Lionel HQ & Warehouse Tour!

Wow, @will2926, Will, great review, great pictures, looks like Lionel is showing all of the LCCA Members a grand time a “Truly Memorable Tour”  and I wish I could have attended. Have fun and enjoy the LCCA Convention in Concord, the best train club on planet earth. Happy Railroading Everyone

Thanks Will - we're heading up tomorrow from Charleston - doing the Friday morning AC&W train ride/tour - can't wait

The Lionel tour was really great!

cool tour

was anything said regarding the lionchief dash 8s particularly the santa fe autorack set?

Great report and nifty pictures! Thanks.

Did anyone ask some questions? For example:

1. Is the parts situation going to be improved upon and when? OK, they have 1 million parts but the support of past product is, shall we say, limited.

2. Are there plans to alternatively source some production and (possibly) repatriate more than a limited number of pieces of rolling stock?

3. Could there be a successor to the Legacy 990 Cab 2?

4. Although the LCCA does not have much emphasis on American Flyer (It is, nonetheless, a Lionel product.), are there any product plans to pull AF out of its ditch?

Again, thanks for the nice report.

Bob

Great report Will. I'm very interested in joining the LCCA. It sounds like a great club with great events!

John

I watched this last night and enjoyed it.  I've been to the warehouse sales quite a few times and was impressed with the size of the place.

Thanks will. Watched last night and very insightful. Thanks again for filming the whole tour.

Thanks for sharing, Will. I watched it yesterday. Great tour!

Happy Sunday everyone! With the 2023 LCCA Convention completed I have one word to describe it, Incredible! This was my first LCCA convention and I recently joined on Wednesday for the tour! My video is now online and I hope everyone enjoys the Tour of Lionel LLC! Thank you again Lionel and LCCA!!! Happy Railroading!

Cool vid, I liked the glimpse of the upcoming I1 Decapod. I still don’t understand what’s going on with their paint and color selection though.

Great video of the tour, almost as good as being there.  Thanks!

Norm, I was at the convention too, I did a Lionel tour at a different time than Will. I brought up the subject of paint. Ryan said they have people who do paint and do research on the colors, there are a lot of factors that go into what we see as far as colors, in old photos what type of film is used, is it faded, on a computer just using a different brightness for your screen than I use affects how we see the colors. Also different chemicals used over the decades such as lead can make the paint different shades. Lionel sends physical samples of paint back and forth to the factory in China instead of a computer. If you or anybody else can get accurate paint samples, Lionel said to contact them and they will tell you how to send it to them. Here is a sample of a new kind of paint they are going to start using called flash coat paint.

They have painted their own products correctly in the not too distant past only to reissue them more recently in outlandish shades. PRR GLa hoppers are one example, first few batches were pretty good, later batches looked like someone went at it with crayons.

I sure hope that “flash coat paint”, which looks like hot wheels metallic blue paint isn’t really going to be the color of the new Lionel Dreyfus’s Hudson. If it is, I’m canceling mine! YIKES!😳

Did they comment on the status of any overdue items such as the Strasburg 90's?

@ironman1 posted:

I sure hope that “flash coat paint”, which looks like hot wheels metallic blue paint isn’t really going to be the color of the new Lionel Dreyfus’s Hudson. If it is, I’m canceling mine! YIKES!😳

Did you order the 2023 locomotive of the year exclusive one?

@GAN Railroad posted:

Norm, I was at the convention too, I did a Lionel tour at a different time than Will. I brought up the subject of paint. Ryan said they have people who do paint and do research on the colors, there are a lot of factors that go into what we see as far as colors, in old photos what type of film is used, is it faded, on a computer just using a different brightness for your screen than I use affects how we see the colors. Also different chemicals used over the decades such as lead can make the paint different shades. Lionel sends physical samples of paint back and forth to the factory in China instead of a computer. If you or anybody else can get accurate paint samples, Lionel said to contact them and they will tell you how to send it to them. Here is a sample of a new kind of paint they are going to start using called flash coat paint.

Excuses, excuses.  In the case of PRR colors, which they continue to get very wrong, there is a Paint Committee in the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society that will work with any manufacturer (for free) to get colors right.  Lionel has been aware of this group for years, yet gives us Army green locomotives and pumpkin orange freight cars.  It looks like they still have pumpkin paint in stock and are using it on the tender decks of at least some of the new L1s.

tom21pa, I ordered this:

@ironman1 posted:

tom21pa, I ordered this:

Your safe then, the blue one is  a special Lionel website offering.

Will, just wanted to thank you for a fantastic video.  For those of us who could not attend, this was the next best thing. Again, Thank You so much. Dwayne

Will - thanks so much for this excellent video!!   Listening to the various Lionel department chiefs and seeing Lionel LLC's operations, certainly  helps me to understand the high cost of Lionel trains .. especially their high end locomotives etc.  

The video was great.

Did anyone ask what happened to the TMCC and early Legacy electronics parts Lionel obsoleted and made unavailable suddenly months ago? The parts guy in the video stated that they kept parts inventory for about 10 years and didn't throw anything out. They would purge parts occasionally but would sell the parts to dealers so they could make those parts available to customers. So whose got the TMCC and early Legacy parts?

It's great Lionel went the extra steps to get the strange colors of the Aberdeen Carolina and Western right but based on all the paint color errors Lionel has made in recent years, the steps they went through on the AC&W items appear to be the exception rather than the rule.

Ken

Hmmm..  TrainZ said something about having parts in there video for the training school.

We carry the ERR boards in our parts inventory and occasionally get some out of production boards when we buy service stations or other parts inventories.

FAN-tastic video tour!!  Great bit of history there....

Many thanks!

Pretty awesome video! I finally got to watch last night and it was a lot different than I envisioned. I thought it would be a much smaller operation but it's pretty impressive. I appreciated how slick their picking system is in the warehouse. I dream of doing something like that where I work.

Thanks for posting! I would probably otherwise never get a look into things like this.

Nice to see a pic of the Anniversary Mickey hand cars, the one and only pre-order I have in the pipeline. Actually, ordered a couple extra I'm giving as Christmas gifts.

Yeah I am going to go with both Bob's gripes here, they are very legit. Parts and paint situation could be a lot better. It was still nice to get an insight into Lionel's operations and Will did a good job on the Youtube vid. It was nice to see their very helpful service department.

Colors are a constant complaint and problem for decorating model railroad equipment that no longer exists in prototype form.  So photos, sometimes only black and white, are the usual source of information.  There's disagreement, even amongst experts, as to which photos are most representative. This is complicated by the fact that not only film types and electronic sensors differ in their color sensitivities and reproducibility but the human eye and brain differ in the way each of us see colors.  So while occasional total screwups occur, the color issue is going to remain a contentious and difficult problem for model railroad equipment that no longer exists in prototype, has been repainted, or is weathered by use.  And the human factor that no two human beings see color exactly the same way is ultimately going to cause disagreements until the earth is consumed by a solar supernova .  Bottom line is you have to either decide you care or don't care, and how much, and spend your money accordingly.  There is often no scientifically defensible evidence for what the true color of a piece of equipment should be, only varied opinions and sources of visual information, which are either conflicting or not definitive.

In the case of PRR, the historical society maintains a set of drift cards showing original colors used by the railroad.  I can assure you that they look nothing like the colors Lionel has used lately on PRR equipment (with the exception of black, they seem to be able to do black).

All well and good. What's a drift card and how is it protected from the effects of atmospheric and photonic degradation/alteration?  Genuinely interested and not asking sarcastically.  I'm no expert but I do know that chemical oxidation and light degradation are the enemies of longevity for all colored objects/paints.

I grant you that using something from such a respected source would have benefits. But I also am pretty certain even those colors would vary from some folks' memory of what they saw or thought they saw, and would be rejected for that reason.  Our memories or favored pictures often conflict with reality, as anyone who has visited their old home town after 30, 40 or 50 years can tell us.

Has anyone asked Ryan Kunkle why Lionel is using whatever color sources they are using, as compared with using the historical society sources?  He seems committed to trying to achieve prototypical fidelity in so far as possible.  Unfortunately for those with strong feelings about this, I suspect most Lionel customers are not all that interested in these issues.

Drift cards are small (4 x 7 inches or so) pieces of thin sheet steel that were primed and painted by railroad shops using the same materials and methods that they used for railroad equipment.  They are kept in non-acidic paper folders, protected from light.  The railroad used them as color references, comparing them to new batches of paint, etc.  The drift cards were used to minimize color drift, hence the name.  I believe that most railroads maintained sets of them, and reproductions are available from the railroad historical societies.

I cannot imagine a more inappropriate thread for the sort of self-involved whining and nit-picking. A guy goes to the trouble of taking a near hour long video tour of the one remaining manufacturer in the hobby, and some think it useful and reasonable to contribute only sour grapes and personal wants and needs in their diversion of the thread.

I'm sure some of you would have preferred a tour of the world HQ of K-Line, Weaver or MTH's HQ and warehouse. Oh wait.  The first two don't exist and the second would have taken about 30 seconds .  The vast majority of customers for three rail trains don't give a darn about the minor issues being raised and enjoyed the video of the tour.  I know I did.

You don't know the value of what you have until it's gone, as the song goes.  I, for one, am thankful there are still a Lionel HQ and warehouse to tour and they are staffed by amiable and informative people.  And I'm very grateful to the fellow who shared it with us.

It is simply bad manners to bring up grievances and criticisms about Lionel on this thread, and most importantly, seems unappreciative of the person who went to the trouble of sharing his experience with us.

For those with grievances, please consider copying the comments you have made,  and posting them in a separate thread,  and then deleting them from this thread.  Let people enjoy the thread who wish to,  without the unnecessary casting of shade.  Then those of us who are correctly complaining about the complaining can delete our comments too .

I’ve been a Lionel consumer for almost all of my life, from age 6, now closing in on 79, and I’ve enjoyed their products more than words can say, you might say I’m a Lionel train aholic…It’s a addiction that’s indescribable…. I’ve enjoyed the post war era trains, the modern era trains, and now the highly electronic era of their trains… I’m not a rivet counter, a paint authority, a design critic, I just love where Lionel is taking us fellows (and ladies) in the hobby today. Yes, I love the scale look, the sounds, the chuffs per revolution, the ability to run them slow, steady and realistically as a toy can be operated. Cab 2 is amazing, I’m even excited to see the new Cab 3 App when it arrives, I just want it to work and Yes, my great friend Captain William Porath, the gentleman showing us this beautiful tour of Lionel’s Factory will help me learn the new programs. I would have loved to visit Madison Hardware when they were in their hay-day, but I never got there. I would have loved to visit Lionel in Chesterfield Michigan, but never made it there either… Then, years ago, I would have loved to visit Lionel in Hillside New Jersey, seeing the 1949 Dream Layout, however that didn’t happen either.
Therefore, getting to see Lionel today through this wonderful video is a dream come true. There should be no negatives, all positives as this company is trying there best to give us a product to be happy with and enjoy to the fullest… If your looking for true perfection, true to the scale wheels, color, an exact replica, just have one made for yourself, then check the price, the time it takes, and nuff sayd… now,Let’s give Captain Will a pat in the back for a job Well Done… I look forward to his next video, they are fun to watch, I have my pop corn ready…. Thank you my good friend, you’re the best. Happy Railroading Everyone (See Farmerjohn, Will, Charles Lentz) (Leapin Larry, Will at Dr. Jack Fishers) and of course, Will and his beautiful wife Katherine) Trains are fun….

I was planning on going to the LCCA convention when it was first cancelled due to the pandemic and for whatever reasons haven't rescheduled yet.  Will videos and postings remind me to do that sooner than later.  From the Lionel Store video to this one and I believe I saw a new one posted this morning I think he did a fine job covering the event.

OK guys and gals ... I awakened this morning to lots of alerts to this thread.  The mods take care of most of them however my attention was drawn to this one and how off topic and negative many of the posts were.  Will's video was fantastic and he took the time to share it HERE on the OGR Forum for YOU to enjoy and especially for those that would have liked to attend and couldn't for whatever reasons.  Yet, it didn't take long for the complaining to begin.  Frankly, I have no problem with folks pointing problems with product but this thread was NOT the place to do it.  While many of you kept your comments to the topic of the thread, too many used this thread to step up on your soapbox ... again.  The mods deleted and edited quite a few posts here to try to get things back on track.  We probably will go back and take another look as I see perhaps some more need to be deleted and/or edited.  How about just keeping this thread to the topic and if you have a complaint, then go over to the one of the manufacturer's forums and start your own thread where you can complain away (as long as it doesn't get personal).

I want to thank Lionel again for hosting our 53rd annual convention. The convention was a great success and the officers and volunteers made it happen.

I want to thank all the members who attended.

Preparations for our 54th convention next year in Omaha Nebraska, are under way and we will be there earlier than normal starting on July 8th.

Thanks again

Sal Gambino/ Immediate Past President.