Merry Christmas-But I should have known better

I hate to always have to say this...but this is why I stopped buying any trains over $250.

Everything I have bought since 2007 has been Post War Lionels and Williams.

The Post War Lionels last forever, and even if you have to fix something on these 40-60+ year  old engines its so easy. Also, if a Williams train goes bad, and that is rarely, I have not spent more than $179 on even the SCALE Williams trains..so its not a big loss. Plus, they are easy to fix too.

Unfortunately, all of these trains just make bell and whistle sounds and have headlights.

But in the case of the post war growlers, that growl is better than any other sound.

My suggestion, would be to go Post War like I did and/or strictly Williams.

I am done with modern MTH and Lionel, until they are made in America again with quality and pride and NOT made in stupid China.

Even if I have to pay more.

I don't think the engine included in the set includes chuffing sounds. Pretty sure you have to get the "upgrade" tender for those. The poor smoke output is another story, but still for less than $300 I think the Polar Express set is pretty good for the price.

• SET INCLUDES:
• 2-8-4 Berkshire steam locomotive and tender, two passenger coaches, one passenger observation car with rounded platform, three straight FasTrack track sections, eight curved FasTrack track sections, one FasTrack terminal section, CW-80 Transformer, articulated movie characters, smoke fluid
• LOCOMOTIVE FEATURES:
• Transformer controlled forward, neutral and reverse operation
• Air whistle in tender
• Operating headlight
• Operating coupler on rear of tender
• Powerful maintenance-free motor
• Two traction tires
• Puffing smoke
• Die-cast metal locomotive body and frame
• Separately applied metal handrails
• Large pilot and headlight lens shield
• PASSENGER CARS FEATURE:
• Interior lighting
• Decorated drumhead on observation car
• Rounded observation platform
• Silhouettes in windows

It looks like you need the optional 6-36847 Polar Express tender with Trainsounds.

Guys, I know what I bought. He got the 6-18754 PE Berkshire with Steam Whistle and RailSounds. It absolutely is supposed to have chuffing. It has a magnetic reed switch on the front axle of the tender. It smokes wonderfully and the steam whistle is very neat. The sounds (minus chuffing) are really good. It just sucks that it doesn't work right out of the box.

This may be a silly question, and it may not apply to the latest version with RailsoundsRTR, but is there a Sound On/Off switch on the bottom of the tender that may be in the wrong position?

That, and the volume control?

Thanks for trying to help, but there is no on/off switch on the tender. Just the volume knob. All of the other sounds work fine, except the chuffing.

Well, I can't offer any help but it is nice to know that they added Rail Sounds and a better smoke unit to the engine.

I really understand what you mean. I bought a BNSF Heritiage unit for myself for Christmas and had the LHS open it to look at in the packing then placed it back in the box and the wife hid it for Christmas. I open it today and put it on the track to program it and it rolls away............it has dummy power trucks on it! I paid for a powered unit, the shell has the powered unit number, and the box states it is a powered unit.....I understand how it can feel and now I have to go back and see what my LHS is going to do for me.

They were not perfect back when they were US made as well, why do you think were so many guys who repaired them and place like Madison Hardware had so many parts? Good chance if you have a nice Postwar engine now, someone worked on it in the past

I got both a Polar Express set and a Ice old Express this year, so far no real problems

I have 17 Lionel locomotives 2005 and newer, never have had a problem with any of them.  Thanks for weeding out all the bad ones for us! 

You are so welcome. I glad to provide a needed public service ......

There is not a pre or post war Lionel engine that I can't fix myself. Well there may be 1 or 2.

I know you are disappointed by the apparent lack of QC but did you son miss the chuffing sounds or did he still enjoy his Christmas present?

Joe

It really is a shame that your experience is not that uncommon.  Old or young, big or small the disappointment when you get something you've been anticipating and it doesn't work or is not as advertised never quite goes away because there is only one first time it comes out of the box or is unwrapped on Christmas morning.  I don't blame you for being unhappy with this experience. 

Joe

On a slightly different note... I'm sitting here watching videos I took of my family in the 80's.  At the time I wasn't interested in trains but bought my son an inexpensive HO set, mounted the track, a few accessories and extra structures.  He was about five 

years old and was quite excited when he saw what Santa had brought him.  To say the least, we recorded 15-20 minutes of futility trying to keep them coupled & on the track.  It ended when he said he "couldn't believe Santa brought that train".  

He's almost thirty now.  While he was little, along with my long deceased father, we spent a few days at York together. He would look for figurines like the Philly Phanatic & cars & trucks.  

He's never really liked trains but watching that video was worth a million bucks to me.  

Over the weekend I hooked up a TPC so I could run my dad's old 726.  First conventional train I've run in many years.  It was a lot of fun, think I'm gonna have a nip & go run it right now (with my dad)..  That loco's logged a ton of laps around the tree.

Strange how memories look decades later.

Merry Christmas 

My PE also wobbles.  You might want to check out the traction tires.

Your very sharp 6 year old son must not have noticed the chip and the wobble. Otherwise, he might be as unhappy as you are. Like someone above said, thanks for weeding out all the "bad ones" for the rest of us.

I've bought quite a few Lionel and MTH, both top line (Vision and Legacy, Premier) and mid and lower priced models.  There are a distressing number of problems - somewhere around 7% I'd guess.   Lately I've had more MTH go bad than Lionel but that just might be the luck of the draw.  Anyway, I have also learned that if it does not fail out of the box or after about four hours of running, it probably will not.

I was lucky this year I guess:  both locos I bought for around the tree - Lionel Remote Thomas set and traditional size Polar Express loco, worked flawlessly and put up with three- and five-year old handling with no problems, as did the loco I bought myself for Christmas, a Lionel scale 0-4-0 shifter.  After three days I have one coupler on the Thomas set that seems to be bad, but I think that is kid-abuse, not a quality production flaw.

This talk about "great" US quality is a little amusing to me. I was in the testing business (missile systems) for 45 years. Quality Assurance was always a problem. All manufacturers  (yes-US contractors) used as little QA as they could get away with! It's cheaper not to bother!

I just got a Lionel engine that was manufactured in the US in 1990. The instructions at one point tell you that a switch is in the "ON" position either "Up or down,depending on how the switch was wired"!!! Good way to "fix" a US quality problem.

Don't expect too much from toys--even expensive ones--no matter where they are made, you will be less upset.

Charlie N

I am new to O gauge but happy with my 2007 MTH RTR set. My Proto2 GP9 Diesel fell 3' to floor after mishap with cats and is still running strong. 

My experience with G scale is the German and US made items definitely more robust than the China ones.

Alan

Probably the biggest differance, aside from where they are produced is that the older Lionel, now I am mostly refering to postwar 1945 till the late 60's, were designed to be fixed and fixed many times by the owner.  New ones might come appart easy, but I doubt many modelers can repair IC Circuit boards, let alone even trouble shoot them. Back then the fanciest part was the 3 position reversing unit(E-unit).  Anything mass produced will have problems, but now you cannot just run down to the local Lionel Service Center, of which there were many back then, to get your train fixed.  Just the way our society as gone, toward a throw away mentality, be it computers or trains.   Mike

Finally got it going for him. I'm not even going to get into all of the issues it had. Here it is running with a happy boy at the controls:

Your son indeed looks like a happy camper!!!

I am amazed at the amount of smoke from the steam whistle.  I must be doing something wrong, mine is quite anemic.  I am using JT's megasteam and putting several drops down the smoke stack as directed.  Is there another spot on the engine for steam whistle smoke I overlooked? I don't want to over dispense.

George

George, The ONLY way to get that much smoke is to put it in neutral at max throttle. Under normal operating voltages you can't really see it. That is one of my issues with this engine. Why Lionel didn't put a higher voltage motor in it I just don't understand. You see how fast he runs it in the video just so it will smoke a little. Literally, it's almost coming off the rails on O-36. But if you run it slower the smoke drops way off. The easy cure would be to use a higher voltage motor. Ex. if it is a 12v motor then use an 18v motor. That would make it run slower on the same voltage so the smoke and lights would be stronger but the engine wouldn't be flying off the track. Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually runs these products in the real world before they decide to make them?

I bought my daughter a new Surface tablet, released in November.... she couldn't get it to connect on wifi.  I looked it up & found owners were having this issue from first release and downloads were available to correct it.  You would think they would have told us at the store and helped her before we left.  Oh well, it works now, she's happy and I'm happy.  This kinda thing seems to be the norm.  

Your whistle smoke  is cool.  I've been doing the same thing with my 1950 Berk to keep the smoker hot enough to melt the pills.... I guess 60 years ain't enough.

Wow, a very interesting read, considering this locomotive is next on my purchase list.  

Looks like my son and I are building the same train, too--haven't secured that caboose or the flatcar/trailers yet, but have found everything else.  Was hoping to pick up this loco to replace the underwhelming 0-8-0 from the starter set.  Sorry to see so many problems with the 6-18754.  Rats!

I purchased the new Thomas remote set for my 6 yr old grandson and he was disappointed because it would only run in reverse, when you put it in forward it would travel about one inch and trip the breaker, obviously a short somewhere. I removed the bottom plate and noticed one of the axle wipers was not seated properly on the axle; easy fix but the main problem was that the pickup wire to the board had gotten caught in the main gear and the insulation had been stripped off and was shorting on the gear. In reverse it did not touch the wire but did in forward, fortunate it did not fry the board. Bad design; I taped the wire and fastened it away from the gear. Result: happy boy. Bought this set on-line from a hobby store and dreaded the thought of the cost of sending it back.

Mike

Jonnyspeed-

Thanks, what your saying makes sense now.   I will try it next time I run the PE.

By the way did you solve your wobble problem and if you did how did you correct it?

George

quote:

They were not perfect back when they were US made as well, why do you think were so many guys who repaired them and place like Madison Hardware had so many parts? Good chance if you have a nice Postwar engine now, someone worked on it in the past

Sorry, I don't buy that. The units with Scout motors were troublesome. Otherwise, I guess they would have an occasional defective time slip out the factory door, but they didn't build their brand by selling defective items.

The service station network was created to provided required service after they had been used for a while.

Hmm, reminds me of my experience with the Legacy equpped R16 Subway set from Lionel. Bought on sale last year off the Lionel Store(www.lionelstore.com) and I recieved it all right... All windows fell out. That was all I noticed when it came out the box... Called CS, they said "it was a known issue"... WHAT!!!!! I just dropped around $600 for this junk! Then I sent off paying no shipping for this "known issue" and recieved it back three weeks later with a paper telling what has been fixed:

-All windows replaced

-2 door gearbox motors replaced

-1 shell replaced

Really Lionel??? It works great now more than a year later(2011 September sale), but that was unacceptable on their part. Realesing products with known issues from the factory. It is great set when it works but that was ridiculis. After I recieved it I was really wanning towards MTH since everybody says they have little issues. Then PS3.0 came out and my opinion changed on them.

So my recent experience isn't so bad, my Legacy BN SD60 #8302 works like a charm with no issues. But I have to keep a lookout before I buy things now. After that definetly!

I have the same locomotive and actually pre ordered it. When I got it in late January it had the same issue no chuffing and extreme wobble! I took this video the first day I got it and you can see both issues. I replaced both traction tires which fixed the wobble. I ended up buying a new reed switch board from Lionel and swapped it out which fixed the chuff problem. 

Week later smoke stops working right after I build a larger layout platform  I didn't know much about smoke units then so back to the LHS. Week later it was fixed. 

One week after that smoke goes out again change the resistor a couple minutes into operation a horrible smelling smoke came out of the cab and the smoke board went bad. Wired the unit to track power worked good, 

The whole time I was using a CW-80 the problems were happening now I run with a Z750 under DCS variable mode which seems to work better than the CW-80. It's been running good since then and smoke and sounds still working and I actually seem to like it more on DCS variable mode. I found this whole situation pretty sad considering how much I spent on their whole Polar Express collection but in the end when an engines working I'm happy  Luckily I paid a good price for it so with replacement parts and gas to the LHS I paid about 290 and I still love the sounds and smoke.