Got home yesterday, unboxed it, put it on our 7' test track, fired it up and - the new Vision Niagara is everything I'd hoped for .... and less:
Less drama. The past few Lionel locomotives I've purchased have had defects and jerky operation. Resulting in unhappy children, returns to Lionel, and weeks waiting for what we ordered to actually be "right." This brute, however, seems to have nice smooth operation. We've come to expect the drama and it was so nice when this thing fired up and seems to be working as it should right out of the box. Fundamentally, this was the biggest checkmark for us.
Less expensive. Kind of a backhanded compliment, but I expected the quality of functions to be lower given this 4-8-4 was "only" around $1,500 (compared to some of the other recent VL steamer prices), but all the smoke functions not only work well, but they seem to have improved. Rather than the wisps of smoke I've come to expect from Lionel (compared to MTH), this thing has a prodigious smoke output. The sound package is incredible. A horn and whistle too - what?! And the paint and assembly seems state of the art.
Less detail. Well, this could just be me, but the description says a "high level of detail." While I'm not in the same galaxy as rivet counters, to my untrained, uneducated eye, the details (hoses, pipes, doo dads) on the boiler seem sort of spartan? Having said that, it has clean beautiful lines, there are nice hand painted details, the pop off valves and builders plate are all crisply done, etc. So, for what it provides, it has delivered very well.
