I have a few of the BLI steamers and I noticed that they were made in Korea.
The new stock items at the LHS are all made in China. When did this change occur?
I am not at all surprised to see the change to a lower priced economy.
Was there an obvious change in quality of their items when the change occurred?
If I am not mistaken (which happens more frequently with age) there is one company in China that manufacturers for just about everyone. From the brief time the MTH blurb was on the forum they make MTH also and possibly the Proto stuff. Price rules.
China is correct but the MT73 Union Pacific mountain and one other BLI model was made by Ajin, probably in Korea. Ajin has been a fairly high level brass builder for Overland for many years but the first run MT73 that they built for BLI was lacking good running qualities.
Probably all of the future models will be made in China.
CZ
Don–
the early run BLI’s that I have (N&W 2-6-6-4, Pennsy M1-a/b Mountains) were all made in Korea. The ‘City of San Francisco’ E6-A-B-B that I have was made in China. I don’t know exactly when the change occurred, but it might have been with their second runs.
Tom
Updated.
Samhongsa in Korea not Ajin was resonsible for the early Athearn Genesis 2-8-2 and 4-6-0 models with the high incidence of gear failure.
Do you think the first run engines made in Korea are made to a higher standard than those made in China.
Quality control seems to be hit and miss with a lot of Chinese goods. An example that comes to mind is the Bachmann Spectrum steam engines. Most of their steamers are excellent finish and are excellent running characteristics, however, there appears to be a fairly high rate of problem engines as well. Good thing Bachmann stands behind their products, as they have the best warranty out at present.
The maker of the Genesis Mike and Pacific is unknown to me, but they were sub par in many ways. The gear set breaking was probably the worst feature. The gear problem happened with the first run E units from Oriental Limited and one of the best brass makers, Samhongsa made those.
I think the China builders won out over the Korean’s because of the price they charge. The same story is true when all of the brass was made in Japan and then the Korean builders worked for much less money in the late 1970’s era. After that time, only a few models came from Japan because of the high prices. The quality of the models from China has been very good lately and they probably will start charging more in the future.
CZ
Do you think the first run engines made in Korea are made to a higher standard than those made in China?
Quality control seems to be hit and miss with a lot of Chinese goods.
An example that comes to mind is the Bachmann Spectrum steam engines. Most of their steamers are excellent finish and are excellent running characteristics, however, there appears to be a fairly high rate of problem engines as well. Good thing Bachmann stands behind their products, as they have the best warranty out at present.
Don, you said it when you mentioned Quality Control. I would call it lack of QC. The entire industry probably operates on QC at the customer level rather than spending time to check each and every model.
CZ
I purchased a set of PCM PA/PB/PAs that were made in China. On one of the As, the coupler was mounted upside-down, all three of the units had loose handrails, and one of the MU cable assemblies was missing on the B. The speaker on one of the As “blew out” within an hour of operation (not consecutive running time), and I had the volume turned down.
Don–
I’d really not be the one to ask, because frankly, being strictly DC, I’m not using my BLI’s right now because of the dual-mode DC/DCC function requiring such a high rate of voltage to get running on pure DC. I can’t use them with my brass DC locos at the same time (and I can live without sound, anyway). I will say that when I was running them a lot, I had very few if any problems with them, except for making sure that the plug-in connections were in VERY tight. But absolutely no gearing problems and their running qualities were very smooth, even if my control was limited to the last quadrant of my power pack. They’re also VERY good haulers, a must on my mountainous layout. So–I’d say they’re very positive in quality. But they’re really made for the DCC modeler, even though they’re touted as dual-function.
Tom
Tom, I forgot about the BLI power requirements on DC.
There certainly was a noticable power problem when one was running a couple of the BLI units on DC. Great engines the early BLI but they certainly take a lot of power.
I also had tried running a mix of BLI and others on an early Bachmann E-Z DCC unit . What a laught that was. Upgraded to a MRC DCC package soon after.
Folks:
BLI locos are made by elves in hollow trees, for all I have ever seen of them. 
CZ:
This is actually a popular misunderstanding about QC. Inspections are part of it, but even 100% inspection is not 100% QC. 100% inspection means somebody screwed up, or that something’s going to the moon. QC is not a matter of putting buckets under the leaky roof so the carpet doesn’t rot, but of patching the hole. You control every process so it produces good products, then inspect enough of the products to make sure the process is working.
(Chinese QC, OTOH, very often IS a matter of leaky roofs and buckets. Sometimes literally. When you see a product marked “Made in Country A, Quality Assured in Country B”, you can be sure that the leaky-roof-and-bucket analogy is in full force.)
QC at the customer level is a synonym for a QC failure, and the fact that we have been trained to accept it, and to accept no-questions return policies as a good thing, is the only reason manufacturers can get away with it. I’m not referring to the garage or small companies that really don’t have any other alternative, but the big boys that could do better. I’d rather have a 30 day warranty that was only rarely used than a lifetime warranty with a “revolving door”.
There is no doubt that all of the manufactures could do a better job of Quality Control, but it probably costs less money to ship the product as received. I believe they probably do a spot check of a few of the imported goods and ship the rest as they are. Most of the problems or broken parts that I have reported were fixed very quickly and parts were sent out to me in just two or three days in some cases. I prefer to repair my items and not sent them back if that is possible.
And yes, I know the way QC is mostly by us buyers of the product and so we must get involved.
CZ
Autobus Prime
Said
“QC at the customer level is a synonym for a QC failure, and the fact that we have been trained to accept it, and to accept no-questions return policies as a good thing, is the only reason manufacturers can get away with it. I’m not referring to the garage or small companies that really don’t have any other alternative, but the big boys that could do better. I’d rather have a 30 day warranty that was only rarely used than a lifetime warranty with a “revolving door”.”
I would opt for the lifetime warranty myself. I do not think a time frame of 30 days is enough to cover the consumer.