I’m admittedly not a patient person. Couple that with a very limited ability to fix electrical issues buried inside sometimes impossible-to-access engine housing and you get someone who most definitely is “irritated” (to put it mildly) when you unpack a brand new train only to find that there are “fixable issues” that must be addressed. Especially if the brand new product costs several hundred or a couple thousand dollars.
Whenever I read threads like this I’m reminded of all the posts and threads asking “is the hobby dying?” Stuff like this doesn’t help. Will spelling errors or plain carelessness when it comes to graphics put train manufacturers out of business? No. But the overall attitude of “it might work out-of the-box but then again it might not. Ah, don’t worry. You’re a tinkerer. You can fix it”…..That kind of attitude in my opinion is a major turn-off for those who are new to the hobby or thinking about diving into the world of trains.
This was a little bit off-topic from the original post but some of the responses to people with valid quality-control observations really mystify me. Maybe if I had the ability to yank out and replace a board with one hand while rewiring a tether to a steam engine tender with the other I’d feel differently. I wish I were the type that looked forward to the next “new-product repair challenge” presented by my latest purchase. Unfortunately I am not.
