I’ve always wondered about this. It seems far more people love Lionel which is to be expected but why so many against MTH? I don’t ever see local places carrying anything from them other than sections of real trax. I even asked the guy at one of the locations if he could order MTH and he said he could but he refused to. He didn’t elaborate. That seems to be a consensus with the stores around here. What is it about MTH that has so many not liking them? It looks like they make some very nice products. Is it their warranty policy? Is the owner just a royal pain to deal with? I do know I’ve seen info on lawsuits between them and Lionel, among others but admittedly I’ve never looked into their details. I’m just trying to understand where so much animosity for them comes from. I don’t have anything from MTH but I also currently model N scale. My dream layout is 3 rail though which is why I’m curious. I also have nothing against Lionel or anyone else so don’t think that’s why I’m asking either. As far as I’m concerned Lionel should have everyone’s respect. I do have Rich Battista’s video and it looks like the have some really nice products.
Fred, that’s certainly a loaded question. The well-documented lawsuit (which you could go back and research on the train forums) certainly polarized people, and certainly didn’t not help the image of the hobby especially to outsiders. I think hatred is a strong word… it’s really a matter of choice.
Dealers are a different ballpark than the consumer, and there are a number of variables that affect a dealer’s decision including: product availability and allocation, pre-order amounts (both quantity and dollar amount), wholesale availability, product backup and service/repair arrangements, return policies, product updates - and the list goes on. For every dealer who feels like he got some kind of raw deal from MTH, there’s another who could say he got a raw deal from Lionel, or Williams or others.
Blowout pricing certainly annoys small dealers. They pre-order products at normal pricing to be sold at normal pricing and then all of a sudden a select few large mailorder dealers are selling the same product at a discount price to consumers that beats the small dealer’s wholesale price. Which means that item either sits on the dealer’s shelf until the blowouts are gone (which can take months) or the dealer sells his items at a loss. That’s one small example, and Lionel and Williams have been guilty of that too.
From a consumer viewpoint, I think there are some real diehard MTH fans out there… you see that in the train magazines. MTH has aimed their product line more towards the scale end, and they do have variety (espeically of locomotives) that is unmatched in 3-rail trains.
For me personally, they make very few undersized 027 or traditionally sized trains outside of their Rugged Rails line, which lags behind other companies. From the very beginning, MTH made known their intentions they were not making undersized, smaller trains and their advertising made good point of this in comparison ads with Lionel products.
BUT some of us lik
Lionel is the venerable O gauge name and many folks blame the MTH lawsuit for their bankruptcy. Personally, I have some of both - I just buy what appeals to me.
Enjoy
Paul
I’m unloading all of my MTH engines and possibly buildings. I’ve got TMCC and Legacy and do not need, nor require DCS, so that’s the reason for that move. The MTH buildings are flat out huge and do not look right with my Lionel, OGR, and other buildings. IMHO the MTH buildings look more appropriately sized for scale O gauge and could even be used on G scale layouts.
As for the hatred.
Mife Wolf - the founder and owner of MTH trains (Mike’s Train House) got his start in model railroading by working for Williams Trains I believe. Williams got their start by selling knockoffs of Lionel’s venerable PostWar engines. He was selling Williams trains out of his house and was one of, if not, the largest Williams dealers. Then he partnered with Lionel and started selling Lionel trains as well. This helped him to grow his business and he decided he was going to get into O Gauge Brass and started working for Weaver Trains, all the while still selling Williams and Lionel trains. He then started manufacturing his own trains under the MTH brand. Now he never severed his connections with the other three manufacturers and this came to a head during a York train meet. Wolf had aspirations of buying and owning Lionel trains and when he was uncermoniously fired from Lionel he turned his attention to ruining Lionel. Back in 2000 there was some stink about Lionel manufacturing and selling engines that rivaled MTH’s detail, and MTH sued Lionel. This is when the MASSIVE rift in O-Gauge railroading was formed. MTH got their start selling knock-offs of Lionel’s products, MTH’s DCS is TMCC compatible ONLY because Lionel made the technology open and would license it to other companies - then MTH CLOSED the DCS system and stated that if anyone reverse engineered their system they would sue them. So MTH sued Lionel for selling knock-offs of their products, but it was - and still is - fine for MTH to sell knock-offs of Lionel products.
Spend any amount of time in a train stor
We have a lot of large train shows in the Philadelphia, NJ, and MD area, and I would say there is 3 times the new MTH engines, etc. for sale than Lionel. At my LARGE train store, it’s about 50-50.
I know some have said that MTH is responsible for al the lawsuits in the hobby but I also think if it weren’t for them the other companies like Lionel wouldn’t feel the heat of competeition and find improvement of their products as important as it is right now. With the MTH products continuously running and looking better it forces the other companies to keep improving thier products to stay up to par. If you ask me, they have only been a godaddiion to the hoby. I f on love their products, I recently bought one of their premier f7 units and plan on buying my next engine by MTH as well.
Lawsuits don’t promote competition. They typically result in bankruptcies of all companies involved.
MTH has been struggling since they started the lawsuit, laid off a bunch of people, and their quality (at least track) has not been up to snuff.
As for Lionel they are still in a transition state, which is why they cancelled 90% of the last catalog, and the new catalog is smaller with fewer new offerings. There has been some hints throughout press releases and other media that major changes are occuring and for the betterment of Lionel, its employees, it dealers, and its customers.
I’ve heard from a few people at Lionel that they value our feedback and would like more of it. You can do this via the Customer Service line, or their email address. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to recommend products via their web site and see what others have recommended as well.
One aspect that I think riles the most people is a personal issue in this small cottage industry. Mike Wolf, the leader of MTH, has always portrayed himself as the savior of the hobby, has an ego the size of Mt. Everest (not necessarily a bad thing), and most importantly, has consistently disparaged and failed to show respect to all his competitors, both as companies and as individuals (not just Lionel–he engaged in predatory marketing against K-Line and Atlas when they entered the scale end of the hobby). By consistently mocking the products of his competitors he by proxy mocked the taste of those hobbyists who liked those products, which is not calculated to foster affection for the guy in those people’s minds. 
Thus for those who care about these things, as opposed to the products themselves, he’s viewed by some hobbyists and dealers as a largely divisive, unprofessional, entirely self-serving, not entirely truthful and corrosive figure in the hobby. In fairness, in recent years, Mike Wolf, his staff and their advertising have toned down these hostile and seemingly malicious attitudes greatly. The next step would be some collegiality and occasional cooperation when it serves the industry and consumer.
A few finer points regarding the lawsuits have been glossed over, and it is too easy to simply write off MTH’s changes to the industry - and the vast quantity of new, original tooling they’ve produced (which dwarfs the pre- and postwar repros in quantity), but the prolonged nature of the litigation soured a lot of people on the MTH brand - even people who had been enthusiastic about the line.
Regardless, MTH demonstrated that there was a larger market for more prototypical trains than had been previously guessed. When I started at CTT I asked why the new product coverage had been so limited and was told “Guys aren’t that interested in the new stuff.” But then I was hired specifically to do the product coverage, so that was certainly changing and that was 1996.
Neil is also right about the personality issues involved (but there were certainly issues on both sides of the orange/purple divide).
The more time between the end of the litigation and the current catalog of your favorite brand will be good for everyone.
I’ve got both MTH and Lionel [Atlas too]. MTH builds some good looking diesels but their sounds and horns are crappy. I have MTH Realtrax which looks great. Crappy connectors so I soldered. Their switches are trash. Buy extras so you can take one out of the layout when it suddenly stops working [they do this all the time] and replace it. Work on the bad one and you have another spare. MTH rolling stock seems to be the worse for couplers poping open under a heavy load. So I have little rubberbands from someone who wears a retainer to go over the couplers to hold them closed [but lets them still work]. Now ask me that question again.
“MTH demonstrated that there was a larger market for more prototypical trains than had been previously guessed.”
Once again, in fairness, I must agree with Bob’s caveat here. Even those who have nothing but contempt for Mike Wolf’s style of doing things, such as myself, recognize his extraordinary contributions to the industry and hobby as Bob says. His competition clearly caused others, particularly Lionel, to improve their quality, constrain their prices and become even more innovative. Sometimes this is overstated, by those who fail to remember that even before Mike Wolf came on the scene, Lionel was experimenting with prewar reproductions, had started development of TMCC and Railsounds and other such paradigm shifting approaches.
But clearly Mike Wolf’s energy, competitive nature and creativity pushed Lionel much more than would have occurred otherwise, and opened the door for Atlas, in particular, by promoting the hi-rail part of the hobby. So whatever unflattering things one can say about Mike Wolf and MTH, and I have mentioned a few, he and MTH deserve a lot of credit for growing the hobby, providing products that wouldn’t have existed otherwise and that many love, and generally pushing the envelope overall.
Not mentioned is the fact that they have a bad reputation for customer service. Often no one answers the phone so you leave a message and hope that someday they will call you back. The ones that seem to dispute this claim, appears to be those they know by name. Part of the problem could be lack of employes to get things done in a timely manner.
Amazing to find thoughtful, reasoned posts on this topic.
Bob makes a good point here: “The more time between the end of the litigation and the current catalog of your favorite brand will be good for everyone.”
Personally, even with these issues, MTH has been good for the hobby and I like their stuff.
I own both Lionel and MTH. I agree MTH concentrates more on scale which limits the number of their locomotives (steamers) that I can operate. Their Premier Line rolling stock and passenger sets have a level of detail that can leave Lionel in the dust.
I still love Lionel, but I think they have some quality issues. I have seen one of their brand new steam switchers, fresh out of the box, refuse to smoke and the sound system just made a loud buzzing noise. And that was a nearly $500 locomotive.
Between the long litigation expenses and the current recession, I guess both manufacturers have cut some corners.
I never said that al\lawsuits influence good competition. I was saying that since lionel now has a manufacturer that could competite it influences both companies to strive for better performance and detail of their trains.
“Regardless, MTH demonstrated that there was a larger market for more prototypical trains than had been previously guessed. When I started at CTT I asked why the new product coverage had been so limited and was told “Guys aren’t that interested in the new stuff.” But then I was hired specifically to do the product coverage, so that was certainly changing and that was 1996.”
Bob makes an interesting point and it illustrates how much the hobby has changed in just over the past decade. The market for scale prototypical trains may have been larger than previously guessed at that time a decade ago, but that market is not as large nor as profitable as everyone seems to think it is either. MDK K-Line went down that prototypical track and found out the hard way.
One thing for certain: as some hobbiests turned their interests and dollars to accurate, advanced, scale sized trains, prices on used common postwar and especially MPC Lionel products have come way down from a decade ago.
I can honestly say because of MTH (and the technology/scale advances at Lionel too), I own far more postwar and MPC Lionel products than I suspected I would when I first re-entered the hobby. So while those electronically advanced scale products are of zero interest to me, I’ve certainly benefitted from them.
I have only one MTH-Rail King car that I bought on E-Bay (NIB with s&h less than half its list $) and was skeptical about the great “deal”. As it turned out, it is a real gem.
With that experience, I sort of made a ‘wish’ list and ventured to three, not-so-near-by hobby shops. The MTH products shown were out-numbered @ 3 to 1 by Lionel. I am an O27 traditional guy. The buildings seemed a bit larger than Lionel and there seemed to be less O27 size rolling stock on display. The prices seemed to be either the same or slightly higher than the Lionel. One dealer that I spoke to suggested that his ‘profit’ from MTH in these hard economic times really made him decide to concentrate on Lionel.
My ‘wish’ list was not filled on that trip. I’ll continue to look at MTH products as I see them but, in my particular case, Lionel, for now, has the edge. Thanks for asking.
I like some of MTH products, mainly their steam locomotives and rolling stock, never had any problem with the couplers on MTH. I have no regrets about buying any MTH product and will buy more as time allows. I have heard too much bad publicity about MTH Realtrax to attemp buying it.
As for Lionel I have very little loyalty for that company because they don’t back up their product warrenty at times. Also Lionel’s newer switches in tubular track(not Fastrac, I can’t afford it)are the worst I have seen in over 14 years. Bought a brand new GP-7 from Lionel about 12 years ago and it would only pull four quad hoppers, even when powered by a ZW transformer.
Just for the record, Lionel helped put K-Line out of business by suing them a few years ago.
I personally think that Williams made a very high quality product for the money that you paid for them. The only thing is that Williams never put command control in any of their engines, they kept it simple. The other thing about Williams is that they are not well known outside of Classic Toy Train members.
Lee F.
It seems to be the other way around where I live. Everyone likes MTH and hates lionel. Im a lionel fan myself and I thought thats what everywhere else was like… I was wrong. As for MTH. It kinda seems liek they copy ionel in terms of products and not to mention that standard gauge line. If lionel was never around I bet MTH wouldent be either.
It seems to be the other way around where I live. Everyone likes MTH and hates lionel. Im a lionel fan myself and I thought thats what everywhere else was like… I was wrong. As for MTH. It kinda seems liek they copy ionel in terms of products and not to mention that standard gauge line. If lionel was never around I bet MTH wouldent be either.