Quote,"The fact that people liked both the climax and the shay, shows their popularity with the model railroading public!"
And that's exactly why they don't stop producing them!
And that's exactly why they don't stop producing them!
No. It gets some electrical continuity checks along the production line, then it gets packed in it's box and off to despatch. Eventually you buy it and take it out of it's box, put it on the track, run it forward, then backward works the lights and after 10 minutes of operation, put it into service. You have become final quality control.
Mark - You are truly "old school". Manufacturers doing their own QC went out around the turn of the century, not just in model railroading, but every consumer product. However I have always had good results from certain companies such as Athearn, Accurail and Atlas; less than positive results from Intermountain and Walthers. Horrible results from Bachmann. Never purchased a BLI product.
Willie
If what you say is true, that is so very wrong! To have customers be Quality Control is a really good way to have the Company Name turn to crap! However, this would seem to be the case with what has happened to me! I truly am from the old school, I would have a test track and one locomotive out of so many would be run to destruction. It would be very important to me that the public associate my company's name with quality. This is especially true now days, with the quick dissemination of information on products on the market, via the internet!
Product reviews done by the modeling press are worthless as the company that is having its' products reviewed, also pays the modeling press for their advertisements in the magazine. That's why I feel any product reviews done in the modeling press is just going to show what the model being reviewed does while in good working order and nothing more!
I know that this is only a hobby; however, there really does need to be a "Consumer Reports" for Model Railroading. None of the RTR locomotives; or, powering systems are inexpensive anymore! If the manufacturers want us to be their Quality Control Department, than maybe we should do documentation and reporting on them.
Product reviews done by the modeling press are worthless as the company that is having its' products reviewed, also pays the modeling press for their advertisements in the magazine. That's why I feel any product reviews done in the modeling press is just going to show what the model being reviewed does while in good working order and nothing more! know that this is only a hobby; however, there really does need to be a "Consumer Reports"
I agree, but it took years to talk them out of the MRC decoders too. BUT they finally did, so they can change.(except for Athearn and those darned plastic couplers!
True quality control usually requires a statistical evaluation of a product by testing a certain number of the product to some point of either longevity or GO/NO-GO evaluation (such as whether a certain number of pyrotechnic initiators out of a lot fire successfully or fail to fire). In the case of reusable electro-mechanical products such testing might determine the mean-time-between-failures (MTBF). To be valid, a number of units would have to be tested. I'm not sure how many model HO scale diesel locomotives would need to be tested out of a lot of so many, but to be statistically valid, it would probably need to be 10 or 15 percent of the production run. That would be that number LESS that would be available for sale. The result would be increased cost to the consumer. (Maybe that is one reason the prices have gone up as much as they have in the past several decades.)
So far as having a consumer forum of some sort is concerned, whenever I have a problem with a product, I contact the manufacturer, reporting the problem and as much detail about the failure mode, as I know. For a non-model railroading example, I returned a kitchen faucet to the manufacturer after it broke off and similar problems occurred with a replacement. The manufacturer refunded my purchase price, and I would not buy their products again! In several cases with model railroad products, two different manufacturers had me return their products, and repaired or replaced them, as was appropriate. I think forums such as this permit the consumer to report problems with products. I would think that various manufacturers or importers would read these reports and would respond either by complaining to the manufacturer (if the are the importers) or taking steps to increase quality control in their own plants. I know of one other example of a non-model railroad product, where a domestic importer contracted with a manufacturer in a major foreign country for a certain product. The first batch of product were full of defective parts, very poor wood-to-metal fitup, and other problems. The result was that the whole lot was returned to the manufacturer. The next batch was a bit better, but by no means satisfactory. The gentleman had to go over to the foreign country to talk at length with the manufacturer. This cost him time and money, not to mention having to deal with a considerable language barrier. By the third or forth time around, the manufacturer seemed to get the message about customer satisfaction in this country...something foreign (no pun intended) to their culture.
What defines "A Golden Age"?
Generally nostalgia, not always reliably.