Lionel Engine Issues

Lately I’ve been reading Lionel owners having issues with Lionel locomotives a lot

Sorry to hear about your bad experience with Lionel, Jim and totally understand your frustrations.   For the price of these locomotives, you expect things to be right.  Imagine if we purchased a lawn mower for example, and it came with as many failures! And then you send it back for warranty work and they deliver it back 2 months later, still broken and even worse than what you started with?  The brand would collapse.   

Somehow our hobby has come to accept this lower quality at a high price, and the reason is that there is simply no good competition.  I wonder what Lionel's actual failure rate on their locomotives is?  All I hear lately is problem after problem. But it would be interested to see, for example, per 100 locomotives, how many of them have issues?  Considering that Jim received two bad ones in a row of different types, you have to come to the conclusion that it cannot be that good of a failure/defect rate. Don't get me wrong,  I am not trying to put down Lionel, as I generally really like their product when it is produced as promised,  but instead what I would like to see from Lionel is and improvement of quality and transparency.   I am just wanting Lionel to take action like every one else here wants them to do!

Thanks for sharing Jim J.  Come on Lionel,  step up to the plate and talk to us on the forum and keep us posted on your quality initiatives and how you plan to improve the quality of the delivered product as well as your warranty repairs.  Being transparent and communicating with your customers would go a long way!     Be up front with us about what is occurring with the quality lately.  Explain to your customers on why the quality has gone down even though the prices keep going up and what are the plans to improve on this poor quality? Get your repair shop people more help and training if that is what is necessary to get successful repairs performed in a timely manner.  No one should have to wait TWO months to get their defective locomotive repaired considering the prices you charge for a new locomotive. 

I have a (6) Lionel locomotives on order right now and reading about the failures on the NEW Lionel locomotives does not make me feel too confident about Lionel's ability to deliver. 

We purchase NEW to enjoy a good quality product with minimum to no hassle and agree to pay these very high prices in order to receive what is advertised.  If I wanted to tinker, I would purchase used and at a greatly reduced price.   I think the expectation when buying a New product is to get a product that is in New and proper working order and in New cosmetic condition as well.    That is why the price of a locomotive can start in the High 500s, and 600s.  They are priced like that because of the detail and complexity, and we understand that the production numbers may not be huge.  However remember, these things are priced like a good dishwasher or lawn mower. $500 to $1800 price range.  We should expect and demand the same kind of quality, on an item that is similar in complexity in many ways yet much cheaper to ship to the customer without damage. 

Rory

Thanks Nick and Rory.  I’m not upset it took 2 months, but after that long I expect it to come back fixed AND not with NEW issues.  It’s bad enough to get an engine that is DOA, but when service makes it worse, it’s very frustrating.

I would hazard a guess given the way these are put together and by whom, that their fail rate is probably pretty high. You can't go by forum posts because of course those with problems are the ones you see, but if their fail rate was low quite honestly we shouldn't see the number of complaint threads we see on here, that is not the hallmark of a well made product, especially one with relatively low numbers (if I was on a forum where they complained about let's say LG OLED tv sets, where they sell millions of them and saw a lot of complaints, that makes sense, but with something made in small quantities and on a small slice of that base ie this forum?)

And looking at what I can glean from what I see on here and from what I have heard from people in person, it is a classic case study from when I was getting an advanced degree in the field. This is an example where the cost of quality (that to a quality assurance person represents the cost of low quality ie the cost to fix things under warranty, loss of customer faith and other issues) doesn't affect the cost of quality as measured by beancounters and the like (cost of quality=cost of actually producing the item where it is a quality item, is reliable, does what it says, etc).   GM was like that, when they had like 50% of the US market, they had horrible quality  by modern thoughts, but didn't care. The cost of (low) quality didn't matter because they had their 50% market share, and the 'cost of quality' was often born by the customer and the dealer (warranty repairs are a burden to dealers, car or otherwise, they are not paid the full cost of the repair but have to do it as part of being a dealer). They never improved how they made the cars, didn't care about bad parts from the vendor unless they couldn't mount them on the car (and even then mostly tossed them in the scrap bin)......and like these trains, it is because there wasn't any competition on quality (hint, Ford GM Chrysler et all were all poor quality).

Even today when you bring up the cost of quality, the first thing many finance types is whine about how expensive it is to improve quality, it isn't worth it, etc. The reality is in this market is that there is no cost to low quality to the makers, they really don't care, and we the consumer are faced with either buying them and dealing with the poor quality (either in waiting months to get it back, or having to tinker ourselves) , or not buying them and doing something else (maybe another scale, or going postwar/pre all the bells and whistles).

People have said that quality on the old lionel stuff (MPC I Know was poor),the post war stuff, was likely not all that great (especially given consumer products in general weren't great by today's standards), but back then you had a lot of service stations (kind of like car dealerships) and places that could fix them, parts were easy to get and replace. Lionel trains today were kind of like having what was in the 60's exotic, specifically a foreign car, few places to fix it, parts often had to be shipped in from overseas, and you kind of grinned and bore it. What we are faced with today is what someone buying a Maserati or Jag in the 60's faced. For the record, I don't think that quality has suddenly gone downhill, I think it has been poor all along but between engines getting more complex, and the service side being decimated (the fact that Lionel , let alone MTH, has 0 training for service people says a lot), it is a lot more evident how bad it is.

My take on this is Lionel is caught between a rock and the Great Wall Of China. All their tooling is in China so it belongs to China not Lionel. China at this point has nothing to lose by letting quality slip. As you can see **** near everything we have availible to buy comes from China.  Lionel like many other companies who moved their production there won't/can't spend the money it would take to completely retool in another country let alone here in America. Cost is also going up because the shipping has been hijacked by China as well. Lionel has most likely raised the cost so much in part to cover the cost of repairs by the QC behind the great wall. As long as we keep buying things won't change.

DK

@Dan Kenny posted:

As long as we keep buying things won't change.

DK

Bingo.

Mark in Oregon

I read these posts and on one hand I am dismayed because I feel for the people having these issues and agree it shouldn't happen.  On the other hand, I say to myself that if Lionel quality is as bad as we are to believe from posts such as this, they would have alienated all their high-end customers by this point.  Which leads me to believe the problems are there, but perhaps (1) over-represented on this forum; and (2) stem from the extensive amount of shipping used today with the train hobby.

On the latter, for what it is worth, when I was a kid and my dad was "in charge" of things like train repairs, he would never ship them, even when the shop to get a specific repair (or in one case, a restoration) was quite a distance away.  I remember him saying, "you don't ship trains, they get damaged."  And that was then, when O gauge locos were less detailed and more robust / toy like.  

So I don't want to make excuses, but one thing I do now, and I have found it has cut my aggravation substantially, is to buy at York and a few local dealers we have (one in particular that also handles repairs expertly).  That dealer is mostly MTH, but my guess is that my luck, and yours, would also be substantially better if you took UPS, USPS, and FedEx out of the equation.

Good luck getting any other issues you have resolved.

True, but there's also the trip from Asia to here in the first place; not an issue back when your dad was fixing this stuff, I bet.

Having said that, it appears that the Korean- built Samhongsa era items seem to show less issues...and Korea, last time I checked, is in Asia, so I dunno what the answer is to this dilemma...

Mark in Oregon

@Strummer posted:

True, but there's also the trip from Asia to here in the first place; not an issue back when your dad was fixing this stuff, I bet.

Having said that, it appears that the Korean- built Samhongsa era items seem to show less issues...and Korea, last time I checked, is in Asia, so I dunno what the answer is to this dilemma...

Mark in Oregon

All fair points.  I am just trying to find a coherent explanation other than to conclude that Lionel's quality control is as bad as some of these posts suggest.  I just cannot believe it would be that bad, or there is no such thing as market discipline.  

@Dan Kenny posted:

My take on this is Lionel is caught between a rock and the Great Wall Of China. All their tooling is in China so it belongs to China not Lionel. China at this point has nothing to lose by letting quality slip. As you can see **** near everything we have availible to buy comes from China.  Lionel like many other companies who moved their production there won't/can't spend the money it would take to completely retool in another country let alone here in America. Cost is also going up because the shipping has been hijacked by China as well. Lionel has most likely raised the cost so much in part to cover the cost of repairs by the QC behind the great wall. As long as we keep buying things won't change.

DK

Don't blame Lionel quality control in China is what you pay for, the Chinese make what you ask at the price point you request. issues fall fully on Lionel.

@Ray Lombardo posted:

I read these posts and on one hand I am dismayed because I feel for the people having these issues and agree it shouldn't happen.  On the other hand, I say to myself that if Lionel quality is as bad as we are to believe from posts such as this, they would have alienated all their high-end customers by this point.  Which leads me to believe the problems are there, but perhaps (1) over-represented on this forum; and (2) stem from the extensive amount of shipping used today with the train hobby.

On the latter, for what it is worth, when I was a kid and my dad was "in charge" of things like train repairs, he would never ship them, even when the shop to get a specific repair (or in one case, a restoration) was quite a distance away.  I remember him saying, "you don't ship trains, they get damaged."  And that was then, when O gauge locos were less detailed and more robust / toy like.  

So I don't want to make excuses, but one thing I do now, and I have found it has cut my aggravation substantially, is to buy at York and a few local dealers we have (one in particular that also handles repairs expertly).  That dealer is mostly MTH, but my guess is that my luck, and yours, would also be substantially better if you took UPS, USPS, and FedEx out of the equation.

Good luck getting any other issues you have resolved.

I use to sell it in my store , and was not impressed!  But when you dont have much in the way of competition,  you can read on the forum,  what kind of customer service , and products  they offer

We've all seen the old black and white videos of the Lionel workers, checking the performance of locos, etc before they leave the factory.

I can only guess that doesn't happen once the products reach our shores? Where do they go once they come off the ships? If they all go to Lionel HQ, do they not get inspected?

Or do they go directly to the dealers? I'm guessing the dealers check, if asked; and I bet they do (get asked).

I can imagine checking everything is time consuming and costly, but so are repairs and unhappy customers.

Again, I'm just wondering.

Mark in Oregon

@Strummer posted:

We've all seen the old black and white videos of the Lionel workers, checking the performance of locos, etc before they leave the factory.

I can only guess that doesn't happen once the products reach our shores? Where do they go once they come off the ships? If they all go to Lionel HQ, do they not get inspected?

Or do they go directly to the dealers? I'm guessing the dealers check, if asked; and I bet they do (get asked).

I can imagine checking everything is time consuming and costly, but so are repairs and unhappy customers.

Again, I'm just wondering.

Mark in Oregon

The problem is that inspections don't guarantee quality. Talking here more about an engine not working or failing right after you get it. Without writing a book how you make something is about quality, inspections miss a ton of things, if they do them at all. Things like marginal parts, boards not seated right, cold solder joints can be hanging by a thread.

As far as market discipline, there isn't any. There is no competition, no Toyota or Honda showing how bad GM cars were in the day. In 3 rail O it is like the US auto industry in the 50s, quality simply wasnt a concern to any of them, in 3 rail O it isn't either. The concept of cost of quality is if poor quality costs you in terms of customers and sales you fix it, if it doesn't you don't.

It is funny, you see ppl in these threads denying there is a problem, they never had any issues, or ' it is the fault of the buyers'. It was like that w the US auto industry, ppl would be GM guys and deny their cars were crap or would, like w 3 rail O, fix defects themselves and act like it was normal.

W trains though it is unlikely there will be better quality and given that they can sell out runs or get 2k for a bto engine,not gonna change. The trains are built the way things were in the 50s, not today, 0 concept of lean production or kaizan that is for sure.

@bigkid posted:

1. The problem is that inspections don't guarantee quality. Talking here more about an engine not working or failing right after you get it. Without writing a book how you make something is about quality, inspections miss a ton of things, if they do them at all. Things like marginal parts, boards not seated right, cold solder joints can be hanging by a thread.

2. As far as market discipline, there isn't any.

1. I understand that but (like in the case in another recent post about a truck falling off as it was removed from the box for the first time), that's going to happen regardless of who's the first person to remove it from the box, be it inspector or purchaser. A defective item is a defective item, regardless of who sees it first, right?

2. Bingo.  👍 As I've mentioned before,it seems the two most common topics often seen are: "what are you buying from the new catalog" and: "poor quality control"(often from the same brand).

As long as there's enough people willing to purchase the newest thing (regardless of QC issues) then you are right: there's no reason to improve.

I'm glad I'm not affluent enough to play in that league...I think. 🙂

Mark in Oregon

How many of  these problems would we know about before the internet? Here at our convenience we can complain about every thing and any thing when ever we want. I do not think the net killed local dealers but it did not help.

The days of Lionel,Gilbert or Marx owned or managed by their founders is long gone and with it the vested interest in product quality and dealer success .

I am glad my train buying days are winding down!

Gunny

Gunny:

I don't think poor quality and our need to discuss quality issues has anything to do with the internet now available  as a communication platform.  Sure, the internet medium has given us the opportunity to be able to compare our experiences, be good or bad.   At the same time, many here talk about how really happy they are with certain trains they just purchased and other great things.  Many members here have helped me troubleshoot and fix issues that I have on my trains and that is awesome.    I own many trains from all manufacturers that were good right out of the box and have others that had to go back for major repairs new out of the box and many that I could correct by following the instructions of a helpful forum member.    I remember when I was 13 years old, writing to Lionel to get my brand new train fixed, (C&O Hudson) and I had no maw and paw hobby shop to go to as I lived overseas in the Canal Zone while my dad worked on the Panama Canal.  I certainly did not have the internet.  Instead, everything was done by mail in those days unless you had access to a nice hobby shop which I did not.  The closest hobby shop to me was Orange Blossom Hobbies in Miami, and that was a 2.5 hour international flight. The next closest one that I had mail contact through a magazine ad was Maury D Klein in Chapel Hill NC. (Eventually became K-Line Trains)  Nope, I could not have made it via bicycle.  Some how I get the impression that you think that back then, in the 1970s and before, everything was perfect, and there was no problems.  Not true and not even close.  Yes things were simpler, and hobby shops could fix things easier, but the quality issues sometimes were still there even though the product was simpler in every way possible. 

But to go back to the topic about current product quality expectations, I think this is a very good discussion and we are just wishing that Lionel up their quality of their imported product.  Sure, maybe we can stop buying the stuff, but like most LLCs, they will move to the next product if there is no one purchasing what they have for sale and we will be left with no new product. So we are in a catch 22 situation.  So we purchase based on what the Catalog promises knowing that the quality may or may not be there and hope for the best, or we buy nothing and have no other options.  IN the meantime we hope that Lionel does read these posts and strive to improve their quality. With that said, they do produce some nice models, even though some may  come with difficulties, I will say it is awesome looking product.   Also, comparing Post War Lionel, AF or Marx to the trains that are offered today is not a really good comparison as the product complexity has gone up exponentially as well as the detail.   If you want to compare Post War Lionel, AF or Marx, Set them next to Williams, which I own many of and you will find that quality improved with time.

In the mean time, enjoy your trains!     

Rory     

I have no doubt  Lionel "knows" they have quality control issues. Why do you think the warranty starts at the date of manufacture and not at the date of sale. Even though sometimes it takes months to get the product after manufacturer. Narrow's the window of responsibility.

This is why I wish there was an option to buy kits.  Less likely to be damaged in shipping when heavy parts are separated from delicate ones AND I can guarantee you that I won’t strip a screw for a $1000 locomotive I just paid for.

That said, the QC problems are still inexcusable with the cheapo warranty they give you.