Lionel shame on you!

In case anyone is wondering if the Shay is any different that is in the 2013 catalog then the 2012 catalog the answer is no, they are the exact same engine. I received that confirmation from Lionel. The Shay's do run on 031 curves very nicely I might add, so it appears that Lionel's position is that it's correctly listed as 0-31 minimum. The fact that if you hook up any of their logging cars made to go with them, or any other type of car for that matter, it derails every time you enter a curve, doesn't mean squat to them. I know that will get the dander up in those that still play the Kool-Aid thing, I am sorry but I have been in contact with Lionel personnel since I purchased my Shay last year, and this is what it is and what I have been told by more then one person at Lionel. I have 3 Legacy engines, and I can tell you there will be no more bought by me. Again shame on you Lionel, but with all the NASCAR sets and stuff y'all expect to be selling, I guess you don't need the O gauge hobbyist dollar anymore.

can Nascar trains turn any other way than left?or will they derail? Imaagine someday digging through abox at a train show full of DuPont and dale ernhardt geeps  all the aluminum plating sounds like a nightmare twighlight zone. coming very soon to a kmart walmart near YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED 

Paul, I think the complication that Lionel might be considering - perhaps some would say "hiding behind" - is that this Shay apparently will pull some cars or types of cars and couplers. 

I had a homemade logging car train consisting of four log cars, a donkey-engine winch car and a shorty caboose that was, until your original posting made me try other cars, the only thing I ever ran behind my Shay, and it pulled them well enough: My problems with my Shay were it its binding driveshaft, not the couplter.  But my homemade cars and had perhaps particularly forgiving couplers (unmodified Atlas trucks bought at my LHS).  The point is, the Shay worked okay on 31 curves and great on 36 with these.  So the Lionel Shay will pull some things well enough to get by - at least if they are lightweight as my cars with "roomy" coupler hooks that permit a bit of play in the junction.  On the other hand, I have a lot of rolling stock I tried, including scale PFE reefers by both Lionel and MTH, that it won't pull well, so . . .

This is just like the mistake they made when they failed to put the PRR Keystones on both sides of the PRR U28c. They claimed they made a production change and decided to put the Keystone decal only on the nose. However they put them on the front and rear of the right side and failed to put them on the left side.

Certainly not a crucial as the coupler issue but nonetheless another instance where they made a manufacturing mistake and would not take responsibility.

They did the same thing with the Legacy PRR Mikado. The catalog advertised whistle smoke but the production engines eliminated this feature.

I wish I had the lack of issues and problems that people have on this board, that this is all they have to worry about!

and some of us don't even worry about those - we just discuss and deal with them!

Well, when you pay $800 for a loco and find out you can't pull most cars behind it -- including the very log cars specifically made to be pulled behind it -- I think you have every right to complain. Why Lionel doesn't provide a coupler fix for this is baffling to me. At the very least they could issue a bulletin telling folks how to make their own work-arounds.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I used a black twist-tie to connect a log car to the rear railing of my Shay and it works pretty well (if you overlook the 1/4 inch gap between the two couplers. At least I can run a logging train now, which is better than running the Shay light or letting an $800 product gather dust on a shalf..

That's exactly what I did. Picked up two keystone decals from a friend of mine at York.

I think the point is that Lionel is not taking responsibility for their manufacturing defects regardless of how serious they are.

In another thread Lionel responds to the elimination of whistle smoke on all but Vision Line engines. This was a feature that a lot of people, including me, liked. They claim that with two smoke units there are just too many service issues with the lower margin products. Never really thought that a $1200 engine was low margin.

I think it's fair to say that with several hundred O gauge locomotives occupying space in my home, I have had as few operational problems as just about anyone on this forum.  Over many years I have had less than five out-of-box problems with purchases from any of the manufacturers (problems that required an outside source to repair).

Even my Shay is not a real "problem" so long as I don't run it with the rolling stock I would prefer to run it with.  I suspect it might operate just fine if the car immediately behind the locomotive had  something other than a non-articulating truck-mounted coupler.

An you can be 100% certain that I don't worry about it one way or the other, but there's also no harm in making the manufacturer and others aware of the limitation.

Exactly.

I think the whole point of the discussion here is tending toward: you have a right to complain but maybe not to expect a resolution you like.

It's also about taking those operational/functional problems that continue to exist and making other potential buyers aware of the problem.

Exactly John!