Jim is right about that, as has been talked about ad nauseum on here, Lionel for the most part was not a low cost product, it was why buying a train set, or even having a decent layout, was a big deal, often accrued over the years. The other thing to think about is that when Lionel did produce lower cost items, they often were not the same quality, the scout set engines come to mind (yes, I know, there are ones still running 60 years later), other items of the low cost line likely have not lasted the way the typical items did. One of the reasons Lionel could produce what they did the way they did was they had high profit margins and more importantly, had large enough production runs that the fixed costs of production were minimalized, so they could afford to use die cast components, heavy duty motors and the like, or produce the gee whiz accessories they did. It is not coincidence that once Lionel faced declining sales and was trying to squeeze every dime out of the company that the quality went downhill, you saw cheap plastics used, and more importantly, when units were in continuous production, you saw them using the same old dies and such, rather than replacing them, and that caused for a lot of substandard product being put out.
lionel is not a cheap unit today, and I think some of the reaction to modern units is you buy something that costs upwards of a thousand bucks or more, and you have no expectation that it will perform well out of the box or more importantly, will work in a couple of years, or at least that is the perception of the way these units are. I often wonder when Lionel introduced the 700E at the price it was at, and what they thought if/when issues hit it (and I have seen stories written that said it wasn't necessarily the most reliable unit out there).
