It was offered as a rebuttal to the notion that we need to immerse ourselves in never-ending hand-wringing over trying to make the electric toy train hobby resemble NASA projects. If electronic components of toy trains are not robust enough in their design or applications, then we need to rethink the design and applications, not fret over multi-dollar protection devices that the manufacturers apparently didn't seem to feel necessary.
As has been explained many times by the electronic experts here, there are only a few things we can do to protect the fragile electronics inside a locomotive, should a fault occur outside the locomotive. The cure to the perceived or real volatility in the electronic components is to source them and design their circuitry so as not to be susceptible to external faults.
My remarks were offered, as are most here, in the spirit of getting a conversation going. They were not made to deride "modern electronics" whatever that means. They were, however, made to try to poke the manufacturers into getting their act together. My favorite "fix" has been the "add a light bulb and see if that helps" mentality.
