The "Disposable Commodity" and Model Trains

I have a few low-level starter set Lionel locos from the late 90s/early 2000s, granted they don't have TMCC, but they still work fine after being in storage for a while and not being lubed or anything. I think the only answer we have is "We'll see." 

This is the year (1978) and set that Lionel basically blew it. Fundimensions almost killed Lionel.  My Dad was so disappointed in purchasing this "disposable" set. He said he should have just purchased a used one at the train show.

Fake trucks with single axels, plastic upon plastic locomotive. The only thing really cool was the accessories... But a train was a train when I was young so I ran the heck out of it. I think my Dad tossed this one when I left for college.

 

 

Does cheap translate into unreliable?  My Marx collection runs just fine. I think theres no balance in any of this between $2,000.00 engines and what is considered basic. The concept of what science calls an "elegant" solution or one that is compact seems to have been lost in favor of adding more complexities with no end in sight.Who is going to be able to afford any of this..a relative handful? The whole model train bit is becoming a niche within a niche.

Cheap is definitely unappealing. Marx is different that the set above, it has that Deco look that stands the test of time. Basic sets still need to have a good feel and quality to them that maintains good operation.

The niche market was opened up when a lot of scale HO brass operators came to O.

My son is 4, he doesn't know the difference between scale or 027, but he sure enjoys the sounds and additional features.

quote:

 Now if you like all the gadgets in cars that run on electronics and are willing to put up with unreliability just to have the latest thing, you have made your own trade-off and will not be frustrated when something goes wrong.

 

The manufacturers / importers of todays trains leave the customer with little choice.

It's true that manufacturers/importers leave us with little or no choice when it comes to trains or any other consumer product.  But it is our response to that very fact which is at issue.  Some people take disappointment in stride; others get frustrated, especially when they can remember when products were more reliable.  If you've never experienced having a product last for more than 10 years, then you are not disappointed when one breaks after 4 or 5.  For me, the computerized model trains today are simply wonderful to watch, but I don't own one.  The frustration of having a circuit board blow out would probably make me quit the hobby, especially if it were a recurring occurrence.  I play with post-war mechanical stuff and traditional runners like Williams.  It keeps me sane (I know my weaknesses) and a happy person (at least most of the time).  Cheers!

I think what got lost was "reasonable". A reasonable amount of detail, cost, control and quality. Its all or nothing now. The manufacturers have largely boxed the O market into a corner..either you buy what they are selling or you don't. They are not stupid, add this and that as a "necessity" and you increase the margins. To me the whole thing is upside down and I have only bought two items in eight months as I can equally enjoy something other than model trains at a fraction of the cost and not fret about becoming ridiculously obsessed with either having everything or paying too much for what is in essence, a small part of a bigger picture. What can I do for $500.00 not spent? A lot.

Its gotten so that either you are a die hard or not. Again "reasonable" has flown out the window. 

Actually, Apple's quality control in one sense is hideous. There are no official stats on this, but because their cost of production is so cheap compared to price (the phones cost 600 bucks retail, but cost about 130 bucks to make), they achieve quality by testing the phones, both in China and here, and anything that seems marginal is basically either thrown out or refurbished. The only data I have is anecdotal, but reputedly their fail rate off the assembly is abysmal,and in the field the fail rate on their products is higher than other typical consumer electronics (the first I am pretty certain of, the latter not so much). They get away with it, can throw away a lot, because their margins are so high (it is much the same as GM during the 1950's until they faced real competition). Lionel, MTH and such are low volume producers, and the problems you see with their products reflect that they probably allow a lot more marginal stuff to get through, they probably don't test as rigorously, and I would bet pretty good money they don't have QA efforts to improve build quality, given their market, easier to let it fail in the field. 

 

Disposable culture is nothing new, the old postwar trains were simple and reliable because they, well, were simple and reliable, but that said there were a lot of examples of defective products, but it was so easy to fix, if an e-unit went, you replaced it, if a smoke unit broke you got a new one...but then you had things like the pre war 700e with bad alloys that caused it to crumble, as one example. On the other hand, comparitively, cars back then were pieces of crap compared to what we have today, in terms of reliability and other factors for all their complexity, cars today are enduring, not the cars of the past. Back then, people used to routinely get rid of a car after a couple of years, and engines and drivetrains used to start having significant problems after 30k miles, and getting 100k out of a car was considered something. Cars rusted out after a couple of years, literally fell apart, that doesn't happen today, and in part it is because of the complexity (the pollution controls on cars drove the electronic control systems, which made the engines run a lot cleaner which helps them last a lot longer)...not everything back then was made to last, either, and throwaway culture has been with us a long time, planned obsolescence was not a myth, it often was very true...it is, as with most things, a mixed bag. 

 

And yes, if you need to repair electronics in these modern engines, it is almost impossible to debug the boards and such yourself. A lot of the stuff is not off the shelf components like CPU's and so forth that are unique by code (like a PC, for example), the use hardware specifically built and programmed to do what they do (ASICS are one example of this), so it usually isn't fixing broken wires or replacing capacitors and such.

 

The other problem is these boards are not engineered necessarily to be easy to be fixed, the design on these I would hazard a guess are done to get it working as quickly as possible, design and engineering time is expensive, which among other things leads to designs with shortcomings likely to fail, quality comes from design reviews and finding potential issues before it is put into hardware, and that probably does not go on all that much, either. 

 

The biggest things with these units is that they are relatively delicate. Cause a track short on a postwar engine, one that causes the breaker in the transformer to trip, and the engine won't notice, do that with a modern engine and the surge probably fries half the boards in it. Open the engine up and cause a static discharge on a post war you have a shock, do that on a modern engine, it has caused damage. 

 

Sadly, with the new stuff, you won't have a cottage industry making replacement boards and such the way you do with postwar, just too expensive to try and recreate the boards for these engines, and it would be next to impossible to reverse engineer the custom components....might be able to pirate parts off boards from a similar engine, but not going to be cost effective. 

It would be great if the manufacturers went to a common standard, like DCC, where you have a wide variety of board manufacturers to choose from, that not inconsequentially would be supported because of the size of the HO and N scale markets (among other things, you can upgrade DCC easily by switching boards I believe), but that is not likely to happen. 

Today's trains, in terms of detail, operation, and scale fidelity leave the old postwar stuff in the dust, IMHO.  The advent of Command Control technology fundamentally changed how I operate and enjoy my trains, and I haven't looked back.  Postwar stuff is cool in a nostalgic, retro sort of way, and I do enjoy seeing pics of other folks' Postwar layouts.  To each their own cup of tea..... 

+1

 

I keep hearing about how older automobiles were unreliable junk, and it makes me laugh every time I start my reliable little 1962 Corvair....

 

Jeff C

+another one (+2)

 

I sort of said this earlier, but what the heck, put me down again. If not for the modern trains and command control they wouldn't be selling me any trains. Pre and post war trains are great and I know there still are a lot of folks that really prefer these. I think that's good too, but the new ones are what does it for me.

I purchased a Williams engine, dummy unit, and passenger cars used, not new.  After running it around, the engine would not reverse and required a new E-unit.  I took it to a train shop for repair and the E-unit could not be acquired.  I contacted Bachmann about the situation.  I was informed to send the engine in, and for a flat rate that was quoted to me, it would be repaired.  The rate was reasonable for an E-unit so I sent it out.  Imagine my surprise when it returned with an entirely brand new chassis inasmuch as the E-unit for it was apparently unavailable.  Thank-you Bachmann!

Hello after a hiatus ladies and gentlemen,

As with some of my DCC HO that doesn't run well on DC, I've ripped out the digital boards and sound, like my BLI Pennsy. Centipedes, wired the wheels to the motor and installed constant lighting. Much smoother running and my enjoyment is really just level continuous running Anyway.

I never cottoned onto DCC or its O-gauge equivalent. Sound I can take or leave, and some of my K-line and MTH engines have class lights that I disconnect as way too bright for realism.

When and if engines start to fail due to PCB failure I'll go to a 3-position e-unit and regular lights like my post war gear.

jon A.

peterborougn Ontario Canada 

In case there's anything, not just trains but anything, we can buy in this fabulous millennium that is not disposable I'd like to know about it.  These days landfill is what we make.

 

Pete

The biggest reason for the "throw away society" world we now live in is the cost-benefit advantage for repairing versus replacing tends to be pretty small nowadays.

 

If it costs $60 just in replacement parts alone for a sub-assembly in your consumer-grade inkjet printer that cost you $120 5 years ago versus $100 to just buy a whole new printer, well, it tends to make more economic sense to pay the extra $40 for the new printer.  The return on investment if you purchased the replacement part (not including labor if you have a tech do it for you) just isn't there since it's still a 5 year old printer and long out of warranty.

On the subject of printers.....

About 12-13 years ago I bought a Kodak photo printer. A few weeks later I needed some more ink for it, and I discovered that the printer model that I had was now on sale. Due to this sale, the cost of a set of ink cartridges alone was more than the cost of the whole printer. So, I bought their entire stock of printers (They had 9 left.) and simply disposed of them when they ran out of ink.  

Maybe it's time for optional (for a price) extended warranties? This coverage would offer repair or replacement and be similar to coverage available on almost all other electronic items. Could be offered by manufacturer or merchant. 

Good idea, but in my opinion products should be made to last to begin with, not last if there is a warranty. I take it to mean that the company built crap but will give you another one if you pay extra. Warranties have become a replacement service instead of a manufacturer reassuring the purchaser that the product is well designed, well built, and will last. Again, maybe rocks are better ...

Actually, if a product is that shabby, they won't offer extended warranties on them. Extended warranties are based on them not breaking down and thus making a lot of money when people don't use the service. It is why they tell you not to bother with extended warranties, that most people never get anything out of them. 

 

That may be the case right now, but I strongly suspect that it won't remain true forever.  Right now DCC decoders are cheap and plentiful, but were they always so?  I hate to say it, but what needs to happen is for someone to "win" the control wars.  When there's one standard (and there will be, eventually) then the component prices will come down.  For someone who isn't afraid to gut a unit and put new electronics in it, the quality of the model is more important than the longevity of the circuit board.  

 

If you want trains to just run forever, there is plenty of postwar stuff available (assuming you like changing brushes and cleaning commutator faces every Xmany hours of running.

I agree completely . . .  standardization of "control" will lead to commodity pricing of replacements as well as standardized "solutions" to failure, obsolescence, and upgrade problems.  

But beyond that, something else will happen, slowly, over time, eventually it will be the post-war stuff that is difficult to get repaired: the skills and parts needed to repair them will be a thing of the past as folks like, well, me, die off.  There will be a whole generation of folks (kids today) raised in a world of remotes and circuit boards, who were doing code and programming options in middle school, who can fix electronic trains but are not going to touch electro-mechanical stuff.  

 

It is the same way today with Model T Fords.  They were/are very simple machines, and one upon a time you could find someone to repair one anywhere (any farmer, for example . . . .) and they did and Model Ts ran forever . . . 

 

But today, even though replacement parts (at least upgrade ones made with superior modern metals) are easy to get, just try to find someone who will work on them.  It takes a specialty shop now and getting it done right is difficult.  If a modern mechanic can't hook her OBDII diagnostic computer to it, she doesn't want to touch it!  Eventually, it will be the same with toy trains.

You raise a very good point.  We're now about 15, almost 20 years into the "control wars" and it is not clear to me when that issue will resolve itself.  Until then, unless  a TMCC or DCS locomotive is converted to conventional operation, the only choice up until now has been to replace boards, which are not inexpensive.  Fortunately, other than some very recent Lionel products, I have had good luck with MTH and Lionel, even with products that are now far from new having been purchased in the late 1990s.

quote:

But today, even though replacement parts (at least upgrade ones made with superior modern metals) are easy to get, just try to find someone who will work on them.  It takes a specialty shop now and getting it done right is difficult.  If a modern mechanic can't hook her OBDII diagnostic computer to it, she doesn't want to touch it!  Eventually, it will be the same with toy trains.

 

I guess that's the difference between a skilled mechanic and a lesser one.
I notice a theme on this board disparaging automobiles mechanics.

There are still plenty of issues that can develop on a modern car that aren't diagnosed with a computer.

If we had one command system and the technology was 'open' we would have cheaper and better control systems and cheaper easier to get repair and upgrade parts. It's just one of the many reasons I am conventional. I recently used Dallee DCRU boards to fix locos that had bad/fried boards. But I did buy a box of bridge rectifiers and micro DPDT switches for use down the road in place of DCRU's. Simplify....

That won't happen until the market shrinks to the point of making proprietary stuff loses it's advantage. 

And when the market shrinks to that point, any economy of scale will be lost, and the boards will still be expensive.

We did have one such system at one time. But the company responsible for Dastardly Complicated System decided to not play nice, and so now we have two systems. 

We don't have one operating system for cell phones, cable TV boxes, computers, etc.  Most people just use one and get emulation (either hardware, software or both) when they need it.  Lionel's Legacy system is now open for any third party who wants to make equipment to work with it (as MTH has helped themselves to for about 12 years ).  I don't see a problem, except if you are a Lionel person who wants to operate PS2 or PS3 locos in command mode.  If you have such unnatural desires , feel free to buy DCS, as many have done.

 

Personally, I don't see a problem with disposable equipment.  The pace of technologic change in most areas of life is so breathtakingly rapid, that owning older technology holds little attraction in many areas (computers, cell phones, TVs, automobiles).  In fact, I've decided not to own a car any time soon. Leasing for three years makes sense as the pace of safety innovations is so rapid, I don't want to be driving around a 10 year old vehicle.  In a few years, automobiles will all have backup cameras, automatic braking for sensed collisions, lane departure warnings, etc. and a few years later we'll have some autonomous vehicles that will drive more safely than 99.9% of the unreliable wetware (i.e., us) now operating automobiles.  We don't want air traffic controllers to be using state of the art 1968 equipment, do we?

 

Technologic obsolescence may save your life. Bet on it.  If you like old toy trains, nothing is stopping you from buying, running, displaying and fixing them.  No one is putting a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to buy trains equipped with electronic E units, TMCC, Legacy, DCS, Lion Chief, etc.

Some said the same thing about the cars made after the Model T.
Even grandma could remove the head, pull the pistons, re-hole the cylinders, and do a valve job in the driveway.
And she only had to do it every 18,000 miles.

These new fangled cars with there tight tolerances require a mechanic to rebuild them every 100,000 miles.

And these new cars with electronics 
They may go 500,000 miles but then you need to buy a new one.
God forbid.
I would rather do a valve job in a snowstorm than buy one of those.
Lol

Steps can be taken to get away from the "Throw away" mentality that exists in todays society from reaching expensive model trains.. The control boards even in Legacy Locomotives are not expensive to produce. If an extra control board were packed in a sealed static protective bag and shipped along with each engine, problems down the road could be easily solved. At the very least make extra boards an option for the consumer to purchase. The auto manufacturers make PCM's, BCM's and other computer based electronic control modules available, why not put this into practice in our hobby?  

Because they would rather sell you one.
And if the production run was not profitable, why bother stocking parts?

There is nothing that can not be made to function with an Err replacement board and a bit of the old Yankee ingenuity.
If you so not have it, than this hobby is not for you.

Try finding replacement parts for a VCR.
I still have a couple of hundred films not yet converted to CDs
What are those? Pre DVD.
Technology moving to fast for you.
Ever stick a discount Blu-Ray disc in your DVD player.
Get used to it.

The central issue is that 3-rail trains have moved from mass production to near-universal limited runs over the last 20 years.  When factoring in the cost of tooling, the size of the production run, the logistics, and the cost to the manufacturer to stock parts for all of the models, the old service station concept goes out the window and trains are treated more like iPhones in terms of repair and replacement.  

 

Postwar-era trains were freakishly robust, but they broke too.  E-units were particularly prone to failure.  The difference was that the 736 Berkshire was catalogued for 19 years and shared common components with many other models.  Mass production and interchangeable parts begat a strong service network.  Until about 1995 when TMCC took over, a repair shop could often use a Postwar part to fix a newer engine if caught in a pinch.  Todays models blow away the classics in terms of detail, but the tradeoff is a complete loss of parts standardization. 

 

Its not not that the trains today are less reliable, it's that they lack the service network to back them up.  This is not a slam at Lionel or the current service stations, just a statement of economic reality.  This is why I have decided to stick with Postwar and MPC.  I love the new sounds and features, but I cannot countenance spending $1,000 on a luxury item knowing that with one serious short on my layout I could have little more than a very pretty doorstop. 

You make a good point about safety but knowing a little bit about cars I can tell you are paying a tremendous amount, in the form of interest and depreciation, to purchase a smaller and smaller safety increment.  If you don't believe me, dig into the safety data -- the actual readings and fatality data, not the overall scores -- at IIHS and NTSB. 

 

Depending on how you drive, and if money is an object, you would be better off stretching that increment out to about 10 years, give or take. 

Your point about the expense is correct.  But it is mitigated by not having to take a car for service more than once or twice a year, no expenses for new tires, brakes, etc.  I have reached the stage of life where time is more important than money.  So having a new car every 3 years seems very attractive not only in terms of safety and features,

but in terms of down time, service visits, general hassle.  It's a tradeoff.

 

That said, I think the pace of safety features being added, like automatic collision sensing, lane departure warning and ultimately full automation of driving makes leasing attractive.  Right now I have a nice leased 2012 Honda Pilot with a rear view camera (great safety feature--each year dozens of small children are run over by their family members and killed for lack of this feature).  It will not parallel park itself, it has no collision sensing braking, no lane departure warning, no warning of objects behind the car, etc.  I'm guessing the car I lease in June 2015 will have most or all of those.  As an older driver, I need all the help I can get despite never (knock on wood) having run into anything in my previous 50 years or so of driving.

 

Your mileage may vary (literally).  Personally, I'm really hoping I live to see fully automated cars being the only ones on the roads, and 30-40,000 fewer fatalities per year.  Probably not in the next 20 years, but perhaps in the next 30.

Call me nostalgic, but I like my 1976, CO belching, flaming-metal-deathtrap.  

 

Learned to drive in a 72 Pinto wagon 4 spd. Love that car! Doyou have that car now?!?!?!  Really fits into my 70's era infatuation I am going through right now!!!

My 70's era fun.......dangerous fun!