Regarding the question for any locos ever being recalled, one item that comes to mind is the LionChief RS-3. Forget what the exact issue was. Shortly after they were shipped to dealers, they all went back to Lionel. Remember at the time my LHS mentioning his distributor picked up all the locos, no questions asked.
John Quogue RR posted:I sent mine last week, I will post the forum when I receive. I think it's official now this thing is a L E M O N.
You could be right!
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You are right. That is not chump change. In the past 5 months I have bought 7 engines. Four Lionel and 3 MTH premier. Had to sent 4 back for repair. Two Lionel and two MTH. I must be stupid! That is a lot of money sent to these two companies. To be fair Lionel did pay shipping both ways for the GG1 and it was repaired very quickly. MTH took a little longer to get them back but that is a long time to be without the engines that I paid a lot of money for. I must be stupid! I do really love playing with the trains and my grandson but it does get frustrating. I must be stupid! Maybe it's time to stop buying trains and go back to sending my money to Harley Davidson. I MUST be stupid. Have a good day. I'm done now.
audi posted:Sorry to report my #364 among the defective units. It has a couple of hours on it, but the rh marker board started blinking along with the amfleet coaches it was pulling!
That seems to be the harbinger of doom for these locomotives. Every time I've seen one with the number board issue, smoke has quickly followed! It's always been the right hand number board, something unique about how that's powered and/or wired.
Received mine yesterday and it ran for 3 minutes.
Well I picked up my 4 F40s and 1 NPCU last night at my LHS (Trains N Things in West Trenton, NJ). Based on these posts I gave everything a thorough look over and running before leaving the store. I'm happy to report there were nodamaged hoses, lights etc.
The only issue was the hatch removal, which as suggested here I will gently sand down the edges so it removes more easily.
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farmerjohn posted:Received mine yesterday and it ran for 3 minutes.
But did you stop it voluntarily or was the stop forced by circumstances beyond your control? 
It just shorted out. It has a dead short in it somewhere.
Sorry you guys have had so many problems. This has been a very sad thread to read. I hope they have an easy fix and you guys are up and running again soon.
Watch out for the 20 minute mark Glenn. 
Just unpacked and tested my #388, after about 20 minutes of running the sound went out then the number boards and stobe lights started flickering. I had tested two other units but only for about 5 minutes, I will let these run a little longer Sunday.
I'll have to get an RMA on Monday from Lionel. There is definitely a production issue with these units.
I'm waiting to hear what they find on these, from the sound of the failures, my guess is on the flywheel or drive wheels rubbing wires and shorting things.
So what did the folks at Lionel at York say about the issues with these engines?
Well, since York doesn't happen for a few days, we'll know when we get there.
Green Bay & Western posted:So what did the folks at Lionel at York say about the issues with these engines?
I can tell ya what they will say.........
"If you're not happy return it for a refund."
What do you think they will tell people? Um, our QC sucks, we're headed in a different direction, and we don't care about our brand or what it stands for.
This type of thing has been a very common issue the past year. BTO is all they care about....oh and LC+ junk.
But...but... this was a BTO item, so they should care about it.
The videos posted are great! I am reading all these posts just thinking how crappy this is for all of us. Out of the 25 or so engines I have, 24 from Lionel this one has been disappointing. I hope the fix is an easy one. I think we all want this engine to be a good one because it is so much of the fabric of our growing up. Everyone can vividly envision that F40 pulling a bunch of Amtrak cars in real life. It was such a beautiful sight.
i did just buy the MTH F40 Metra and all 6 cars. I grew up in Chicago and man did they do a nice job. It is stunning. I have on order a DCS remote and TIU to integrate with my legacy.
The best part about reading all these posts is how much we all love this hobby. Hopefully Lionel will get this one right.
The F40 is gorgeous imo so hopefully it will be out of the shop soon and up and running on our layouts.
If anyone has any DCS advice for me I am all ears.
If I had to guess, I would think the front motor flywheel is cutting though the wires to the front lights. That would be the only reason that the marker lamps on mine flash in cadence with the speed of the locomotive.
I'd stop running it until it's fixed as the next step is a direct short and smoke! The smoke is even if you have it turned off, it's not optional.
Since the number boards appear to be wired to track power without any switching, they may be the wires that short everything.
Good advice, RMA Monday morning
On Lionel's behalf, this beautiful set of Diesels I KNOW, were meant to be Trouble Free....Fun to Run Scale like Models of the real thing....Sometimes things Happen, sometimes Good, sometimes not so good, it's simply Life. You can be Sure, Lionel will Take every measure Possible to "Please" Everyone that so kindly purchased these nice Legacy Diesels.... BTO....It's definitely a Manufacturer Error, Lionel, I am Certain, will Step Up Quality Control to see this does not happen again. (If Lionel has any one reading this wildfire thread, it's time to Chime In.) This could have happened to any of our Favorite Manufacturers, this time Lionel. We need to simply keep Calm, let the Storm subside and Go Forward...Happy Railroading...Let's have Fun at York!!! WOW!!!
leapinlarry posted:On Lionel's behalf, this beautiful set of Diesels I KNOW, were meant to be Trouble Free....Fun to Run Scale like Models of the real thing....Sometimes things Happen, sometimes Good, sometimes not so good, it's simply Life. You can be Sure, Lionel will Take every measure Possible to "Please" Everyone that so kindly purchased these nice Legacy Diesels.... BTO....It's definitely a Manufacturer Error, Lionel, I am Certain, will Step Up Quality Control to see this does not happen again. (If Lionel has any one reading this wildfire thread, it's time to Chime In.) This could have happened to any of our Favorite Manufacturers, this time Lionel. We need to simply keep Calm, let the Storm subside and Go Forward...Happy Railroading...Let's have Fun at York!!! WOW!!!
You are right, keep calm and carry on.
Time for Lionel and others to try "Burn In" on new models. From the responses here, it suggests that a 2 hour run of 10 units would have exposed these problems.
I think this bucket of trouble caught Lionel by surprise, clearly they didn't expect this kind of issue. Still not sure exactly what happened, but certainly the QC on the production line fell on it's face! I do think they may want to do a bit more acceptance testing in the future of early models in a new production run.
If it was just the F40PH that was having problems you could cut them some slack. Unfortunately, the Allegheny and the GG1 have been problematic also. Makes me think a lot about whether I want to make any additional purchases until Lionel can again prove that they can put out dependable locomotives.
I think the issues with the above mentioned pair aren't nearly as prevalent as the ones for the F40PH. From the feedback I've been getting from the F40PH locomotives that went out of Henning's, a vast majority of them have already failed. There is some production glitch that is killing them, hopefully Lionel has gotten to the bottom of it. I have this sense that it's going to turn out to be some fairly simple thing like wire routing causing the issue, it'll be interesting to get the whole story.
Whew! Dodged this bullet. Only because I am focusing on items on my layout before 1959. I hope they find the root cause and my new UP SD40's will not be plagued with the same issues.
Well, I got a shipping notice for my F40PH and the Cabbage unit, so soon I'll see how they should run. I'm betting on more than 15 minutes. 
Pretty quick turnaround, I hope this episode is behind me. 
Sounds like they know what's wrong. Pretty impressive turnaround.
They have secretly been reading our posts!
I don't think it is a secret!
Rudy beat me to it! No secret, I'm sure Lionel is very interested in sorting this out.
I am excited to get mine back. As I said yesterday it is an iconic engine.
I'm picking up 3 of these from my dealer at York. Seems like I should just call for an RMA without even opening them and dropping them off up the aisle at lionel....
not terribly excited to throw down $1200 If they're almost guaranteed duds.
If they have a Lionel tech, it might be advised to interface with Lionel about what they've been finding, I'm guessing it might be a simple fix if you get it before you run them and cook something.
If someone is there and knows the answer it would be great. Sounds like something must be making contact in the cab. If it's something that can be fixed before blowing it up by heat shrinking or moving a wire bundle, then maybe they can provide some instruction... pulling a shell isn't beyond basic skills.
My "guess" is a wire getting sanded down by a flywheel on the front motor. I haven't heard the "official" word from Lionel, but that's my best guess not having seen the inside, but having seen three of them fail in the same way. Whatever powers the number boards seems to be involved as the right number board goes in every instance I've seen them fail. Two in the row had a flickering right number board and then "dead". It would also explain some reporting that it was running a bit jerky.
This is all total speculation on my part, it'll be interesting to hear the actual failure reason from Lionel. 
Not unheard of. I've had MTH switchers eat the headlight wires because the wires didn't stay where they're supposed to be routed. I'll ask if they can give a reason and see if they're ok with popping them open. Taking the shell off might also ease the initial release of the tight hatch too.
If I can preemptively fix them, that would be preferred to blowing them up.
I got an e-mail from Lionel and my F40PH is being shipped back to me. That's a one week turn around.
gunrunnerjohn posted:My "guess" is a wire getting sanded down by a flywheel on the front motor. I haven't heard the "official" word from Lionel, but that's my best guess not having seen the inside, but having seen three of them fail in the same way. Whatever powers the number boards seems to be involved as the right number board goes in every instance I've seen them fail. Two in the row had a flickering right number board and then "dead". It would also explain some reporting that it was running a bit jerky.
This is all total speculation on my part, it'll be interesting to hear the actual failure reason from Lionel.
Based upon these type of comments I took the shell off my locomotive. There are a couple of harnesses to guide wires to the front of the locomotive and to keep the wires away from the motor flywheel. On my unit a couple of wires worked themselves out of the harnesses, but they were not near the motor flywheel. I secured the wires to make sure they are never free.
The shell wires are separate from the wires of the motherboard. The shell wires connect to motherboard wires by series of 6 or perhaps 8 (I did not count them) plug connectors. Another possibility is that some of these got reversed during the manufacturing. With some AC circuits the wires can be reversed and all seems well for a little while, but then failure.
With some hiccups, my Phase II unit #200 is still going well. The hiccups were rubbing of the coupler wires on the wheels and a broken wire from the pickups. It has about 15 hours of run time.
Most failures that I hear about are Phase III units; thus, it might not be a surprise that this Phase II units is ok.
Needless to say, my experience with these units have been largely positive; especially when considering all the failures many of you have had to deal with. Even so, knowing what I know now would I sill drop $800 on the powered and cabbage units? Probably not. They are nicely detailed and have some cool lighting features and such but also have a cheapness feel to them. They could really use a cast metal chassis and get rid of the flimsy plastic chassis side frames.
Also, why is there 1/8 inch of space between the wheel and the truck side frame? The large gap really detracts from the look of the trucks. 2343 from 1950 has much tighter tolerances and looks much better.
Also of note is that these units go around 048 curves just fine. I have tested every type of rolling stock I have: freight cars, 15" aluminum passenger cars, articulated couplers, fixes couplers, and even the lightest of MPC rolling stock with plastic wheels. Everything navigates the 048 curves and switches just fine without any derailments. It seems that Lionel was overly cautious in calling these units 054 in the catalog.
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