Price and quality questions

[JimInMichigan]

I hope to find someone who would spend the time and post some photo's of the internals of some "cheap " Loco's and do the same of some moderate and also expensive Loco's, then explain the difference of the componets used.

This would help a newbie like me to understand why spending $200 for a Loco is better than spending $60 for the same model in a cheaper brand/build.

Same would help with the rolling stock as well.

 

[bigB]

I dont have any pictures to share, but I would say that three big factors are in play between a $30 locomotive and a $200 one. I am excluding Brass here, because they are much more than $200.

The three main factors IMHO are 1. Quality of the drive system, 2. Level and attention to detail and 3. DCC/sound capability.

Drive systems: the better low speed control, the quieter the drive, the less power it takes to move the engine, usu the more expensive. The factors that make all those things possible include: the armature, flywheels (number and quality), worm gear drive quality, all wheel drive pickup, and the way the motor receives power from the track.

Level of Detail: Basically, the more detail you see, the more you pay. Things like see-thru grills, grab irons, MU hoses, coupler cut bars, snowplows, metal knuckle couplers, accurate horn type--all of these result in a more expensive engine. Also, equally as important as having details at all are that they are prototypically applied ie the models features look like the real thing. ie is the headlight in the right place for the railroad being modeled?

DCC/sound capability: is the model dcc ready? Can it quickly and easily be converted for DCC use or will it require a hardwire dcc application by the modeler? Does it come decoder equipped? Does it come with factory installed sound? Factory installed sound adds a great deal to the price.

Lastly, some brands have more appeal over others and have a strong brand following. This is highly subjective and you could write a book on the debates on this website and others about which brands are best and why. However, this appeal of some brands has particularly helped the used market for certain brands esp Tower 55, Kato, Atlas Gold, and many others to name a few.

I left out a bunch of stuff and someone more knowledgeable can add a great deal as I have barely scratched the surface.

Good luck,

Brad

 

[Motley]

It follows the same logic as anything else for products you purchase. Whether it's a washer/dryer, a TV, a computer, etc. There are brands that are well known and more reliable, and thus more expensive.

You get what you pay for. But what really surprises (frustrates) me with this hobby, is even the expensive well known products are having the same quality control problems as the cheap inexpensive products do to the debauchery going on in China.

It's really frustrating when I recently purchased 14 of the Walthers new Bi-Level Autoracks that retailed for $40 each, I got them at my LHS for $32 each. And the darned things wouldn't even roll properly, ALL 14 of them! I had to spend another $3 for each of them with replacement wheelsets.

So all my statements aren't even true, go figure. It's a crap shoot now.

 

[Selector]

You'd think the only practical difference would be in the details and features, and not in the drive mechanism since those components are mass-produced and one would expect to have the manufacturers offer the best price-point combination, regardless of the expense of the model or kit. Wouldn't you.

And yet, in the case of Life Like and Bachmann, their brands by that name only were most often the subject of complaints over the years, mostly in terms of running characteristics. Simply, the engineering and materials were cheap, and the models ran that way. Better materials, better engineering, and better assembly mean better quality and durability. So, while not perfectly and always true, the models claimed to be the higher end ones, such as Spectrum, BLI' Paragon, Hybrid, and PCM, Genesis, Heritage, these tend to have fewer problems. Whether they do or don't need to be repaired after purchase, once the warranty problems are solved, they tend to last longer.

This was the 'wisdom' until recently, say in the past couple of years, a bit less. Suddenly, Bachmann's standard line engines are getting some nice shells, and their drives have improved. Some of us have concluded that the Spectrum line quality has been migrated down to the 'lesser' stuff. Thankfully. And yet, I have read many complaints by purchasers of the Spectrum J Class 4-8-4, for example, and I would have to include myself among them. Even my engine fixer whiz couldn't figure out how to stop it from lurching at lower speeds. I found a BLI "Stealth" model on line and had him install a Tsunami. Whew! Much better.

To try to answer you directly, to the extent that I am able, I would say the engineering and materials figure largely these days. The fora are replete with complaints about split nylon gears in both the Athearn Blue Box and Genesis lines in some cases, and in the former Life Like diesels over several models and runs of each. The better steamers tend to have brass worms on the primary axle, and often they mate to a brass spur. There is no reason a properly engineered and assembled plastic drive should not work, but they fail often in our models. There are electric motors and there are electric motors. Several manufacturers make open frame and can type motors. The older assemblies are going to be cheaper. They don't have to be problematic, but they don't run as finely as do quality can motors. Then we can get into the engineering in terms of providing power consistently to the motors. Some engines have marvelous pickup with multiple contact points, while others are poorly engineered and rely on two or four widely spaced points.

Crandell

 

[malletman]

once upon a time, Athearn and Atlas dominated the market with robust and inexpensive engines. Atlas has used both Roco drives in the early SD and GP's and the FP's and most of the Alcos used a Kato drive. None are DCC ready but all can be converted fairly easily to DCC if that is the route you plan to take. Athearn used thier own drive and it varried over the years. Some run quiet as a mouse and some are really noisy. There have been books written on fine tuning the Athearn drive and detailing them to look as good as brass. At the opposite end of the spectrum you have the newer high doller engines from the likes of Broadway Limited, Bachmann Spectrum, PCM, Athearn Genesis, Atlas and MTH amoung others. Most all can be had with factory installed DCC/Sound, but it all comes at a price. Most all are made in China and parts, should you break something are pretty much not available. If its under warrenty, you send it back and hope you get back someday. With Bachmann, you might get a totaly different engine all togther. Some folks love the new sound engines and they are nice, but unless you have a deep wallet, building a fleet of them will get expensive! I am more budget minded both by my wallet's lack of funds and keeping "she who must be obeyed" happy. I run a fleet of mostly Athearn blue box era engines, fine tuned and detailed, some with sound and all are in the process of getting DCC installed in them using TCS decoders. All cost me less than $30 per engine with some under $20 each. Now once I detail them, I do have much more invested in them both in detail parts and time. But the time spent detailing them to me is time well spent. Same goes for early Atlas diesels, Mantua steam and Bowser steam for the PRR folks. All are solid starting points to detail and acutaly build a beautiful model instead of just pulling it from the box and expecting instant gratification. Cheers Mike

 

[RW&C]

A really cheap engine (at least in N, my experience doesn't go outside this one scale) will usually be very low quality in all its parts. The shell will be light on detail, with what detail it has mostly molded on, and not road-specific. The paint might be a bit spotty. (I have a Bachmann boxcar that looks like it was painted with a dead cat.) It probably won't function well at low speeds, due to a cheap open-frame motor, which will also be a challenge with DCC (higher current draw than a high-quality can motor). The gears will be imprecisely cut, and, especially with certain brands, prone to cracking and falling off. It also probably won't have flywheels. The power pickups may rely on flexible wires soldered to the trucks and motor rather than the more reliable sliding contacts in more expensive engines. The wheels will likely have enormous treads and flanges. If it's a steamer, count on seeing phillips-head screws on the outside, or even a power coupling between the tender and the engine.

For instance, a cheap Life-Like C-liner (of which I've had two) is moderately detailed, has the gigantic Life-Like motor, no flywheels, springs as power couplings (seriously), and trucks in which the gears just barely line up well enough to work. The enormous weights make the motor heat way up, and the soldered-on power pickups fatigue and wear out pretty quickly. I tried to put DCC in one, and the decoder couldn't deliver the amps to spin up the motor. Of course, they're pretty much indestructible, and great for kids running DC. And they're cheap enough that, if they break, it's not the end of the world.

Upgrade to a higher-quality (and price) unit, and you get flywheels, DCC compatibility, slow speed capability, good couplers, road-specific detail, well-done paint, good gears (some even have helical-cut gears), better looking wheels and trucks, the works. You get what you pay for. Pay $150 for a Model Power steamer and you'll get a rather nice model, pay $80 for a Bachmann (non-Spectrum) steamer and you get a POS. (I have both.) Also keep in mind that some brands have multiple lines (Bachman's Spectrum, LifeLike's Proto) that are far better than their cheap stuff.

You don't always have to break the bank to get decent stuff. Cheap diesels are, to my experience, more forgiving than cheap steamers. Cheap rolling stock is relatively easy to upgrade (new wheels, new couplers, new grab irons, that sort of thing).

I tend to go cheap whenever possible, but the fact is, the expensive stuff is so much nicer.

 

[JimInMichigan]

It follows the same logic as anything else for products you purchase. Whether it's a washer/dryer, a TV, a computer, etc. There are brands that are well known and more reliable, and thus more expensive.

You get what you pay for.

Well, not exactly. My latest TV purchase is a great example. I had a 42" Poloroid 1080P LCD TV ( $600 during a WalMart black friday sale ) Used it 3 years, trouble free. Then I see a TV commercial ad for the Sharp Aquos 60" LCD. I spend Almost $2000. It has broken down 3 times in the 1st 90 days of purchase, I kid you not. I bought it online, so I cant readily take it back. Sharp customer support is sending me thier Quatro LED 60" as a replacement. I can ONLY hope it will work as trouble free as my cheap ol Poloroid did.

Anyways...

So, this is the reason I'd love to see the insides of the various manufactures and have explained to me the differences. I dont mind paying $100 for an Athearns Genisis Loco, if it is going to be worth it, over a Backmann $40 loco. But if the differences are going to very thin, I'd rather save the money.

 

[galaxy]

You asked for photos of interiors of locos and so far no one who has answered your post has provided you any. Nor Can I. It would, for someone with a digital camera, require lots of their time and effort to dismantle their locos and photograph them just for you. Then it would also require someone who happened to have locos of varying price ranges to do so for you. You are asking a lot of someone's time.

People can, however, easily enough offer experiences and knowlege of locos in the hobby form personal experience or through reading the forums. That is all I can offer.

LifeLike Locos are noted to be cheapy train set quality {not good} and most all serious modelers would avoid them.

Bachmann's were once noted as cheapy crap and the bottom of the barrel shared with LifeLike. TOday, however, Bachmann quality has changed and Bachmann has worked very hard to change it's image and it's products. They came out with the "SPectrum" line of locos which were designed to be more detailed and of higher quality. MAny of their regular lines, however, now share the spotlight of good quality with the Spectrums, and many spectrums become the standard line as time marches on. The "DCC OnBoard" locos range from the simple low price DCC controlled direction, speed and lighting to more expensive Spectrums with sound as well as more DCC functions. I have several of the Bachmann Standard DCC OnBoard locos...inexpensive and DCC controled for speed, light and direction-my basic requirements- and am very happy with all of them and have not had a problem with a single one.
One other note of fact: It seems Bachmann has made quite a name for itself on the warrantee end of things. They do well to repair/replace locos under warrantee, even out of warrantee, even "if you worked on it first", they no longer manufacture that model, or "you broke it", often totally free of charge,in a timely manner, and In their Philly, PA USA warrantee center.

Atlas, Athearn and others have lower priced and higher priced locos. MAny are happy with their locos from these companies, others wouldn't buy them again due to having a bad one in the bunch. MAny treasure the Blue Box locos and wouldn't buy anything else if they could avoid it.They have mixed reviews. I am unsure how they handle warrantee repairs as I simply do not recall having read of them. That does not necessarily equate to good quality.

BLI {expensive} on the other hand, appears to be a bit of a crap shoot-you may get a good one lasting forever, or you get a bad one that haunts you and according to at least one fellow, apparently requires one to pay partial costs of repair/replace including shipping and in this case the guy reported returning his beloved BLI {expensive} loco 6 times, with 2 replacements and STILL he reported it failed yet again.

MTH trains{expensive} really wants you to order and pay for their proprietary DCS system. Their loco's will run, in limited capacity, on standardized DCC systems. MTH could have done well to make their locos DCC Compliant. Few have reported yet on their experiences with failures as fewer buy these locos apparently due to the DCS/DCC issue. A few have reported happy with their aquisitions of MTH, though have mentioned the limits fo the locos on DCC systems. There may have been few failures, or few reports on how MTH handles its issues.

The theory that the more expensive the loco, the better the quality is out the window as there are QC issues with all brands and all manufacturers and it does well to remember they are all made in China, and Chinese Quality has apparently decreased of late. Even when products were manufactured in the USA, there were still QC issues and bad batches.
It also is worth noting that as the value of the dollar fluctuates, so does the price of locos. ANd the advancements of ready to run DCC and sound systems has added grossly to the cost of a loco-that is over the cost of a DC loco and a DCC decoder with sound that one could install themselves if they are so adept.

It often comes down to what happens after the sale when there is a problem that counts, regardless of price.
________
Rock_Babe

 

[galaxy]

So, this is the reason I'd love to see the insides of the various manufactures and have explained to me the differences. I dont mind paying $100 for an Athearns Genisis Loco, if it is going to be worth it, over a Bachmann $40 loco. But if the differences are going to very thin, I'd rather save the money.

So Buy a $40 dollar Bachmann DCC OnBoard loco and give 'er a try...what have you got to loose? Only $40. They apparently have great service.

Buy a $200 loco and if it fails, you could be out $200.
________
Suzuki rg50 specifications

 

[Selector]

For the record, I have had to return five locos to BLI.

The first was my new Hudson bought at a LHS. It ran well until I fiddled with a wiper on the tender and broke a tine. They repaired it for nothing and charged me $7.00 return shipping.

Next was a refurbished NYC Niagara that someone returned or refused because of a damaged carton...not sure. It ran well until one day I did some work on the tender that required me to remove the cover plate and the axles. I managed to forget to orient the axles correctly on re-assembly...it matters. It died, asked BLI for help, they repaired it for the same $7 return shipping.

Third was a NIB "Stealth" DC J Class 4-8-4 into which I added a Tsunami. It developed running problems due to a cracked gear. Returned to me for a few bucks shipping. Is there a pattern here?

Just before last Christmas, I reached for a shelf for support and brought it down off the wall. Too bad for me, it also supported my PCM Y6b, a Paragon J1 2-10-4, and a rather pricey Trix Mikado from the NYC. Only the PCM suffered major damage. BLI agreed to look at it as long as I sent them a check for $44 that would cover each and every repair, part, and shipping. By this time it was out of warranty, so their position was most reasonable...and I felt luck they had the parts. The front engine fell out entirely. Ouch...

Last one was my new Q2. The front light would not illuminate, but everything else was just peachy. Took 4 months, probably because they had to ship it back to the Chinese, but it came back operating 100%. I only had to pay shipping and insurance since it is a brass Hybrid.

I don't say this to discount anyone's claims of poorer experiences. No doubt they have happened, if not exactly as reported. But I feel that I have been very well served by BLI. At this point, I think anyone who feels that they should never get a QA problem loco is in lala land. It just isn't practicable in this day and age with the price point we expect to pay for these complicated and intricate toys. If we agreed to pay $600 for plastic engines with sound, I would guess the return rates would fall to less than 5%. Even so, every brass steamer collector whose posts I have read agree that they had to do some serious tuning to get them to run well. In many cases, they had to add or redistribute weight so they would balance properly and bite the rails well. Drives had to be dismantled, shimmed, trimmed, parts substituted, gears lapped with compounds, and so on....and these can be had new for $800 and on up into the $2K range!!!!

Crandell

 

[nwdrummer379]

I used to have an entire fleet of Life Like Locomotives. Power to only two axles and the motor was housed in an area no bigger than the cab itsself. Not to mention they sounded like wind up flash lights. The rest of the frame was filled with weights, so don't waste your money on Life Like. Has anyone had a model power locomotive?

 

[RW&C]

Has anyone had a model power locomotive?

I have a semistreamline Pacific 4-6-2, N gauge. Great little engine; well detailed, runs smoothly, good drive. Not the easiest DCC conversion, but if I did it, I think pretty much anyone could figure it out. My only complaint with it is that the tender wheels aren't dead centered on their axles, so the tender bobs a bit. But that's an easy enough fix.

 

[ST214]

As for myself, i stick with mostly Athearn and Atlas. I do have a few Proto 2000's and a few Kato's. I also have 2 Bachmann Spectrum's, but only because they are the only ones that made the HHP-8 and Acela.

 

[OCN Guy]

I had my local hobby shop show me one issue with Bachmann... the cheap plastic tube that sits between the drivers... He showed me on one train that was a year old how it was cracking. Then he showed me the replacement tubes he ordered in bulk.
They were already cracked,
He pointed out that the wheels would start to wobble as the train ran, and over time, eventually the plastic shaft would crack.
No word on whether this was the same on the Spectrum line or not.
I'll say I'm pretty happy with my Bachmann 4-8-4 even though it's mega-fragile. Things snap off if you look at the engine cross-eyed.

 

[JimInMichigan]

You asked for photos of interiors of locos and so far no one who has answered your post has provided you any. Nor Can I. It would, for someone with a digital camera, require lots of their time and effort to dismantle their locos and photograph them just for you. Then it would also require someone who happened to have locos of varying price ranges to do so for you. You are asking a lot of someone's time.

Back when I was Jeep'in and belonged to a forum like this, it wasnt unusual for me to run outside, crawl under the jeep and take photos of suspension part's, ect for someone ( to help them out ). Thats the fun and comradery of the hobby. BUT, I wasnt expecting someone to tear into thier Loco's just for me. Many times, people will have taken a photo of thier Loco while doing a repair or upgrade. My request was geared to those people, who might have the photo's on file already. I also didnt expect just one person to help either. 1 photo from this person and that person, wouldnt take long to compile a few of the different options. But anyways, just answering to your comment. I didnt think it was fair to paint my request the way you did.

And thanx for the "typed" info that people have given already. It is all helpful for a newbie that knows squat about toy trains.

 

[Espeefan]

At this point, I think anyone who feels that they should never get a QA problem loco is in lala land. It just isn't practicable in this day and age with the price point we expect to pay for these complicated and intricate toys. If we agreed to pay $600 for plastic engines with sound, I would guess the return rates would fall to less than 5%. Even so, every brass steamer collector whose posts I have read agree that they had to do some serious tuning to get them to run well. In many cases, they had to add or redistribute weight so they would balance properly and bite the rails well. Drives had to be dismantled, shimmed, trimmed, parts substituted, gears lapped with compounds, and so on....and these can be had new for $800 and on up into the $2K range!!!!

Crandell

In most cases, brass needs to be tuned to the layout it runs on, as well as many of the things Crandell states. (I'm one of those posters he refers to ) I have many older (1970's-1980's) brass models that required tuning and weight addition to run without shorting and to pull an acceptable train. OTOH, I bought one of the new Sunset brass SP 2-6-0's with QSI sound, and it runs flawlessly. By and large, the older Balboa and Westside models, as well as PFM's ran like Cadillacs right out of the box, but in most cases you had to paint them. When production moved to Korea things got interesting. New manufacturers had to get up the learning curve, model weight was reduced (nobody wanted to pay to ship lead) so we had bad solder joints to fix and weight to add, unless we were collectors and just put them on a display shelf.

Plastic and hybrids are going through the same thing. Suppliers are changed, new builders have to get up to speed, and we see this through the hiccups we get with quality. Dealers have been pretty good overall in taking care of customers from what I have seen. At the NMRA National I spoke with Frank Angstead, Intermountain's CEO. I have one of their second run SP Cab Forwards. Beautiful model! Runs poorly. Won't pull much. Undersized motor. I told Frank that the brass collector in me was used to taking expensive new models and debugging them to run, but the consumer in me felt that the model should be "right" out of the box. He offered me my money back on the spot. I declined because I want to fix the model. Interesting times for us, isn't it?

To get back on track, for Jim in michigan: buy the best models you can afford and don't look back. That's what you'd do with a TV, a computer, a stereo, or any other product you expect to keep a while isn't it?

Interior photos won't really help you much, because in there, it's often materials of construction that makes the difference, and a photo won't show you that. Besides, most diesel drives look much like the basic Athearn Blue Box drive now anyway.

It's a hobby! Just have fun with it.

 

[Motley]

Just go buy one cheap loco, and the buy an expensive loco and see for yourself the differences in running, details and build quality.