are great, but some have been put into production without through testing. I have the Vision Challenger and five Legacy diesels with a few minor problems. I'm not going to push my luck. The thought of putting my 1500 dollar challenger in the hands of UPS is not heart warming. My MTH  and Weaver products  have all been excellent. The release of the new MTH PS3 board, with the ability to do dc,dcc,dcs, marlin and two other European command systems with no tach reader and improved sounds  may prove to be the best all around system in the future, we shall see. I just purchased the 3rd rail 2900 Santa Fe Northern. Looking forward to this engine as their reputation precedes them.

 

                                                                               JG

Won over by Lionel in 1973.  Went to HO in my teens.  N scale in my twenties.  Won back over to Lionel with the Polar Express set.  Enjoyed the low cost of RMT and Williams.  Liked the detail of MTH, but the likeness soured with that clinking and clanking!  Won over yet again by Lionel Legacy sound and detail.  Currently selling off the Williams and MTH to fund more Legacy diesels.  I've always like the color orange.

 

John,

 

Do consider joining the National Capital Trackers (www.trackers2010.org), lending a hand and running some trains. I think you would enjoy it!

 

As for the subject, my first train set was a Lionel set but now I'm a die-hard MTH person and MTH is all I purchase when it comes to engines and pretty much all I purchase rolling stock wise. Same goes for structures. I used to run TMCC on my old layout as well and now Lionel and Legacy has become more and more tempting to me and while I have tried Legacy a few times, I would like to get a Legacy engine and Legacy command set someday in the future. 

 

If I had to say it, I would say I'm loyal to MTH since I got back into O gauge with a Lionel and MTH RTR set and continued to build onto the MTH collection simply because I like the features and slow speed performance. 

My signature says it all.........

Same here. The tipping point was in the 0-27 Alcos, specifically the recent Lionel Jersey Central Alcos I purchased: light weight, sloppy paint job, just OK. I had previously purchased several WBB 0-27 Alcos and was impressed by the heft, weight, pulling power, and paint job.

 

If WBB can do a decent job, why not the Lion?

 

Best,  Mark

John...you really should consider the National Capital Trackers. We drool trains, they ooze from our pores...and many of us count down the days until York! We're local and do a lot in the DC area. We have a meeting coming up here in Fairfax, Virginia.

 

Why don't you come? You'll meet a lot of great people who will help you get plugged into the area.

 

Matt likes the B & O, I drool the Milwaukee Road and Northern Pacific. But its a great place to be!

 

 

Only Lionel can make PWC and CC stuff, although in a very few cases, others have

actually made some improvements.  I'm really excited about the big IC F3 A-B set

this year.  Now the WBB 027 Alcos are better than those offered by Lionel, but

this is a rare instance of the Lion being out-postwarred by someone else. Back

in the early '90s, Custom Trains (MTH) actually out did the Lionel FM Train Master,

but again, this is the exception.

I predominantly buy 3 rail O Scale New York Central Steam Locomotives. I grew up on Lionel and became an adult hobbyist when I rediscovered Lionel in the late 70's.

 

There was a period of time, after the Richard Kughn era, when the stuff coming from Lionel was pure crap...it ran like crap, sounded like crap. At that time I started buying MTH and became enamored with PS-2. I have many and love them all.

 

But Lionel has won me back with the introduction of Legacy. They run great and, IMO, they have surpassed MTH PS-2 in sound. I enjoy using the Legacy system. I will say that if and when MTH offers American prototype steamers again, most likely with an improved PS-3, I am likely to buy them as well.

 

I have no brand allegiance, but at this point in time, because of what Lionel has done and MTH is not doing, I would have to say Lionel has won me over.

I have always been Lionel first, but between all that is happening with Williams, and this new starter set remote system from Lionel, that loyalty is coming into question...

I'm a Lionel guy.  But I have bought MTH (and was soundly [pun] burned...clank) and I write no checks to MTH now.  Lionel currently offers the best all around value (yes, some Lionel is expensive) throughout their product line.  The Vision Line is simply without peer in the toy train industry today.

I buy what I like but with MTH's lack of American steam there is no doubt that Lionel is taking advantage of that. 

I've been very happy with my Lionels. Course I'm easy to please.

Whoever makes what appeals to me wins me over.  The color of the box it comes in means little to nothing to me.

 

I third the motion. I'll be at the meeting thursday... if you need the room to run trains, the trackers can certainly provide it.

I'm sticking with MTH.  Every one of the 15 engines I have bought from MTH has worked right out of the box.  Of the two that developed minor problems later, they were repaired and returned to me a week later through my LHS, with no hassles.  The attention to detail and realism of MTH products is very appealing to me, and the DCS system is easy to use, with an abundance of features that takes advantage of today's electronic wizardry.  I think the competition between Lionel and MTH have given us some great products to choose from.

My answer to the main question is: partly, slowly, sort of maybe. I have been buying a Lionel engine every couple of years at most, simply because Lionel seldom makes anything I want. Plus, I've had a lot of minor but annoying problems with the few Lionel engines I have bought in the past few years. Plus, I find a lot to dislike in Legacy. The controller has the ergonomics of a brick, it is far less convenient to use than DCS, and it has that silly bar graph display for speed because Lionel wasn't able to get around Mike's patents on digital SMPH readouts. I found it hard to imagine that anything could be less intuitive or user-friendly than DCS, but Lionel managed it with Legacy. 

 

I recently bought the Milwaukee Road S-3 Northern and my experience with that was the best I have had with Lionel in years. Leaving aside the red Mars light fiasco and the wimpy output of the cylinder steam feature, the basic loco is nicely detailed, runs very well, has great sound, smokes properly (finally,a Lionel engine with decent smoke) and offers excellent value for money. I was also impressed by the fact that both Mike R and Jon Z participated in the discussions on this forum and provided some genuinely useful information. Around the same time I had occasion to use Lionel's new online parts ordering system and it worked remarkably well. All of this has gone a long way to improve a deeply ingrained dislike of Lionel. I'm not ordering anything from the current catalog - again, just nothing in there I want - but I'm quite a bit more likely to consider it than I would have been a couple of years ago. 

 

I still much prefer the MTH product line. More variety, I like DCS better, and I really like the new Euro stuff. Haven't bought any yet, but I'm getting there. On the other hand, the MTH parts problem keeps getting worse, while Lionel has made great strides in fixing theirs. 

 

So, as always, it's a mixed bag. Lionel has certainly raised their game in the past couple of years. I still rate Weaver on top, for their really superb customer support and for making more Milwaukee Road steam than all the others put together. Yes, their brass engines can be troublesome, but I have confidence that I can pick up the phone and Gary will sort it out for me, and that I can get owner Joe Hayter on the phone if I really have to. That means a lot. Hopefully Lionel will continue to improve and MTH will decide to stock parts, then we will all be happier. 

I like what Lionel offers with legacy and their new gp9's should be marvelous . I have become a huge fan of yoders brass rolling stock ($$- but worth it). Pure art and just a supreme expression of the car. Scott Mann is my choice for steam and if he did more diesel I would order. I am thrilled Lionel is going more toward scale; should have happened sooner... Also a plug for Peterson supply ( atlas)--- great people and trains.

I hope MTH gets their act together concerning parts. I still favor them over Lionel but if they don`t I`ll look elsewhere for locomotives. I`ve had good luck with Atlas O, Weaver and 3rd rail. I have had some problems with Lionel and I think they are over priced but if they offer something I can`t live without, I will buy it in a flash. Perhaps this forum will prod MTH to get its act together.

I am fast becoming addicted to Lionel Corporation TinPlate.

 

I get classic, pre-war trains, which look like original Lionel or Flyer, but have modern MTH quality.  It does not make any difference to me that they are badged for Lionel or MTH, I know they are MTH underneath.

My heart has always been with Lionel, 1910-1932 Standard and O-Gauge tinplate.

In answer to your question - Is Lionel winning you over? - I'd have to say about 20 years ago.

 

Personally, while I bought a fair number of MTH products when they were just starting out, over a short period of time I realized that MTH products just didn't excite me. Somehow, to me, MTH items just didn't have any soul.

 

Lionel has consistently had at least 60% of the entire O gauge market for years. They dominate now, as they always have. I like the history and the nostagia of the company (grew up in the Postwar age), and the people who were involved with it, including Neil Young. As for their products, they were just more fulfilling to me. 

 

I can't even begin to afford all the Lionel items I'd like, so I really don't shop others much. I've run TMCC for years and now Legacy. When MTH went its own way with their no-share proprietary DCS system, that pretty much canned them for me anyway. I also didn't want to have to read a book to learn how to use DCS.

In a word, no.

Lionel still has me won over. I feel that they have been improving their product line for some time now. I really have fallen in love with the Legacy system. Can't wait until I have somewhere to run my trains. I have only owned a few MTH engines but I have operated many MTH engines (not my own) and they have performed very well and this was before I started buying trains again. And since then almost every train that I have purchased has been Lionel. Granted I have encountered some problems with some engines but Lionel's service has been great and fast. And credit should give to Mike and his team for the wonderful service that they are performing.

 

At this past York, Lionel was showing their new remote Thomas set. And I must say that I believe this is going to take them in a great direction. For everyone that was there if you just walked past the Thomas setup and thought it was just another Thomas train, you were wrong. This Thomas set will be $169 and look at the features you will get. A very small electric adapter that plugs right into a wall socket and the other end plugs right into a section of Fastrack delivering 18 volts to the track. A Thomas engine that has the electronics similar to the Legacy. The engine has the chugging sound, bell & whistle and this can be controlled by a small hand held remote made for a child and it also controls the engine going forward and reverse. The engine was pulling about 8 cars and I was shocked at how slow the engine could go pulling the cars at a creep with no hesitation at all. They said that they have intentions of putting this into some future starter sets. And I asked about what would happen if the child put the train on a regular layout and they said that it can run along side of Legacy engines with the use of it's hand held controller that it comes with. Also that you can run it with your Legacy trains since both the trains are running on the 18 volts. Also each different engine they make with this new system will have a separate different signal so that they run independent of each other. And all of this for just $165.

     

And now with Lionel announcing the production of some trains here in the US, I feel Lionel is moving ahead.

 

Paul

I don't buy trains based on manufacturer (I have had good success with all and have examples from all), but buy based on the model itself and the road name.

To this very day, I still have no idea how my parents were able to scrape together enough money to buy me that Lionel Santa Fe F3 set 50 years ago. Believe me when I say they were no where near 'well off' - so I know now their gift came with abundant sacrifice elsewhere. It was a perfect moment in time captured in the aura of a Lionel train set.

 

When I got back into the hobby, Lionel coincidentally had just released the 2343 Conventional Classic - and it was my first purchase. Today, it is proudly displayed 24x7 as a focal point in my living room. And while I know everybody else makes the same model - this set HAD to be Lionel to make the connection complete.

 

That said, I really appreciate the overall simplicity and durability of Williams. And - being a guy who has never owned a store bought computer (build my own) - I feel much more at ease in experimenting with third party components within the Williams brand. And while I do own other Lionel engines - I guess I'm just not rabidly inclined to change the integrity of the 'original' design. It's a Lionel.