What's the Overall Satisfaction with Model Railroad Accessory Manufacturers ...

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I guess over the past year or so, I’ve kind of been annoyed at the basic lack of anything resembling Quality Control at a lot of the big names like Bachmann (Spectrum), Kibri, Bar Mills, Tower 55, KATO, Heljan, Model Rectifier; Atlas, Walthers, Vollmer, Athearn (Horizon), Model Power, IHC, Preiser, Faller, etc.

Miscut, mismolded, or warped parts; poor conductive track; bad motors; cheap transfomer cores; broken gears; incorrect coupler heights; incomplete kits; the wrong loco in the wrong box; and customer care service representatives who neither care about customers nor think its their job to provide any service (sometimes they just never pick up the phone - are you listening Bachmann???).

I have horn hook Tyco era locomotives and rolling stock that, even though its just Tyco, have decades old motors in them that function better than some of my Proto 2000.

I know I’m preaching to the choir - but any more, even a respectable name like Walthers is getting associated quite a bit with POS for motive power, rolling stock, and structure kits.

We’re in hobby were quality and workmanship still matters - but it seems only to us and not necessarily the manufacturers who make this hobby even possible. I know mistakes happen and we don’t live in a perfect world … but when you buy 10 brand new items from various vendors from an LHS and 9 have to be returned directly to manufacturer because parts are missing/defective or the item was damaged at factory - this is a problem. And what’s even worse - the manufacturer doesn’t correct the problem in their manufacturing process - they just put the defective items “on sale” to unload them …

I hope the forementioned manufacturers and MR actually read this and comment - there’s always been discussion on why people do or do not get into model railroading. This is one very big reason - no one wants to take up a hobby as expensive and time devoted as ours if they know their money and time is going to be wasted on POS

2

Three words best sums this up…Made in China.

Patrick
Beaufort,SC
DRSC

3

I know the feeling. got an HO scale athearn covered hopper that was missing a part, however I emailed athearn directly and they sent not 1 but 2 of the exact same part. Also a few years back I got a 3 pack of Accurail UP fallen flags covered hoppers 1 floor was messed up and again I emailed them directly and they sent 6 floors, outlet gates, and hatches- all at no cost to me.
Walthers on the other hand wants you to send $5 per part on rolling stock and $10 per locomotive shell. to me thats a small price to pay to make a kit operable, as its not an all the time thing.

Tom

4

I on the other hand have found that the quality control of MR stuff is great. I’ve never had to return anything. I did once have a Intermountain car come with a broken coupler pocket but I may have broke it when I opened it and it was easy to fix. If you had to return 9 out of 10 items you purchased then that SEEMS kind of strange.

5

All I can say is that you are VERY lucky my friend … [:D] I wish I was that lucky.

In the past, like other posters mentioned, if it was bad or wrong the manufacturer was more than happy to exchange or replace. But lately, and I think it has a lot to do with the new breed of people now at the throttles of these companies, its getting more along the lines of “make it cheap, sell it expensive, and ignore the customer complaints - it’s their problem once it leaves our plant and replacements for defective items costs us revenue.” I once worked for a company who operated exactly like that (in their case, they were making big ticket home items).

6

I ALWAYS check out the items before I buy them, thats probably why. Everybody will run into a problem sooner or later but to say that MR related quality control from the manufacturers is going down hill is false. You only ever hear about the bad experiences, never the hundreds of thousands of good experiences. No matter what you buy somewhere along the line a bad item will be produced, thats just the way it will always be when you add a human factor into the production process.

7

For me, N scale has come a long way in recent years. All of my Kato engines litterally crawled out of the box when bought new and still run strong and smooth today.

Atlas engines are a little finicky. Otherwise they have proven to be smooth reliable engines.

Structure kits of require a little sanding and squaring here and there for a good fit. Otherwise they look good if done right.

8

HOScaleModelRailroader,
This post of yours is just so much silly hogwash. Comparing a luxury automobile that costs tens of thousands of dollars to a $30 Walthers plastic building kit? Or to a $150 plastic RTR loco? You might as well compare the Apollo space program to a guy making an ultralight airplane in his garage. Get a grip.

The fact that you would seriously try to make a comparison between Walthers and Lexus shows you have an axe to grind against someone or somebody, and makes the rest of your points questionable at best. And that you would even suggest that Tyco, a POS manufacturer if there ever was one, was better than P2K also shows you’re gunnin’ for someone. Perhaps you are upset at recent price hikes?

Paul A. Cutler III

Weather Or No Go New Haven

9

Unfortunately, that’s not always possible. When was the last time a LHS allowed you to break the shrink wrap on, let’s say, a Bachmann Spectrum loco or Broadway Limited item for you to test run that they had to order in for you BEFORE you bought it? Not around these parts … quite simply, the LHS operators are nice folk, but not one of them will take on what has become a hassle of trying to return bad items back through distributors.

10

Sounds to me like you need to find another hobby. Unfortunately you aren’t very credible since some of the companies you list are not made in China

11

Then I wouldn’t buy from them then. My LHS has always let me open up something if I in fact was going to purchase it. If I was going to just look then of course not.

12

Since you asked the question, I would say pretty high. Yes, I’ve had the occasional missing or broken part, but the manufacturer has always come thru. And as the details get better and finer (read…more fragile), we are likely to see more damage when we open the box. While it may be frustrating at first, a little patience and a simple letter/email to the company will usually fix the problem. But again, that has been a very small occurrence in my experience, by and far everything runs good and looks great right out of the box.

Rick

13

I’ve been wondering what’s happening lately as well. This year, I have purchased @ my LHS, & assembled 5 Walther’s Cornerstone Kit Buildings. 3 of the 5 had missing parts (1 each) necessitating calls to a snooty/snotty sounding lady @ Walthers that I swear, thought I was trying to rob her company blind or trying to steal her youngest child.

Another had a BADLy warped base. The one with the warped base also had an instruction page that defied human understanding and you had to really study it to determine whether a # in the text referred to a part #, a picture or the # of parts. Furthermore, the pictures didn’t always match the text. The same kit had only a few of the part #'s identified on the molds, the exploded parts that were there had only a line pointing to a large general area the part belonged and thus leaving you to measure a lot and or guess what was what and what went where.

While the kits are well made detail wise, & they give you a ton of different parts, you would think for the prices they charge (mine were 24.95 to 64.95), they would have better QC, QA and CS. Thank God for the internet – Walther’s seems to want to hide their phone # as I could not find it in the kits.

In retrospect, am I going to stop buying from Walthers because of this? Probably not as, IMHO, they offer a lot of product, variety and overall quality for the $. And they likely know that and likely won’t find incentive to improve things.
Ken

[quote]
Originally posted by HOScaleModelRailroader

I guess over the past year or so, I’ve kind of been annoyed at the basic lack of anything resembling Quality Control at a lot of the big names like Bachmann (Spectrum), Kibri, Bar Mills, Tower 55, KATO, Heljan, Model Rectifier; Atlas, Walthers, Vollmer, Athearn (Horizon), Model Power, IHC, Preiser, Faller, etc.

14

This is ONLY an issue for Shake and Bakers…not for the true modeler.

David

15

I’m not sure the percentage of missing parts or miscast parts or parts that came off in transit is any greater or less than the “golden” years of Tyco, Athearn BB, Penn Line, Varney, Roundhouse, Bowser, PFM, Akane, Gem, etc. I simply don’t have any data to judge accurately, nor do the rest of us.

No model railroad supplier is a big time company, nor have they ever really been. Bachmann and Atlas are probably the biggest. How many items do they sell per month? In the thousands, if they are lucky. Production runs are strictly limited to control costs because nobody can afford to overestimate the market any more - and by the way limited production also limits profits. In these situations, how many people do you think are employed (or can afford to be employed) to conduct repeated quality control checks? This is the reason for the demise of kits - it costs more to repeated count parts and make sure everything is in the box than it does to assemble the kit to begin with. Add in the costs of customer support for those who took on more than they could handle in a given kit.

A perfect examle of how things go wrong in a hurry is the Roundhouse Shay. Originally produced as a kit, and later as both kit and RTR, it was the only affordable way for many modelers to get a geared locomotive for over 20 years. Yet, it had (and has) a design flaw in that it had a closed loop gearing system. And a manufacturing problem in that many of the cast plastic gears would strip their grip on the axle or crack when the closed loop gearing caused gear train binds (seems I have heard of similar problems on modern manufacture also). Because of these problems in significant quantities, the returns and customer support must have cost far more than any profits from production and sales. To add insult to injury, the relatively unskilled labor used to assemble the later RTR versions (to keep costs low) did not correct the gear bind problem either. So Horizon Hobby will be highly unlikely to rerun this item.

16

I have noticed nothing but great improvements over the years. I won’t talk about Bachman, other than their steam is not too bad. Stewart has never let me down. I’m glad that a company like Bowser bought them so the quality and prototypical research can continue just as Steve Stewart did. Athearn what can you say, it is Athearn, basically the mainstay of the hobby for many years and probably years to come. I started w/ Athearn, kitbashed, super detailed and repowered them later on. Then P2K came about, at first they were OK (glorified Athearns), they have since come far in detail, paint and quality of the drive. Atlas, probably the best overall loco produced for reliability, prototypical details, paint, drive quality and consistancy (90% of my roster is now Atlas). BLI, I wasn’t that impressed at first, not really being into sound, Some of their units seemed to have quality control issues. They sold like hotcakes, mainly due to the QSI sound. I don’t think their drive is all that great (but they sound real good) Turn off the sound sometime and see if it can compare to an Atlas, Kato, Stewart ,Genesis or even P2K. Some of the SD40s, the worst in my opinion, sound like clicking or growling old Athearn.
I do have one E7 in B&O it sounds real good, but only runs OK, P2Ks E units run better and w/ less issues. Can’t say anything but great as far as Kato is concerned.
Walther’s Cornerstone has always been so-so for instructions and some fit . Many times dry fitting of all parts is needed to find a better sequence of building the kit. Never had any trouble w/ DPM. Most kits are not going to just trow themselves together. What would you do if every building had to be scratch built?
I’m glad that you didn’t toss Micro Engineering into the fire w/ the rest. ME is probably the best “designed” thought out, molded and choice of styrene of anything I have built in 40 years.
The instructions are absolutely fantastic with no stone left unturned. Of course they need to be thoughly read “before” any sprue s

17

[(-D] THAT’S FUNNY. BUT TRUE.