Another disappointing shipment!

[johnh35]

If I pay money for something, I expect it to be right. The old phrase about being a modeler has absolutely zero to do with expectations. I am also a certified auto mechanic, but I don't purchase a new car expecting to have to work on it.

Quality has taken a dive. I see it in everything I buy nowadays. If you sell 1,000,000 of a product and save a dime on every one, that is $100,000. There are two aspects to the problem, product engineering and production. More and more products are being engineered to be cheaper to produce, cutting corners as you go to get an edge on the competition. It is a downward spiral that has been playing out for years. Then came moving the actual production to foreign countries to take advantage of the lower wages. I don't consider it greed, I am sure none of the model train manufacturers are getting rich.

That said, if they sell it, it should be right out of the box. Foobs are one thing, poor assembly and shabby engineering are another.

[Denver Road Doug]

I will chime in....the Walthers 100T Hoppers are pretty poorly put together.

I can only assume that the majority of reason for the recent trend in glueing the crap out of everything is because less attention is being paid to the design, tolerances, and quality control.

I'm not one to get too up-in-arms about the price of things and the increases, but when the quality issues keep creeping in like they are....well that I DO have an issue with.     

In a lot of cases I really WOULD like to see disassembled cars being offered...and sans trucks/couplers.   I'm told IMRC will send them to you that way, but then you're still paying full MSRP and I'm not sure I'm that gung-ho about it.      For onesy-twosy buys I probably would.  (of course IMRC seems very giddy about cancelling any covered hopper I preorder, and running the rest.     )

[chicken45]

If I pay money for something, I expect it to be right. The old phrase about being a modeler has absolutely zero to do with expectations. I am also a certified auto mechanic, but I don't purchase a new car expecting to have to work on it.

QFT

It's irritating that you have to tinker just to get things to run reliably. That's different from what we do here; holding ourselves to higher standards like correct ride height and we worry about how a GG1 looks running through a 9.75in S curve. I think we are in the minority.

[Albert in N]

Just wondering what brand freight cars were the disappointing shipment that started this thread?  Was it confirmed to be Walthers? 

[robert3985]

Y'know, every locomotive I've ever bought had to be re-gauged to NMRA standards in order to run through my tight NMRA standards hand-laid turnouts.  That started 30 years ago when I started building my own turnouts, so nothing's changed as far as that is concerned...meaning that quality control in that area isn't any worse nowadays.

I just got done last night fixing my son's WOT SP baggage cars (all the ones with two axle trucks) simply by replacing the horribly wobbly WOT wheelsets whih have those  astoundingly rotund axles (which are off-center) which rub on the truck mounted coupler attachment parts.  The next WOT fix is gonna be on his two baggage cars with three axle trucks where the retainer pin's head is too thick (a design flaw) and the thin steel axle of the center wheelset rubs it...all of the cars wobbling and squawking as they go down the track.

The "fix" will total about 45 minutes of my time, but both issues are not "quality control" at the assembly line...they are design flaws, and should have been spotted in the design stage.

However...and I mean HOWEVER...I love the WOT cars, and my son Ben's baggage/mail train being pulled by his new brass LIK Skirted Black GS-2 is a lovely sight even to my U.P. prejudiced eyes. It would have been difficult indeed to duplicate without the WOT cars...so the effort to fix 'em is worth it IMO.

Just to make it clear, the WOT problem is an isolated case, and the vast majority of time, I don't have problems with any RTR cars I buy, other than I replace the wheelsets and body mount Z-scale MTL couplers...and lower them if necessary. 

On the flip side of the coin, my son and I were talking today about it being the "golden age" of N-scale, with many manufacturers being increasingly concerned about scale fidelity and making specific equipment unique to certain roads rather than attempting to make foob versions with wide appeal, such as ConCor's GS-4's with a U.P. FEF nose, painted in U.P. black with smoke lifters.

Over all, I am very happy with the state of things in N-scale, and I have high hopes for more transition era/mid 50's cars and engines that will be perfect for my era and location coming to a dealer before I get so old I can't remember how to use my airbrush.

[nkalanaga]

Bob:  I agree this is definitely the Golden Age.  As I said before, even if the products do need work, the starting point is so much better than 40 years ago.  At least the model is available, in some form, to be worked on! 

As for the couplers, as long as there are two or more viable options, someone is going to have to change theirs.  When it was Rapidos, folks changed to KD/MT.  Now that some form of knuckle coupler is standard, some change theirs to all one version, and some, like you, change to Z scale for the looks.  At least all of the couplers work together, most of the time, and they look better than the Rapidos. 

I have a train of ore cars, with MT Z couplers, and they work fine with the MT N couplers on the loco and caboose.  In my case the change was for closer coupling, rather than scale size, but the results are the same.

Off topic:  One of my biggest worries, modeling-wise, was that something would happen to the KD/MT factory.  When they were the only source of knuckle couplers any prolonged production disruption would have been a major problem.  In any industry, having a single source for a critical component isn't a good idea.  I still prefer their couplers, but at least there are other suppliers now.

We have the same issue with small rail.  Does anyone other than Micro Engineering make code 40 and 55 loose rail?

[Iain]

It could be worse, you could be modeling Canadian National and their new sport:  Locomotive Tipping.



 

[flight2000]

It could be worse, you could be modeling Canadian National and their new sport:  Locomotive Tipping.

I thought CSX invented that sport...   

Brian

[Leggy]

Nothing like connecting the non rotary coupler to the loco and putting it thru a rotary dumper 

[robert3985]

It could be worse, you could be modeling Canadian National and their new sport:  Locomotive Tipping.



 

Hahaha!!  Thanks...I needed that belly laugh! 

[Bill H]

Group:
I have to rather straddle the proverbial fence on this post as it has developed. In the very early seventies, I decided to move from S gauge to N gauge and started off with an SD-45 from Mehano as my first N gauge locomotive and some very early Atlas snap switches I decided to build a test layout to see if I would stick with N gauge. A few months later, many new curse words fully exploited, that SD-45 was dropped down the air vent of the house cesspool, where it fittingly belonged. The test layout was generally recycled into firewood and I ran screaming from N gauge. Again I was already an experienced model railroader, and yet I left N gauge because of the abominable performance and poor quality. Accordingly, I can understand the concerns of other posters as to how poor QC, wobbling wheelsets, balky engines etc. could drive younger or inexperienced potential model railroaders from our hobby.

Yet on the other hand, I do consider myself a modeler of sorts, a tinkerer, and do get enjoyment from fixing that little problem with a balky engine or a loose part. And if I think back to that Mehano excrement and compare it to my recent Bachmann EM-1 ascetically and performance wise, and given the adjustment for inflation, most of our engines have seen significant quality improvement at an inflation adjusted price point - so something must be going right in the hobby. And as our culture has changed (hesitant to say evolved) from using cardboard and old soup cans to boxcar kits to must be ready to run, and as our hobby expectations have changed from enjoyable hours of assembly to I want it now, right now, and it better be the right lens color for the Lower Mississippi Freight and Banana GP-2 or the manufacturer is an idiot, certainly our expectations have, at least in some minds, raised the quality or accuracy bar, but without accepting that it may come as additional cost.

Personally, I have no issue if my most recent purchase, after traveling thousands of miles has a loose screw, and requires tightening, but I do have a major issue with a serious manufacturing flaw that causes my purchase to be unsuitable for its intended use. Accordingly, I am willing to cut the manufacturer some slack for a loose screw and not complain, but as I no longer have a cesspool, I do strongly complain, not to my dealer, but directly to the manufacturer for a manufacturing flaw. That is the only way we can collectively improve the hobby.

Best,
Bill

[Mike C]

It could be worse, you could be modeling Canadian National and their new sport:  Locomotive Tipping.



 

  So THAT'S how you wake up a sleeping locomotive !

[nkalanaga]

Bill:  That Mehano SD-45 was probably the worst model you could have started with.  I had one.  Even after jumpering it to a MiniTrix F unit it STILL wouldn't run!  The motor would turn, if I took the gears out, but it couldn't turn the wheels.  I tried removing the motor, and the wheels wouldn't roll.  The F unit could drag it quite nicely, and I seriously thought about using it as a track cleaning car...

I finally turned the radiators into an industrial cooling unit, and the motor magnet ended up on the refrigerator, where it could hold one piece of paper, if it wasn't too large.

Now, if you had bought a MiniTrix U28C, you might have stayed in N scale.  Those things ran quite well.  And I switched my layout with a set of their F units for 20 years, simply because they ran smoother and slower than anything else I could find.

[mcjaco]

QFT

It's irritating that you have to tinker just to get things to run reliably. That's different from what we do here; holding ourselves to higher standards like correct ride height and we worry about how a GG1 looks running through a 9.75in S curve. I think we are in the minority.

You guys were clearly not around in the Athearn Blue Box, Roundhouse Ready to Run kit, days. 

[GaryHinshaw]

New rule: further responses to this thread should include specific examples of poor quality, to substantiate  the poster's comments.  Vague statements that things are going down the tubes are not useful and just get people riled up.  I'll pick two recent examples, the last two pieces of rolling stock I've purchased:

* Athearn Auto-Max - it won't roll freely because the axles of the articulated truck scrape against the screw heads that attached the connector to the two halves of the car.  An easy fix if I can find suitable low-profile screws, but why should I have to?  This is not a design flaw, because I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be this way, but it was a slip in quality control.

* Red caboose auto-rack - Many of the etched panels are warped, and one is even slightly crushed.  The knock-off MT couplers (on extended draft gear) are prone to height mismatch and do not recenter very reliably, hence they tend to spontaneously uncouple.  These cars have taken a dive in quality since IM took over their production and I am hesitant to buy any more.

These are both cars with MSRP's in the $40+ range, and they both used to be state-of-the-art products, but neither of these cars can be run on the layout without repair.  Is this good for the hobby?  The Athearn issue is just inattention.  The IM issue is a price-point trade; frankly, I wish they would find a better factory and jack the price a few dollars more (and go back to genuine MT couplers, at least for these very sensitive extended draft gear cars).

Again, please cite examples if you respond.  Examples of outstanding quality are welcome too!  I'll pick two of my recent favorites: the ExactRail Trinity hy-cube and the Atlas coil car.  I'm sure you have some.