Ongoing QC Issues In The Hobby

Wait until they try to get their tooling out of China, in order to move to another country!

I don't know about you guys, but I've stopped buying any China-made trains.

And, yes, Rick, this horse has been beaten so many times already that the meat can't even be used for dog food.

But you get those with over a hundred Trains and never an issue.I have seen enough with my own eyes to know better.Chinese junk as far as i see it.And it cost a fortune.

I don't know guys, more and more companys are moving there mfg. back to the states just to avoid this type of problem

I have several cars made in the USA, some new (1990 etc) and real new (President cars).

Paying more is a decision I can/will make for a product made in the USA.

What brothers me is when manufacturing left the country, prices did not come down

Brent

(retired)

Of course prices didn't come down. That's why manufacturing moves overseas, to increase profits for shareholders, not do the mug customer a favor.

What, didn't you just recently buy the MTH Hybrid? So thats it, nothing new for Allan. Guess that DCS and Legacy base is going to be lonely

Chris:

The Evo-Hybrid was purchased prior to my all-new "no more trains from China" pledge. 

Also not included is the MTH trolley arriving tomorrow and a number of other trains pre-ordered back when I was younger (at least it feels like that).

The DCS gets all the work on my layout these days because my Legacy system has gone belly-up.  I need to haul it down to Big Mike's place for some diagnosis and surgery.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm pontificating because I'm certainly no expert on industrial globalization but about 7 or 8 years ago, Tom Friedman from the NY Times wrote a very interesting book called”The World is Flat".  He theorized that wages (and as a direct result, the cost of goods) will gradually and inevitably rise in the developing countries because with the increase in foreign production, laborers will want to seek an improved standard of living giving impetus for them to seek out higher incomes and wages. However in order to compete now, wages in the industrialized world will need to level out and in some cases get lower - flattening wages throughout the world at which point it will be the quality of the goods produced that will determine the success or failure of manufacturers, regardless of whatever it is they are making.

I’m not sure how all this helps us in this hobby now but my bottom line at the moment is this: If an engine is gonna cost $1000 the thing better work out of the box and it better keep working for a long, long time or I'm not gonna buy it. So our train manufacturers better take note or they will face the industrial equivalent of extinction.

I have had pretty good luck with engines from MTH and Lionel.  My one (and last fall really big!) complaint comes when repair service is far below what we should expect when paying big $ for a locomotive.  I am all in favor of more and better quality control, but want to be sure service is primo as well.  

As have I! 

One can probably write a history of toy trains simply tracing such issues as QC, shoddy designs, & dubious value of products. One can recall such issues as plastic trucks & couplers, rampant paint flaws, non existent repair services, F3's loosing a motor & magnetraction to boot, operating accessories suddenly growing mechanical hand cranks rather than being electrically operated. There were also brilliant periods such as 1951-1959 and I submit 1995-2007.  Much of the product from both those periods can still be found on the market today. Back in the late 1960s-early 1990's  enthusiasts (myself included) didn't need an internet or Forums to figure out what to do. As has become the fashionable advice now, we voted with our wallets when things went sour, and came back when things materially changed for the good.

Those who remember their World History will recall that it was Adam Smith that turned Economics and the Wealth of Nations on its head when he observed that it is not the country that holds the most gold in its vault that will remain supreme but it is the nation that controls the means of production. The toy train companies can be differentiated along that simply stated dimension. There are those who own their own means of production (factories) and those that don't.

It was only a few years ago (2008/2009) that 50% of the world's toy train production went up for sale (Sanda Kan). As was reported in OGR Magazine the final price went for something like $6.5 million. The seller was none other that a US banking hedge fund. The buyer turned out to be a well known Chinese toy manufacturer. Guess which two U.S. toy train importer/manufacturers were busy suing each other rather than cornering a big chunk of the means of world toy train production?

You don't own any factories? You buy and resell what you can find, take delivery whenever, and take whatever QC is delivered in the box. That is the way capitalism works. It was true in Adam Smith's day, it's true today. We are fortunate. Toy trains for most of us is only a hobby & hobbies can be substituted, modified, delayed or replaced. That was true for many of us during the 1965-1995 period. It can also be true now for anyone reading this post.

As far as QC, its random. If you had your $1,200 toy break out of the box, you get irked. If another guy happens to get lucky and his runs without fail, the natural reaction is "problem, What problem?" And so it goes.

I think if you dont like to tinker you should not be in o gauge trains..Though it should work out of the box.. I am about 50 percent out of the box with lionel everything ran but little things couplers smoke units on 5 out of 10 legacy engines . Mth i only bought 1 new .It got new boards with in the first 6 months ..

Gentlemen,

   I still purcahase from all over the world but I do look for the Made in the USA 1st,

and always have, buy as much American as you possible can.

PCRR/Dave

No, it has been sent to Europe and magically transformed into beef hamburger.

There have been plenty of defective "American made " trains in the past as well. The story of people exchanging  out of the box defective locomotives at Madison hardware comes to mind.

As far as the foreign manufacturing goes,modellers made their own bed. When Mike Wolf began manufacturing better operating locomotives with a higher level of detail over seas.  Lionel had no choice but to follow suit to remain competative.

Folks should have refused to buy this stuff and simply demanded lower level detail locomotives with pullmor power.

Teenage chinese girls assemble thousands of locomotives, most men here on the forum are leary of taking one apart to do their own repairs. What makes you think if we assembled them here they'd be any more reliable? I've owned enough American cars to know that where something is made has little to do with its reliability.

I'm not saying its right........just saying it "is".

While its a popular saying "I'd be willing to pay more if it were made here" I doubt if that would truly be the case.

Most people don't buy things "on sale" because they're made somewhere else, they buy them because their cheaper.

Smith's The Wealth of Nations is like the Bible - it's a book everyone cites but few actually read or comprehend.

It would behest all those citing Adam Smith to read his earlier work - specifically his book A Theory of Moral Sentiments. 

What China is practicing is mercantilism, not capitalism.  And the US trade deficit numbers with China prove this without dispute.   I doubt Smith was in favor of this beggar thy neighbor approach to trade.  

It's really hard for a company to have any long term control over its production when it is handed off to a totalitarian jurisdiction where everything is state controlled, subsidized, and sanctioned.  It's like making a pact with the devil.

Looking for competitive, open capitalism in China is like looking for honesty and integrity on present day Wall St. (where much of this mania for off shoring originates.)