The Lego Death Star in Barnes and Noble caught my eye a few weeks ago.  $400 if I recall correctly!  Very nicely done, but beyond what I would consider reasonable for a child's toy.

-Dave

M1FredQ states:

"Also consider the costs of doing business in the States not so much labor but the heavy taxation a business is burdened with here in the states."

Are you talking tax rates or taxes paid? Most peoples personal taxes are higher by percentage than corporate taxes paid.

Here's just one source to back this up...

GAO: U.S. corporations pay average

effective tax rate of 12.6%

and then there's this:

"Also the Unions have done their part to destroy any manufacturing capability in this country."

This is not personal...and I am a retired Union Member.Please furnish your sources to back up your statements.

I can supply plenty of info on this topic  but i'd like to see yours first.

Thanks,

Mark

Funny I have as much trouble with USA made products as I have with foreign made products. Though having failure on a $500,000 piece of farm equipment is a little harder to take than a $400 toy train.

Personally I don't care where the product is manufactured as long as the price is what I am willing to pay or can afford and the thing works. I don't care about the little things that go wrong that is going to happen. I don't think I ever bough a vehicle or piece of machinery made in the USA that didn't have to have some type of warranty work done.

Lets see the Jeep has been back for 5 different things in its warranty period and I have a hay baler that needs work done every time it bales. While these are all made by union workers they last no longer than non union products.

Now to my trains nothing ever had a serious defect other than one MTH engine that had a flat spot on the wheel. The LHS just replaced it with another one. I was lucky he had more than the one I had just bought. Other issue were electrical again on two MTH engines. No big deal one had wires that had come out of the wire nut and the other had a short in the trucks. Both easy to fix and not worth sending back.

People get excited when something needs just a little tweak. When talking to my father he said things were much worse in the 50's and 60's. Heck things back then could even kill you because they didn't ground most of the electrical stuff like they do today.

Not everything is made overseas in fact all the computers I have had were made in the USA and I am on my fifth one since 1997. They all had a major failure though my printer made overseas has been chugging along for a very long time.

I would certainly like to see more products manufactured in the USA while I believe the failure rate would be the same at least we would have more people working.

BTW during World War II there was a company that built gliders for the army. The workforce was 90% women. On the day that they were going to show case it in front of the army, townspeople and press they had a major failure. Once it was released from the tow plane the wing broke off and killed 6 people including the Mayor, a General and some other VIPS that were riding in it. The reason for the failure was a bolt and the woman who inspected it did not realize the key importance of the bolt. Thus it isn't really truthful to say that the change in the labor force during the war did not result in some very bad accidents. I forget the name of the company and town but I will check on it and post that info later f your interested in the story.

And I've got an Ariens from the 1970's that is still running on its orginal engine.  Just a few carb rebuilds over the years and clutch adjustment.  And I live in a lake effect snow belt area.

I purchased a "made in USA" Ariens snowblower a couple of years ago. I like the machine very much, but much to my disappointment, I think the engine is imported.

I don't know if it's so much that China is making bad trains.  I understand you have a problem with a Williams-by-Bachmann reverser board.. Although it's frustrating, THAT particular item is a very simple, inexpensive fix that can probably be done at a local hobby shop.  I own about 60 Williams engines (probably over half under Bachmann ownership) and yet to have a problem with one, the reason being they are not loaded with gobs of whistles and bells that require circuit boards to run.  The same principle applies to your postwar and MPC trains you have.  There's nothing but a robust motor and an E unit - what could go wrong, save needing some grease or a bulb every now and then?  Manufacturers like Lionel and MTH are socking their trains full of gadgetry to satisfy consumer demand.  I wish Lionel would go back to its roots, but I guess I'm behind the times (at 34 years old)!  -Scott

Everyone clamoring for a move back to the US might think about this. Chinese, or Mexican, or Indonesian, or Bangladesh-ish  manufacture is not the real cause of poor quality.  Cutting corners is.   When labor costs $28/hour rather than $4/hour, a manufacturer might be much more tempted than ever to cut corners.  At $4 you might decide to go ahead and take an extra 15 minutes per loco to put them together, and to test every loco rather than every tenth, etc.  At $28/hr - forget it.  And it really doesn't matter if its robots or people, its the same principle at work; companies trying to find the sweet spot between cutting costs and upping prices will having enough profit left over to survive, if not prevail.  Bring production back to the US and this will give the weaker manufacturers more incentive than ever to try to cut costs a bit too much.  

From personal involvement at work, I know that Chinese manufacturers are causing lots of headaches for many US (and European) companies.  But assembly quality actually isn't one of them: pay them enough, watch them enough, work with them enough, in the way they require, and the quality can actually be very good.  The problems come about with regard to other things.  Intellectual property issues (mold and CAD drawing design theft) scare me to death and are the reason I generally squash going there anymore.  Then there are the production delays due to labor unrest which are killing a lot of folks, in and out of the model train industry, too.  And then there is a frustrating lack of strict adherence to the fine print of specification in the contracts which we sometimes take as poor quality ("Sorry, we missed your requirement for satin paint - we hope the high-gloss finish is not really a problem to your customers, but we assure you that was applied well over a good primer."), made all the more frustrating because very often the guy on the other side of the table really doesn't seem to understand why you are so upset about the difference.  

That's what I have been saying to other people. I'd like to see more come back to the US, but not for quality, for jobs, and for self reliance. If we were to get into some kind of conflict with China, not war per say, but anything that would interrupt the flow of goods from China, we could be hurting.

And you are exactly right. If a product was brought back here, the first thing would be a significant price increase. And secondly probably a reduction in quality. You have all the fixed costs of production here, IE: fed regs, from enviromental, to workmans comp, plus the extra labor costs. So the only place for the mfg to cut is on the product itself. A fellow I know, who deals with manufacturing in China says it scary some of the things they do. We are either ignorant or turn a blind eye because we like the price. Short of a conflict that cuts us off from China, I believe it's a one way street with no way to turn around. Sadly so.

Gentlemen,

    You make some good points, however IMO most still may be missing the big point

as to just why the US companies manufacture over seas, the #1 reason is these companies do not need to pay retierments for any of the foreign labor force that produces their products, sure the lower wages are part of it also, but not the major part.  US Taxes & Retierments force businesses to contract over seas.

PCRR/Dave

To me this thread is asking a question that is akin to asking why we can't have a perfect summer day 365 days a year. Its sort of a fantasy what if that flies in the face of economic realities and in that sense we would have to re-engineer the nation's economic forces to make what is in effect, a toy here instead of there.

Not exactly a national security issue.

Its the quality issue and no amount of griping will change that unless folks vote with their wallets, and of course theres a certain schizophrenia involved when it comes to that..... related to being unable to resist new product while complaining about it's pitfalls. Its a circular path leading nowhere.

The topic generates a lot of heat without any light.

Oh my, the quality of toy trains is not a national security issue!?  What is this country coming too?  Where are people's values?

How many companies in the private sector  still offer pensions?

It is a dwindling few from what I have been reading.

How many forum members who have or have had quality issues with their O gauge trains ever contacted the train company directly with their complaints?  Members dump their problems here but are hey afraid to tell the company for some reason?

Steve, Lady and Tex

I always contact the manufacturer directly about problems in warranty, and even sometimes with respect to out-of-warranty issues if the product has failed my expectations in some manner.

After reading through this discussion, I am of the view that we can't manage the business of these firms, but we can insist on greater quality, as it does seem that there are too many issues.

On the issue of data, would there be any interest, or way, to set up a poll, or a thread where people can post quality issues?  What I mean is essentially a place where when users here have an issue, they can report it, together with enough detail that it could serve as at least a cut at a reliability database, or better than the current limited anecdotal tales we all tell.  So for example, with respect to my Genset switcher, I would report the manufacturer, and the issues, that a number of the windows fell out when I opened it, and that within a few months one or more of the smoke stacks was not functioning.  Enough people post stuff like this and it becomes an informal reliability database, and encourages the manufacturers to improve quality without endless discussion of the best business model and the attendant politics, perhaps?   Possibly it would make better informed consumers, and hopefully give the firms greater incentives to improve?

Is there any appetite for such a thing or is it not feasible for any reason?

Thank you in advance.

Apart from the fact that the small sampling of reported issues posted here would hardly be representative enough to collect data to the extent it could be considered scientific to determine that actual quality control problems exist since only a small percentage of active O gauge hobbyists actually post here, what's to prevent people from tainting the accuracy of the reporting, in other words, making stuff up just because they dislike company A over company B and don't actually own any company A products?

You raise fair points.  As far as sample size, there are no good answers but a known place to post such data would likely be better than what there is now.  As with anything else, how to use the data, and how much weight to give it, would be up to the user.  As to people using it in bad faith, there is no easy answer there either.  In certain instances, I would think that people could smell the proverbial rat, and you could always leave a functionality for the manufacturer to respond.  Perhaps I am too naive or optimistic in terms of thinking that most people here would probably use the functionality responsibly? 

A survey? Whats the point from a pragmatic point of view as it would change nothing. It would be a gripe festival that went nowhere.

Maybe they really should bring production

back to the U.S.?

They will bring it back when it makes financial sense to do so. Which means it will not be coming back to the U.S..