It is a shame that in this day and age, that you still face problems like zinc rot that effected the 700e back in the late 30's. Appliances and other consumer products don't last long any more and generally aren't worth fixing, and with cell phones now at the 1 grand mark (and unlike the past, the carriers don't pick up the cost any more), you do replace an expensive item. That said, though, many consumer products like appliances are cheaper than they once were, tv sets today are ridiculously cheap compared to their forbears,and appliances are relatively cheap as well. The thing about 1500 dollar toy trains becoming unusable in 5, 10 years, is that they are not appliances, they are pure discretionary income spending, and something you don't exactly use like you do a phone or appliance, so you are talking something that is relatively lightly used comparitively, that costs a lot. So basically what you have is something that is pretty expensive and might as well have been designed to fail, especially with the electronics, for something that is a pure discretionary purchase (sorry, these days cell phones, especially smart phones, have become so integrated into doing things like working, buying things, controlling things in the house, it no longer is a pure luxury it once was, not to mention try making a call someplace when your cell phone dies...). The other thing is by the time it dies,unlike a consumer good, you likely won't be able to replace it,given these are models of specific engines. You might get lucky and find an NOS someone has, or you might find a used one that is running okay, but that kind of becomes less and less likely, especially given the relatively small production runs for these.
As someone else said, it is what it is, you are dealing with semi custom product made in small numbers, and you have to buy the thing knowing that there will come a day, not that far in the future, where it will become either a paperweight, or where you revert it to basically conventional operation with a reverse unit to run it.
