In all fairness to Lionel, MTH has had its share of "typos" on their products. For example, I have an early PS2 Brooklyn PCC car (no. 30-2544-1) on which the destination board mentions "Flatmouth Avenue" (rather than "Flatbush Avenue"). As Ralph Kramden might exclaim, "You're goin' to the moon, MTH. To the moon!"
Whose responsibility the mistake was is anyone's guess but it slipped by everyone, both at MTH and their Chinese manufacturer.
Chris
Someone needs to take responsibility, no pass is deserved for shoddy work, I can't get away with this at my job. Cheers Jim
Chris, that's a Railking model that has a street price for less than $200. Accuracy and supreme detail is not what you pay for on the affordable Railking products. You had to go back 17 years to find a print mistake... I'm not say they don't exist on MTH but I haven't noticed until your mention now.
If what you have was a Premier model from MTH, then you'd have bigger soap box to preach from.
Meh, that decal error is nuthin'. So far only 2 people have noticed the recent J3a hudsons have 5 chuffs per revolution, instead of 4. No way to fix that.
If everyone of you doesn't send yours back for a refund, then, it's your own fault. Especially if the steps are broken as has been stated!
I sent my N&W Class J
(you read that correctly!!!) back and I haven't missed it one bit!
Make a statement for a change people! Or, are you waiting for the "Pale Rider" to step in and make things right?
I have all stated issues with my SD70AH. I hope Lionel does a rerun of shells. I have a brake pipe hose that I think came from the front pilot but can’t figure out where it was. The steps are aggravating to have to glue back on but if that was it no big deal. I understand UPS and FedEx are not the nicest to our engines while in their shipping cartons
The mfg. should do it right or don't make it. End of story. As Big Jim said, if you don't send it back then you are part of the problem. You have to hold the mfgs to account and the dealers have to do the same thing when they get items from their customers that is not what Was promised.
once the mfgs get pallet loads of returned items, maybe they will fix the QC.
Dave
As far as the broken steps that you are speaking about. In my opinion it's not a shipping problem but more a packing problem. I have seen many engines just crammed in the styrofoam containers with bent grab irons, railings, broken bells and broken pieces which were obvious to me that they were broken as a result of careless handling / packing
@D500 posted:No - scale models that cost a lot of money. The "toy" went out of this stuff decades ago - except for the "Back of the Catalogue" stuff.
Not toys, not on my layout.
When Ryan previewed the newly tooled starter set Tier 4 locomotive, he said that while the traditional line of starter products seldom get much attention, they are the products that keep Lionel in business. And it has been that way for years.
Richard Kughn and Dick Maddox both said the 4-4-2 starter steam set outsold every other train set combined during their respective years with Lionel. Which is another way of saying that outside of track, it was the best selling item in the entire catalog. That 4-4-2 set was removed from the number one position during the Calabrese years by the Polar Express traditional starter set, which quickly became the best selling train set in the entire history of Lionel.
SO, the "toy" hardly went out of the catalog decades ago. I'm not knocking the scale product line. But there is a reality here. The truth is the stuff in the back of the catalog makes the stuff in the front of the catalog possible. Otherwise Ryan might have said it is the scale product line that keeps Lionel in business. But he didn't say that.
And when you compare prices of the high profit traditional line products to their scale counterparts, you see that the prices are not all that far apart. The scale products would have increase in price A LOT for them to make the same contribution to Lionel's bottom line, given their higher production costs.
As far as current prices on scale products, of which there is a great deal of grumbling especially when things like the topic of this thread happen, what you're really paying for is the privilege of being able to purchase extremely small production runs of scale proportioned trains, which is not a formula for making big profits in manufacturing. Before Rapido had their own dedicated factory, they had scheduling delays because their Chinese vendor could make more money producing plastic plates and dinnerware than they could producing high end detailed model trains.
The emphasis is on variety and not large production runs. Both Lionel and MTH have acknowledged that. Along the lines of what NOT LionelLLC said, I'm sure the folks in North Carolina and then overseas also are under a great deal of pressure to maintain deadlines, given the vast variety of products to be fit into ever changing production schedules. One item may be scheduled to be made in July, but the the vendor realizes the motors or specialized circuit boards won't be available until September. So now you have a delay in production. Jason Shron has spoken of this very dilemma, but Rapido keeps a backlog of unannounced rolling stock to compensate for unforeseen production problems and to keep his factory busy.
None of this will make the mistake made on this particular locomotive feel any better to those who have purchased it, expecting an accurate scale model. Pure speculation here... It could be the solution would be for Lionel to hire more people to handle to work load and to double check artwork (ie: higher prices on scale products) or to cut back the amount of variety featured in the catalogs.
Neither of those solutions will go down well for those who want even more accurate 3-rail scale trains, want them sooner and want them for even less money.
@brianel_k-lineguy posted:None of this will make the mistake made on this particular locomotive feel any better to those who have purchased it, expecting an accurate scale model. Pure speculation here... It could be the solution would be for Lionel to hire more people to handle to work load and to double check artwork
Its most likely costing as much or more fixing all the issues resulting from their lack of quality control, while losing customers because of it.
I agree that Lionel and MTH are making a lot more money on the starter sets and the like, the fixed costs of producing them are a lot less because of the volume. One of the reasons the scale units are so expensive is to make a profit out of them, given the market for scale units is relatively small, they need to sink more of the production costs into each unit, that is basic manufacturing 101. It isn't that they are doing the scale units out of some sense of being nice to scale modelers, I am sure they make a decent profit on those units (if they were losing money on them, they wouldn't build them. Even with Dick Kuhn, who obviously was an enthusiast as well as a businessman, I don't think he made things simply because he loved them).
In terms of quality, we have had a lot of threads on it, and one thing to keep in mind is even with all the inspections in the world, problems slip through. If inspections are being done in manufacturing, inspections are usually done after it is built, and by then it won't pick up a lot of issues, can't. Something like the wrong numbers on the sides of the engine seem glaring, but it also depends on someone who quite honestly is looking for it, especially if the detail is relatively small for example, they may be looking more at the paint, that there is no bleed or bubbles, than that. They might run basic tests on an engine working, but it is likely to be specified areas, and sometimes with that approach glaring errors are missed.
If inspected here, it is very, very easy to miss things, likely they have a big shipment come in, want to get it shipped out, so the people doing it aren't exactly going to have the luxury of time. Given this process, the only way to assure the kind of quality we are talking about, would require going to a lean production/quality process that basically devalues inspections, but given the way trains and a lot of other things are manufactured, that isn't likely, no basis for it. The train manufacturers assume, rightly, that people might not be happy, but figure they can handle that fixing stuff under warranty.
Warranty repairs are always problematic, they are a pain to the person owning it since they have to take it in/given that to be blunt they have a captive audience, in scale there are basically 3 main manufacturers (Lionel, MTH, Atlas, with 3rd rail as a smaller, more boutique example), and given units are often unique, if you want that engine painted for that unique road name, you have no choice for the most part. So if you have mismatched numbers, missing parts, bad paint, etc, you can hope the manufacturer will/make good, or accept that you have a unit that is going to be flawed going down the road. You would hope something that is not cheap would have quality built into it, but that isn't always true, in the car world some of the most expensive luxury cars have had horrible quality compared to cheaper ones.
@Train Nut posted:Its most likely costing as much or more fixing all the issues resulting from their lack of quality control, why losing customers because of it.
That is actually an interesting thought, and in the quality world is know as 'cost of quality'. One of the traditional ways of thinking for many years was that quality 'cost too much', that to put in the processes and procedures and methods to improve the quality of products would be up front cost that would hurt profitability. Cost of quality measurements came about to try and sway the finance types that clung to the notion quality cost too much. One of the problems was in the good old days no one bothered to really measure that, when you are making oodles of money, like GM in the 50's, they didn't care and the costs of poor quality were seen as 'cost of doing business'. Classic example of that was the car industry, standard line about cars was 'if somethings is wrong, dealer will fix it' (which the car companies loved, and dealers hated, because warranty work is a flat number and doesn't remit the cost of doing the work). And a big problem is the cost of poor quality often looks only at the defect rate, the things many people on here are complaining about it.
In the end, what cost of quality studies showed was that the ineffeciencies of the entire process cost a lot more than the beancounters could ever imagine, it wasn't the 200 buck bill from Big Harry to fix the broken Chevy under warranty. The way they produced cars, from losses due to poor quality parts being 'thrown away', spending time rebuilding cars coming off the line, and then later on when the Japanese cars came into the US in numbers, lost market share that was due to poor quality.
Lionel et al are in many ways where GM was in the 1950's, they have a captive market where (in this case) due to the size of the market, they don't really have any incentive to improve quality in the true sense. The assembly process in China could be a 1914 Ford assembly line, they take raw pieces made by vendors and put it together , with specialized work stations for painting, electronics, etc, then they have inspectors who check the final product, if they see something obvious it will be rebuilt, or as is more likely, they will take the unit, recycle what they can, and scrap the rest. For them, the cost of customer complaints, having to fix things under warranty, is okay, they are making money as is, and any benefits they gain by improving quality wouldn't produce much. Do they care that customers aren't happy? I am sure it gives them no pleasure when people aren't happy and people in the company do the best they can to fix things, but they also know that they don't have to worry about many people walking away, for many things there is no alternative, unless the people involved went to HO or another scale (and I don't know how good the quality is there at all), they aren't going to do much better with another company.
@RickO posted:Meh, that decal error is nuthin'. So far only 2 people have noticed the recent J3a hudsons have 5 chuffs per revolution, instead of 4. No way to fix that.
The incorrect chuff rate on all of the Legacy Shays has also apparently gone unnoticed 
Several years ago an company did a run of HO scale FM C-Liners with the B-A1A truck arrangement for New York Central, New Haven, and Long Island. Unfortunately the got the cooling fans wrong. They only had three fans instead of the correct four.
The company went and had correct replacement shells made and they would send them free to any customer who wanted them, without the requiring customer to return the incorrect shell.
That is customer service!
Stuart
Another point. Does a company want a one time customer, or a customer for life...
And another thing companies forget. People can vent on the internet, and PR cannot control that message...
@Stuart posted:Several years ago an company did a run of HO scale FM C-Liners with the B-A1A truck arrangement for New York Central, New Haven, and Long Island. Unfortunately the got the cooling fans wrong. They only had three fans instead of the correct four.
The company went and had correct replacement shells made and they would send them free to any customer who wanted them, without the requiring customer to return the incorrect shell.
That is customer service!
Stuart
Several years ago there was also another company that had a problem with possible water damage to a run of O scale PRR s1 turbines.
They recalled the entire run and repaired them. Those that still wanted them got a repaired loco. Those that didn't want theirs back in spite of the repair got a refund.
This was also customer service at its best.
I think at this point maybe we are starting to cross the line. For the record I am a loyal Lionel collector. I was one of those that shouted "send the incorrectly lettered SD-70AH back!" That helped to fuel a mob mentality to go lynch some perpetrators. In retrospect, a manufacturer simply got a couple of 2 mm letters wrong on each side of the cab. Running the engine nobody will ever notice. Sitting on the shelf, somebody might be able to call it out but they certainly will not see both sides.
For most of us we can't understand how this "atrocity" could have occurred at the factory. But of course all of us know the difference between a SD-70ACe, M-2, and AH versions.....right? How about the young Chinese woman at the stamping/inking machine? Do you think she knows what any of these letters actually are or mean?
No I'm not excusing Lionel for the lettering error, I'm just saying its probably not as big of a deal that we are all making out of it. I know Lionel is not perfect but neither am I nor is Ford, GM, EMD, GE, Dell, Apple, etc.
Sorry but my conscience just go the best of me....
@Steims posted:I think at this point maybe we are starting to cross the line. For the record I am a loyal Lionel collector. I was one of those that shouted "send the incorrectly lettered SD-70H back!" That help fuel a mob mentality to go lynch some perpetrators. In retrospect, a manufacturer simply got a couple of 2 mm letters wrong on each side of the cab. Running the engine nobody will ever notice. Sitting on the shelf, somebody might be able to call it out but they certainly will not see both sides.
For most of us we can't understand how this "atrocity" could have occurred at the factory. But of course all of us know the difference between a SD-70ACe, M-2, and AH versions.....right? How about the young Chinese woman at the stamping/inking machine? Do you think she knows what any of these letters actually are or mean?
No I'm not excusing Lionel for the lettering error, I'm just saying its probably not as big of a deal that we are all making out of it. I know Lionel is not perfect but neither am I nor is Ford, GM, EMD, GE, Dell, Apple, etc.
Sorry but my conscience just go the best of me....
Thank you for adding some perspective to this topic. This thread has troubled me since I first started reading it yesterday.
I have an earlier issued Lionel SD70ACe so I went to the train room to determine just how noticeable this would be. Looks like one would need to be within 12 inches of the engine to read this small lettering and maybe even closer to make out the last three characters. Actually, I am having trouble making out the lettering in the second photo which seems to be taken from much closer than 12 inches.
I am really sorry that the original poster is unhappy with his purchase but of all things that might be wrong with such a feature laden locomotive, this one seems so inconsequential.
As for all the comments about the incompetence of the folks at Lionel, I am reminded of one of my most favorite quotes from John Will (Gunrunnerjohn):
" Nothing is so easy as the job you imagine someone else having"!
Happy railroading,
Don
And nothing is more easy to spend than other people's money.
The OP has a beef and that's okay. Last year, I bought a $1100 Lionel Light Mountain that had Missouri misspelled on the tender. I returned it. I posted pictures of the error and complained about it. I don't feel bad about discussing the minutia of the toy train hobby here. It's a train forum.
@DGJONES posted:As for all the comments about the incompetence of the folks at Lionel, I am reminded of one of my most favorite quotes from John Will (Gunrunnerjohn):
" Nothing is so easy as the job you imagine someone else having"!
Happy railroading,
Don
Don, My only issue is there were lots of "someone else's" involved in the project who should have caught this.This mistake doesn't fall on just one person, but rather everyone who looked (or overlooked) this project and gave it the green light for production.
In my line of work, whenever something is released for public consumption, every letter, word and sentence is scrutinized by multiple groups of people over the course of 48 hours for proper Grammar, Fonts, and punctuation. The process is tedious and overkill but it surely prevents gaffs like this... no matter how small they may be.
Don,
I think overall this thread has been very civil. Nobody is outright bashing Lionel, and I don't want anyone to. I know that to some, the problem might be considered "minutia", but I waited nearly a year saving up for this locomotive, and discovered the problem within 5 minutes of having it out of the box.
I totally understand that mistakes happen, I've made my fair share. I would just like to see Lionel take some sort of action. At the bare minimum, an apology would be appreciated. I doubt Lionel will offer to fix the typo themselves, so that leaves me with the option of getting decals to do it myself (at a cost of about $25) or sending it off to a custom painter ($50-$75). It would be nice if Lionel could offer a partial refund (not at my dealer's expense). I emailed Lionel when I noticed the error and have not heard back, I understand they might be busy/ not even open right now, but I still don't expect to hear a response given others' feedback, which is disappointing.
@MikeH posted:And nothing is more easy to spend than other people's money.
Nailed it. They dropped the ball. Have they dropped the ball worse in the past? Absolutely. However this a trend with a manufacture that over the past 5-6 years has made so many errors I've lost count. It is incompetence.
My favorite so far is Lionel misspelled Missouri on the $1100 Mountains. That wasn't tiny lettering.
In terms of why something that seems to be so apparent is missed, like numbers being wrong or a piece missing, it comes down to how things are checked out. Given the nature of the way trains are made these days and the staffing at home, there simply aren't oodles of inspections involved, that I am pretty certain and the way the trains are made the person making them to be honest is just trying to get as much done as fast as they can. At the factory, they likely have a final quality control inspection only (infamous inspector 6), but they likely run some basic tests on the finished unit, make sure the engine can run, basic things work, but it is unlikely it is detailed testing for any given unit (they likely take samples of production runs to give a good going over, not every unit). Most units will get a pretty cursory checkout. Then when it is shipped and checked here in the US , it isn't going to be that deep a check likely, if at all. With the pressure to get shipments to stores and people who pre ordered them, and given they don't have a lot of people involved with inspecting the units, it is pretty easy to get an obvious slip through. (And I give this warning, I don't know anything specific about lionel or any of the train manufacturers, my comments are based on experience analyzing how companies produce things and based on an assumed profile of how Lionel works (or MTH, Atlas, etc, likely they all operate similarly). Cars are very different, once upon a time they used the inspection model, these days the emphasis is on finding and stopping problems up front that is part of the standard lean production techniques, the big car companies all do this, but in the old days they did very much the same kind of thing, did inspections when built and dealt with it there, it is why the cars often weren't very good, especially compared to today). Modern production of things like tv sets, high end gizmos like computers and iphones, use similar techniques, they have to because build quality there is important, too much competition to do it the older, more sloppy way.
I am not saying I think it is right you pay a lot for something and it is produced with quality that has the perception of being poor, I am not, just saying why the process likely fails to find these things. It always amazed me Mercedes Benz stayed in business, especially once Toyota and Nissan got into the high end, Benz cars were kind of like Legacy engines, full of bells and whistles, when they ran right they could be amazing cars, but the quality of their cars were for the birds, literally, and while I think the Japanese scared them (it is one of the reasons, ironically, Benz bought Chrysler), I know for a fact their cars were not great quality, especially given the price, but they had enough mystique and snob value that people kept buying them and complaining about them, too.
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