My LHS called today to inform me that the GS I had on order had finally arrived. Yippee!
I took a little extra time for lunch and drove over to pick it up. We opened the boxes up on the counter to check it out. Fantastic is what I would say. This is a striking piece that will l;ook great with my others.
HOWEVER, upon turning both the engine and tender over to look at the bottom I was shocked. There is a ton of run time on this unit (Engine and tender). the pickup rollers not only have the black ring from running , they are actually starting to groove. I have engines with between 10 and 20 hours run time that dont exhibit this much wear. My LHS gave me the option of not going through wiht the sale. But, fortunately, I am an operator so it will get run anyway.
WHat would a collertor (as opposed to operator) think if they bought one of these and years down the road decided to sell it to only find out that at best its LN, but hardly mint?
If anyone from Lionel reads this forum, I’d like to hear from them about this.
My LHS owner is going to also contact Lionel about this.
The same thing happened to me with my Black UP FEF-3, I opened the box and the ONLY THINGS in it were the Locomotive and the tender. All the wraps, owners manual, smoke fluid even the Legacy programing module EVERYTHING was gone. It seems that someone had bought and returned that locomotive and just put the Locomotive and tender only back in the box, without even the plastic wrappers, that styrofoam packaging gets a lot of little crumbs on things that way. Then whatever store they bought it from returned it to the distributor, who then sold it to my LTS without ever inspecting the returned Locomotive.
I took it back to my LTS, I am a Frequent customer there, so they did not question what had happened, and fortunately were still able to get another NEW Locomotive for me. Something like that may be what happened in your case.
Enjoy your New GS-4, I got mine last week, and they are Beautiful Locomotives. Have FUN,
That could be what happened here. But everything was in its place, wraps, manual, smoke fluid (still sealed in its plastic bag). ANd the wraps looked like you expect when you open a brand new piece. I for one have never gotten one wrapped back up and into the styrofoam looking as precise as it did from the factory.
Im anxious to run it tonite. Another customer said the “city horn” is quite muted. the manual says the whistle changes with locomotive speed. We will have to see.
I had a lot of fun with it last night. Everything works as it should despite the miles on it.
The city horn operates by a button on the legacy that shows up only for this loco (so far). The mars light is a fairly convincing effect. No moving parts but it does a pretty good job of looking like the real thing. The manual says the regular whislte varies with speed, I was unable to confirrm that with my uncalibrated ears. This is a four chuff per revolution loco. The sounds start to run together (as one would expect) at about speed step 60.
I had the same issue. I bought a Lionel E-7 Pennsy A-B-A set from the Lionel visitor store, got it home and no sound! No instructions and no smoke. Took it back and they said “We will refund your money but we don’t have another one to replace it,You could take it to service but it will be 4 weeks”! So I asked them what will happened to it if I return it? they said they would probably put it in the recycle bin! Yikes! So I took it home took it appart and lucked out… it was just a soldered wire that came off of the volume switch. I don’t know what it is but these locomotives cost an arm and a leg yet some of them have really bad quality…
Im not complaining one bit about the quality, it is a very well executed. I was just wondering how it accumulate all that run time. it was sealed in its shipping container from clinchfield or where ever. whats a bit interesting is a guy in the shop said the date code on the shipping container was for Nov 2007!! where have they been all this time?
I don’t blame you. A bird in the hand…plus, you are going to be running it anyway, about 50 hours the first week from what I gather from your excitement!
