"If the question about today's manufactured products being of higher quality is to be debated I would concede that their electronic functions and detail could not be matched by anything produced from 1900 to 1960 but in terms of reliability, durability and ruggedness in my opinion there is no way that what is produced today can seriously match up with the old Lionel Corporation's finished product. I wish I could live long enough because I would like to debate this issue 50 years from now when the old Lionel stuff is still chugging along and today's current production has been relegated to the trash heap. "
The key thing is that the old PW trains were built for ruggedness and reliability because they were toys, whereas we might call current production engines and such toys but they aren't, they aren't meant for kids and are basically a totally different product. If you build something simple and rugged, with parts that can be replaced, it will last, something that is fine scale, with complicated electronics and fragile detail work, likely won't last as easily, if it all, they are two totally different beasts and should be appreciated as such, and we also should appreciate those who appreciate both the new and old things, I can understand someone who appreciates the simplicity of the power war stuff, that they can fix it and so forth, and I also understand folks who have posted on here that they love the modern scale stuff with all it brings, command control and so forth, they all are good Better is a relative term, someone who loves to repair their own stuff will find post war better for that, given that the modern stuff is tough to fix, on the other hand someone who wants to run at slow speeds and have sound and scale detail and run protypically and who doesn't mind the hassle it can be to fix these units, would find post war to be inferior for what they want it for.
One thing I am pretty certain of, based on what I studied in grad school that looked at concepts of quality and covered historical perspectives, is that the stuff coming out of the Lionel factory was likely similar to other products of the time and probably had typical quality of the time, a lot of stuff was DOA coming off the line, and the people likely working for Lionel and its factory were likewise representative of the time, some likely were proud of what they were doing, others likely saw it as a job and treated it as such, that was the nature of things back then, and quality production was not exactly a major goal, lean production and continuous quality were concepts that were just then starting to be developed. Doesn't mean I don't think there was genius working there, the engineering staff at Lionel came up with some very, very clever things, and in the end they produced something kids and adults loved and still love, and that rocks.
