@Ray of sunshine posted:Dave NYC,
Just saw your video, and glad that you also contacted Lionel. I too send an separate email to Dave Olson several weeks ago detailing the issues with the couplers. I do NOT have the milk car, but did buy a CNW Friendship car that has the same issues.
I hope that Lionel will step up to the plate and correct this serious issue not only on future releases, but will send new trucks and couplers to those of us that purchased these defective designed trucks/couplers at no cost.
When other manufactures were informed of issues on new releases, they not only fixed future releases, but shipped replacement parts to owners at no costs, Atlas and Athearn are 2 that I personally know of.
I really would like to buy the entire Friendship fleet that Lionel announces, 6 cars, but until I know the issue will be fixed, I won't buy any of the new freight cars from Lionel.
As I see it, both Lionel and those of us that refuse to buy new cars with this defective design, it's a lose/lose proposition.
RAY
Ray, it's not my video, but I do agree that Lionel needs to address this with a fix. This is going to be very damaging to their sales of they don't get a fix for this as I have already stated elsewhere that I am not getting any rolling stock out of the new catalog because of truck and coupler potential issues. I say potential because of the descriptions on all the cars in the O-Scale section of the catalog. They all appear to be trucks not being sprung trucks. On the O-Gauge side however, there seems to be a great variety of diecast sprung trucks. Seems to be backwards to me as usually the high-end stuff has diecast sprung trucks. The couplers vary in their descriptions so it is hard to determine if they will be a distorted lobster claw like the milk cars have and the hoppers too(if that was the case).
It seems that this is the new norm for now, and is a great disappointment. As Gary said, Lionel is going to have to restore our faith in them, which if they fail on this, it's on them. I really hope that they get on here to go into how they will fix this, especially before the cutoff on the new catalog as they lose more sales. As far as changing my mind on rolling stock purchases for this catalog, there is almost no interest in what they offered, so that is also partly why I'm not buying.
