Normally best business practice dictates that I keep my mouth shut here, but I feel compelled to offer some explanation to clear the air and before the inevitable spiral of speculation takes this to unbelievable levels.
First and foremost, I want to make clear that neither our increase in minimum order, nor our policy of not extending the factory warranty on locomotives worked on by a third party is in any way meant to be an indictment or criticism of Steve nor Harry. I've known both of these men for years and have great respect for them both and the work they do. And I have no doubts that both would have worked together to bring some models to the market that would otherwise be too limited in demand for us to make ourselves. (I believe Steve's email mentioned most Consolidations had orders of 3-12 units - well below what we could practically produce and likely even below a safe order at a 25 piece minimum.) So I do applaud the efforts.
I also know the fun of customizing models and it's one of my personal favorite parts of the hobby. Whether its weathering, custom painting, extra details, installing new electronics or kitbashing - if that's your thing go for it!!! I can't wait till I can get home tonight and put down the keyboard and pick up my tweezers right now. But that's the hobby side of what we do. There also has to be a practical business side and although we're a small company we still have costs and liabilities we have to cover.
Let's start with the warranty: This is nothing new and also I believe a pretty standard thing. Our factory warranty has always applied to the warranty done by our factory. It has always been the case that work you do to a model can void the warranty. The reason we say that modifications void the warranty is because once things have been done, we can't tell if the problem was caused by a manufacturer flaw or something you/the 3rd party did. And this is where we have to separate the black and white of a warranty text from the gray area of how we do business.
I use the word "can" purposefully. By letter of the warranty page, it explicitly does. But as always we're going to work with you here. "Getting dust on it" is absolutely not going to void anything. Neither is damage as a result of normal handling or even some other customization. If you've painted your smokebox a darker color and later on the speaker in the tender goes bad - we're not going to deny the warranty work. But if you've decided you want to put a Pullmore in your Vision Niagara, well then you're on your own! The warranty has to cover all of these circumstances because believe me, we get some pretty impressive stories here! Check out the warranty on your power tools, appliances or pretty much anything else in your home and I think you'll see a trend here.
"But you've used Harry yourself," yes - and when he is acting on behalf of Lionel those projects are covered. He is in effect part of our factory team. And we produce extra locomotives so that we will have replacements on hand if needed. But not everyone is Harry. Once we establish this standard, other modelers as or less qualified could try their hands at this too. This really opens the door to more opportunities for issues and most importantly to us, unsatisfied customers which we can't help. When you order a locomotive from our catalog, we order extra components here for our inventory to execute repairs. We can't stock parts for locomotives we didn't make. That is why the warranty does not cover locomotives sent out to others for custom work. It's not about controlling the market - it's about ensuring we can provide the product and support that we've promised and you deserve.
As to raising the quantity from 25 to 40, again a number of factors went into this, most of which I'm not going to bore you all with here. We know that this will "kill" some small project runs. However, most of our custom orders over the past three years have actually been for 35 units or more. And I've spend most of today preparing files for Creative and Engineering for several custom runs from the current catalog so for those who like these, fear not there are plenty more in the works and I don't think you'll see this program go away any time soon. I could go on for an hour on the costs of decoration fixtures, increasing factory minimums, etc. We'd both have a better evening at the workbench instead!
Like Steve and Harry, we all want to deliver you the trains you want at the quality level you deserve. And we remain committed to all of our partners and our customers to innovate and collaborate whenever possible to do just that. Thank you, high greens and happy modeling to you all.
