I pre-order no more if it can't be seen, touched and run it can stay where it is. No more problems. Cheers Jim
@ BobbyD All they had to do was look at a picture. How hard would that be. It is blatantly incompetent things that make me nuts........... It looks like Lionel because the couplers stick way out and the hoses look better than MTH.
That NS Genset is an otherwise awesome model- graphics being wrong should not pass go--
With the Pre-Order of new locomotives and cars without samples available makes one wonder if the catalog showing the correct paint scheme or the wrong paint scheme will be exactly what is delivered in 6 months to 12 months.
If the paint scheme changes are worse looking than the real thing, then it would be nice to know ahead of time.
Andrew
The latest MTH catalog has a depiction of the CN ES44AC with the WRONG windshields pictured. I'm waiting to see a photo of the actual production model before I purchase one.
When the new Lionel catalog came out I noticed a potential detail error on the Milwaukee Road E-7 Legacy diesel set. The Milwaukee tilted rectangle herald on the engine reads "The Milwaukee Road" and not "Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul and Pacific" which would be correct for the 1947-48 time frame of the engine's original paint job. Granted, it might be just myself and other Milwaukee geeks who notice stuff like this, but jeez! For $800+ it should be correct. If I can buy a Micro-Trains N scale boxcar and read the journal repacking dates with a magnifier I'm pretty sure Lionel can apply the correct CMSP&P herald on an O gauge E-7.
Attachments
Why should the decals be limited to the ORIGINAL paint scheme? They probably followed a pic of the engines from a year or two later after a repaint. IOW, it very well could be 100% accurate, just not for a specific year.
Sorry, guys, but this is not only nit-picking, it isn't even an error.
@ BobbyD All they had to do was look at a picture. How hard would that be. It is blatantly incompetent things that make me nuts........... It looks like Lionel because the couplers stick way out and the hoses look better than MTH.
The model railroad industry fought UP (and others?) over having to pay for reproducing the companies trademarked images and recall MTH winning that battle. So even if they do not collect any money, would they not have you sign a licensing agreement so they have some control over their logo? Backwards would seem to be a non acceptable use.
We can all live with a few rivets off, the color a shade off, etc.
Backwards logo? Not...
Man, this is a tough crowd. Incorrect structure is ok, but an easily fixed logo is enough to nix the deal.
The bottom line is, look BEFORE you buy. Some "guarantees" are shaky these days! There should be no "mistakes".
The vast majority of people that I know in the 3-rail hobby world could care less about prototype accuracy. This is the reason that you get NH EP-5s with 4 wheel trucks and fantasy (Great Northern, etc.) paint schemes.
The people on this forum are the exception to the rule. We want accuracy except for oversize couplers, wheels, rail, swivel diesel pilots and that always popular third rail.
If you watched Eric's trains video on his loco collection, MTH used a wrong shade of blue for his CSX Genset engine, so he weathered it. Maybe weathering the item might help and you would not notice the error.
Tim,
It was actually the Lionel version that had the incorrect shade of CSX Blue.
Michael
The bottom line is, look BEFORE you buy. Some "guarantees" are shaky these days! There should be no "mistakes".
The problem with "look before you buy" is the increasing amount of products that have to be pre-ordered so that they will be produced. If not enough orders are received then the items will not be produced. So we have to trust that the models will be correct before we receive them.
Stuart
I wonder how MTH picked the two SD-40-2s in Buffalo and Pittsburgh paint. Both 3323 and 3328 have different features. Nose gong, number boards, headlight position etc.
Man, this is a tough crowd. Incorrect structure is ok, but an easily fixed logo is enough to nix the deal.
Not all of us are talented enough to "fix" things like this.
If I had that reversed horse logo and I tried to update it (even if someone wrote me instructions and provided me the right materials), you would darn sure be able to tell I had done it.
-Dave
Paul,
Except for artwork of the Evolution Hybrid & the BNSF ES44DC, all other GE Evolution models (Iowa Interstate, Norfolk Southern, heritage & Florida East Coast) had the incorrect teardrop shaped windshield. I can understand your concern since MTH made the Canadian National ES44DC in an earlier run with the teardrop windshield which was correct for that model but not for the ES44AC from the 2015 Volume 2 catalog.
These are just my opinion,
Thanks,
Naveen Rajan
The latest MTH catalog has a depiction of the CN ES44AC with the WRONG windshields pictured. I'm waiting to see a photo of the actual production model before I purchase one.
@naveenrajan Thank you. At these prices I have to look before I leap. With my luck it will have the wrong windshields.
There are all kinds of mistakes, there are the design ones (on a scale model of a real engine, having the wrong colors, windshield, etc), then there are things like missing paint, the wrong wheels put on, overspray, orange peel paint, which are defects in manufacturing. Both do happen, and yes, it is dangerous when a manufacturer accepts defects as part of the business. However, while Mr. Scher is correct when it came to things like cars, that the US companies assumed defects were a fact of life and paid the price for it, trains are a bit different, as much as we complain and moan about the lack of quality, the problems, the bad detail, we still are buying them, because there is no competition, the same way the US car manufacturers didn't try to compete on quality in the 'good old days'. I kind of understand the arguments, even though the fidelity stuff probably wouldn't bother me, for those to whom scale fidelity is important, buying a scale model with stuff that is wrong is going to be an irritation, they bought it expecting fidelity and got something with flaws. Whether the company ever intended it to be perfectly in fidelity with the prototype or not is debatable, but if they sold it as a true scale model then did this they are in the wrong (not that it matters much that I think that).
"But we train consumers wanted more, and the train companies went overseas to lower costs so they could spend the money on new tooling and product development... which they have done. But now the factory is across the ocean and is a contractor for the train companies: A totally different arrangement from when they had their own production facilities."
That isn't true, Lionel went offshore, as did the other manufacturers, to cut their production costs and increase profits. When they went offshore, from what I have read of the limited information out there, they basically shipped their jigs and so forth overseas and started producing there. There also is no way of knowing that moving production to china allowed them to create any more new product than they otherwise would have, it isn't like they were making X dollars a year, went to china, saved Z dollars in doing so, and spent all of Z on new product creation, it is likely that their spending on new production stayed the same and they simply now were making X+Z dollars in profit instead of X before the move. I doubt very much Lionel et al sent production to China because of customers demand for new products, they sent production to China to make more money out of each unit. Whether the poster meant it or not, it comes out as saying "If you had been satisfied with what Lionel was producing back then, they never would have sent production overseas and caused the problems we see today", when the reason for the move likely had nothing to do with customer demand (it actually reminds me of a certain idiot of a GM, telling fans of the team that if they want a better team with a higher payroll, they need to come out to the games and buy tickets and see the current (crappy) team, then maybe they will pay for better players