** I know this may be a strange topic but
ho mth & bli are beautiful models but electronically are a disaster and most
people rip out the decoders to put in the tsumami2s and TCS WOWS and such.so down the road when these are " collectibles will the originals locos with original electronics be worth anymore then the " modified locos ??. just curious **
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No one knows for sure, of course, but I doubt it.
BLI makes pretty nice locomotives, especially steamers, so the value going forward will be associated with the locomotive itself. But that is just my opinion.
Rich
In my opinion they would be worth more with non BLI decoders. At least to me.
Regards, Chris
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Iāve wondered that too but I really doubt it. Especially in the case of MTH. MTH was never really welcomed into HO and their electronics were just bad for HO. They were never valued outside of their models. I think people may pay more fore OEM BLI but not out of collectability but out of fear of stuff that isnāt stock. Thereās no guarrantee that the person who ripped the Rolling Thunder out did any better than BLI did.
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My experience with MTH concerns the O gauge RailKing locomotives. I started with an early N&W 0-8-0 switcher with smoke and whistle before ProtoSounds was anything. I still have that locomotive but the smoke unit caught fire years ago and the whistle part of the electronics stopped working soon after. I removed both the smoke unit and the sound board and the locomotive continues to run well using the reverse electronics on the original board.
Then came the one and only locomotive I ever preordered: a 20th Century Limited Dreyfuss Hudson, the first one MTH cataloged. It had ProtoSounds 2 and did all kinds of neat tricks. However, I was using an MRC Dual Power O27 power supply and nobody knew that MTH (QSI) electronics were incompatible with that kind of power supply. But the engine continued to run but sometimes it was finicky.
Then followed a series of basic starter sets I purchased: a bantam Daylight set, a non streamlined Hiawatha set, a Southern Crescent set, and a 2-6-0 Santa Fe switcher. All weāre amazing and a lot of fun to operate. But still there was that lurking power issue that was going unaddressed.
During the years I had them MTH recognized that the batteries included in their ProtoSounds sets were not working as well as expected. The problem turned out to be a simple loss of charge over time. ProtoSounds batteries charged themselves only while the locomotive was operating. So if you let the locomotive sit for extended periods of time youād slowly lose the ability to run them at all without charging them for quite a long period of time. And most of us didnāt want to have to leave our engines sitting on the track unattended just to recharge the battery.
Back to the MRC issue. Not only was something in the power supply not properly charging the battery, but something about the power itself was causing the locomotive to lose itās mind. Over time the problem multiplied to the point that even software engineers at Rockwell Systems Automation couldnāt make heads or tails of it ( My friend and I took some ProtoSounds boards over to her lab on a Sunday afternoon and ran them through some tests)
Of the six locomotives and sets I owned I only have 2. The N&W switcher and the Hudson. The other 4, the daylight, the 2 Pacifics and the 2-6-0 I ended up selling. But not before I had removed their electronics and hot wired the motors directly to the power pick ups. (The Dreyfuss is also hotwired.). I ended up purchasing an Aristocraft power supply and I use it for the Hudson and 2 MPC era Lionel locomotives that run on DC.
So for what itās worth those are my experiences with MTH.
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Iām very inclined to ask in a separate thread, āWhat is a collectable?ā but fear it could get out of hand, quickly!
Cheers, the Bear. 
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Nah, it wonāt get out of hand, give it a try.
Rich
+1
Years ago I purchased a used brass locomotive with a Zero1 decoder installed. Didnāt impact the cost of the locomotive in any way.
Probably could have made a few bucks selling the Zero1 decoder.
If you are wondering what Zero1 isā¦
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Go with the standard answer: "20 years old or of such great artistic or technological value as to be declared an instant classic ". Some stuff will always be collectable. Others, maybe only because they were so badly made that only a few remain.
For serious collectors where the desire is to have and/or display the models, any modification lowers the value. The fact that the āas manufacturedā locomotive runs like a wounded snail and sounds like a broken dishwasher
is not relevant.
But not everything becomes a valuable collectible. There are people who collect Tyco. But Tyco trains are not very valuable because there arenāt many people collecting them - still for the collector āas manufacturedā is the most desired.
Personally, I am a casual collector so I run my stuff, upgrade wheels. couplers etc.
Paul
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More to the issue, even once you define collectible, the purpose and intent of buyer is changeable. My wife sells vintage home goods (Pyrex, mid century modern decor, etc.). Some people would rather have a damaged piece that has original non functional parts just because thatās the more authentic one. Other people prefer a functional one. I retrofit ceramic Christmas trees with modern plugs, new wiring, and LED bulbs to make them more usable, but thereās definitely buyers whoād have rather had one of those old semi lethal plugs that are almost impossible to grasp without touching the prongsā¦
I think thereās another side to this that is perhaps unique to model railroading. There are many modelers looking for older models not to collect them but to use them. An out of production locomotive has value to a modeler who wants one because the prototype theyāre modeling had one. They may already be expecting to have to do maintenance on it, so not having the original electronics is probably not an issue for them.
Personally, I believe these modelers significantly outnumber collectors.
Good question. On Ebay, I rarely see vendors mentioning the type of decoder of the engines they are selling. Most often, theyāll mention if itās new out of the box, new old stock or used. These are probably the major drivers of a sell. Many vendors donāt go beyond that. I wonder how many people actually ask the question (type of decoder), and how many vendors actually know!
Simon
At least for BLI, I think it might be more accurate to say āsome peopleā rip out the decoders. BLI started about 25 years ago, and decoders made back then - regardless the manufacturer - are not as good as the ones available now. My most recent BLI engines (Milwaukee 261 and Baldwin Centipede demonstrators) are excellent the way they came. My oldest is a first run NYC Hudson, which still has the original decoder (with the added update chip) from the early 2000s. Still works fine.
Anyway, although it may be changing, HO stuff (except maybe brass) hasnāt really been ācollectibleā the way old Lionel or American Flyer trains have been. Changing the decoder isnāt really going to change the ācollectibleā value one way or another, and if itās a better decoder, it could make it better. (I got a great deal on an early Athearn Challenger, but the sound decoder was made during the MTH lawsuit so didnāt have back EMF. The sound was good, but putting a new Wowsound decoder with Back EMF made it run much nicer.)
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Itās tough in Lionel land but I think itās easing up a bit. Back in the 90ās you could get lynched for putting a mint in the box anything on your layout, and the people who labeled themselves as "collectors " didnāt even have layouts unless the layout came from Lionelās display department. There was a bit of a war going on between the collectors and the operators. Classic Toy Trains magazine had to have the tag line āFor the Collector and Operatorā emblazoned below the masthead.
Sadly, the reason opinions are changing these days is simply based on the laws of nature. As time marches on thereās simply fewer people who were wanting to buy back mint examples of the toys they had in their childhood in the 1950ās. I got to know some really great guys who just arenāt with us anymore.
I was born in November 1969, officially the very end of the original Lionel Corporation when Lionel leased the rights to manufacture the trains to General Mills. Iām mixed on the subject. I wonāt run a mint in the box piece made before 1969 if I know itās super or sought after by the majority of collectors. Stuff made in my own lifespan is fair game to me and most baby boomers didnāt regard stuff made after 1969 to be worth worrying about.
My sense is that most collectors of HO scale locomotives arenāt what youād call serious or hardcore collectors. Clubs in many way drive the hobby and collecting, and a lot of the potential collectors belong to clubs, so being able to reliably run the model is going to be important to them, meaning the LokSound, SoundTraxx, or WOWSound would be a plus.