Well, wherever they were made could be irrelevant. It is difficult to determine if it really has any weight on that because as Lionel had pointed out on the Challengers, "it didn't say that in the catalog, but we understand that we didn't indicate what it would have, so we're offering to fix that to those who want that", or at least something relatively close to that statement. That was in regards to the chuffing sounds.
Someone pointed out somewhere over the past few years or so that there is wiggle room on their end when it comes to what is shown in the catalog and what the end result is. I have noted that in the most recent catalog "diecast sprung trucks with operating couplers" is absent from all or nearly all of the high-end cars(with maybe a few exceptions). The only place that appears is in the O-Gauge end of the catalog on certain types of rolling stock.
The other thing that it could be is they went over to different types of trucks to save money here and there, much like I pointed out that some of the passenger cars don't show or list passengers in them with few exceptions. Passengers can be placed in cars, that's not that big of a deal, and to quote Eric of Eric's trains, "I'm okay with them not putting passengers in the cars because you can always add them later, you can't add quality after the fact." I'm sort of butchering that a bit, but you all get the point if you haven't seen it.
I take pride in my well working rolling stock, and those that are very great quality. Stuff that rolls well and doesn't derail is essential to mostly all of us if not all as some have extremely large layouts where derailments become big issues. When I was into HO, I used to have a Burlington Northern hopper that would always uncouple and derail unless I had a certain boxcar coupled with it. I always ran that BN car directly behind my 2-10-4 PRR Texas and never had issues with that set up. Whenever I switched out cars and the locomotive for another, it would uncouple and sometimes derail. Granted that is HO, and at the time $5-$15 per car depending on what it was. These cars are not those naturally so we expect more out of them.
I sincerely hope that they come up with something that is easy for us on are end. We have to wait unfortunately until they figure out what they are going to do. In any case, sit and wait we have to do, unless we modify what we got.
