My experience is that IM and LL are the biggest "offenders" for having excess lube in new units. Occasionally, a run of Atlas will too.
The problem that I've seen is that is that the type of lube that they use "breaks down" with time, and some of it gets thin enough, that it migrates "down". If the lube is excessive, you can literally have your loco either laying in a pool of lube, or the trucks will be drenched.
Either way, the jewel case foam will retain this mess, and you can't get it out/off of the foam. If the unit has the plastic casing instead of foam, it really pools up.
Now Kato is just the opposite. They use a pretty thick grease, and not much of it. It's a greenish/blue looking lube, and I've yet to see one break/thin down with time. A few older units actually had "hardened up" lube..........but it didn't migrate. These units were 10+ years old.
Best thing to do IMO, is to make sure that every loco stored does not have excess lube to begin with.
It's easy to say, "I'll clean it up and relube it next week"..................and a couple years later you have a mess when you do open them up to run.
