When a three year old engine can't be fixed !

Having you tried contacting Alex M. ?

I know he had a thread in the past about repairing a VL bigboy that was in really rough shape.

There are some really great techs on this forum. Maybe change the title to VL Niagara repair needed.

Of course, if repair involves a board thats unavailable thats another problem altogether.

Yep.  If anyone can fix it, it will be Alex.

Phil - Further to RickO and MartyE's comments, if you want to see evidence of Alex M's technical prowess refer to the 'The New York Central and Alex M to the Rescue' thread  that was just Posted on this Forum 17 hrs. ago and which contains both comments and videos. 

Phil,

Sounds like you are comfortable taking things apart.  Have you attempted a further repair after you received it back from the 2nd repair place?

Beyond smoke unit batting replacements, I do not have the skill to attempt further repairs.  The operation of this engine changed for the worse after being at the first service station but I believe they were trying their best to get everything right.  I am trying to contact Alex as some of you suggest and get his read on my options.  Thanks to all of you.  Phil

All the related parts are in stock including the RCMC, added smoke driver and smoke units. No reason it shouldn't have been fixed.

Pete

Pete,

I agree.

Hard to believe a simple task of replacing batting resulted in these issues.

Regardless of whether Phil's locomotive was out of warranty or not, my take-away from Phil's trials and tribulations is that it reflects very poorly on Lionel's Service Stations in particular and on Lionel generally.  It also occurs to me that perhaps this type of situation may have contributed to Lionel's recently announced 'new' policy (effective Feb. 7/22) that any product requiring service during the warranty period must be returned to Lionel for their in-house staff to deal with.

I agree with everyone above, and i thank you all for your kind comments. Phil has contacted me and i will certainly get to the bottom of this issue for him. His Niagara will be up and running on the tracks once again.

Due to Lionel's new policy, I am no longer on their service station list so if anyone needs me, feel free to reach out directly to me.  My email address is in my profile and it would be my pleasure to help you.

Thanks, Alex

Phil,

if anyone can fix your engine it would be Alex M.

Trust me. My post on the 3rail forum “The New York Central and Alex M to the rescue “ just touches on the amount of work he’s done for me. With never a comeback.

i sent a station sounds car back to Lionel because it stopped working. The lights worked but no sound. After they sent it back to me it went back in the box with the set. I finally took it out of the box after a few years as I don’t have a regular layout. So I took it out to run around my Christmas tree and guess what? It didn’t work. This time the lights didn’t work or the sound. Not just the sounds as before. I took it to Alex he opened it up in front of me. In about 15 minutes he found that it was wired incorrectly from the factory. Lionel didn’t catch it or didn’t want to be bothered rewiring the hole car. Knowing the boards probably aren’t available anymore for this particular car, he rewired the boards with confidence and now it works perfectly.

This is just one of many things he’s done from me over the years. Use him you won’t be disappointed.

Alex,

The dealers don’t have the time or the talent to actually repair the engines except maybe a smoke unit repair. Trust me I know. As you know, I owned a store in New Jersey year’s ago, and when I saw something that needed too much work I would tell the customer either I could send it back to Lionel or they could. I didn’t have the time to try and figure it out. Back then Lionel did out of warranty repair.

Mike R

It seems to me that the first repair place that kept tinkering and throwing parts at it should take some of the financial responsibility. When you sent it, only the smoke was an issue.

Then he spent a year(?) messing with it, and when he put it back together it came back to you in worse shape.

FYI  those parts are in stock.

Mike R - Interesting when you say "I would tell the customer either I could send it back to Lionel or they could" because in Lionel's recent Warranty Repairs Notice to Lionel Service Stations and Dealers it basically says the same thing... "You can still choose to act as a drop-off location and contact Lionel on behalf of your customers for warranty service if you so choose."