Base3 Availability

"This *is* a mess. Lionel will be going on 3 years offering high-end engines in its catalog for which it does not offer a controller."

I know delays are frustrating, but......Not to be unduly argumentative, there are much bigger messes.  Just visit our Emergency Department any time in the last few years or your local funeral parlor.  I know, inappropriate attempt at black humor.  Point is, most of us have seen much, much worse than a year or two delay in some toy train product in recent years.  And this delay isn't impossible or fatal.

I also don't think your comment is entirely accurate. The cab-1L and base, and even the 990 were still available at many dealers as recently as a year or so ago.  I know because I bought them as soon as it was announced they were going bye-bye.   That availability changed rapidly, but I think it's closer to a one year hiatus,  than three, for most of us who delayed getting Legacy for a decade or so.

Practical questions.  Have you tried the app? It controls every single Legacy function and is free.  If you want a remote the $55 Universal Remote provides all the commonly used Legacy functions that most people use.  Whistle, reverse, speed control, electrocoupler, horn.  It's a bargain and except for really large layouts, its Bluetooth function is more reliable, in my hands, than TMCC, Legacy or DCS. 

@Landsteiner posted:

Practical questions.  Have you tried the app? It controls every single Legacy function and is free.

Yes, and I'm unimpressed, especially with the fine speed control!  At least MTH was smart enough to put a +/- on the throttle so you could easily make small speed step adjustments.  Also, any operation with the app ends up being a 2-handed operation.

@Landsteiner posted:

If you want a remote the $55 Universal Remote provides all the commonly used Legacy functions that most people use.  Whistle, reverse, speed control, electrocoupler, horn.  It's a bargain and except for really large layouts, its Bluetooth function is more reliable, in my hands, than TMCC, Legacy or DCS.

First off, the Universal remote has a fraction of the speed steps than either the CAB2 or CAB1L offer, so operation starts off with a bang and has very course speed steps.  As near as I can tell there are between 16 and 20 speed steps from the Universal Remote.

Even basic TMCC has 32 speed steps, and a vast majority of my TMCC/Legacy engines have at least 100 speed steps (ERR Cruise), or 200 speed steps (Legacy).  Add to that with the Universal Remote I don't have access to the momentum or train brake features, I can't turn the smoke on and off, etc. and it just ain't the same!

Finally, BT has lousy range here as well as at the store and in our modular club outings.  If you're more than about 15-20 feet max from the locomotive, you frequently lose control.  That applies to all the BT devices I have access to.  I've tried the Universal Remote, my Samsung Galaxy S21, and an iPhone 12, none of them can reliably run a BT engine end to end on my 12 x 24 layout, never mind driving into the yard extension that adds another 15 feet!  This is with multiple Legacy and LC+ 2.0 engines, they all have lousy range.  (Forget about the "new" longer range BT, that's not a reality for us yet unless we bought the one engine that has it!)

Another consideration, I have scads of locomotives that don't have Bluetooth, so I'm totally out of luck with them!

Contrast that to my TMCC/Legacy experience, I get perfect operation anywhere on the layout standing anywhere in the room, or even the adjacent room!  I can run every one of my TMCC, Legacy, and LC+ 2.0 locomotives using a real remote with no compromises like chasing the locomotive around the layout so the remote doesn't get more than 10-12 feet from it!

No one is claiming the app or Universal Remote answers everyone's needs.  But they perhaps could meet most of the needs of those just starting out with new Lionel locos in the last couple of years, and who are awaiting the Base 3 for the "big enchilada" approach to the hobby. The rest of us already have our needs mostly met via previous equipment such as TMCC, Legacy, etc., as pointed out.  No need to discourage new hobbyists interested in Lionel command control is my primary thought.   Transitional approaches to command control are feasible and perhaps suitable for many while the current limitations sort themselves out.

As far as I know the universal remote only works for lionchief engines, it doesn't work with Legacy engines and definitely not TMCC. If you have a legacy engine with bluetooth you can use the app, but that is relatively recent engines only. And a lot of people don't buy brand new engines, so the legacy engines they buy will basically be orphans.  From the moment Lionel announced that the Base 3 was coming and the 990 was going away, they disappeared really, really fast from dealers. I was at York in October 2021, and I didn't see any 990's there, and none at the later Yorks either. If you saw them, they were on Ebay going for a thousand bucks or more, and not new (I suspect people bought up the 990's when Lionel made their announcement, some to have backups for themselves, others to make an expected killing on a 'collectors' item).

No, this isn't a tragedy like people dying, in my case I'll simply run conventional until the Base 3 and /or DCS shows up, it won't change my life.  And yeah, a lot of the people who want to run command already are, but there are more than a few looking to start using command control. Base3 of course has one big feature, one base, one app to run any Lionel CC engine, that is pretty huge and tempting.

Wow!  This thread certainly got lit up!   What other 'HOT' items can I pre-order and not receive for a couple of years???

@Dennis-LaRock posted:

Wow!  This thread certainly got lit up!   What other 'HOT' items can I pre-order and not receive for a couple of years???

There have been a number over the years, I'm not sure if anyone ever got the one run of milk cars!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

There have been a number over the years, I'm not sure if anyone ever got the one run of milk cars!

OH BOY!  I'm IN for TWO SETS!!!!

@bigkid posted:

As far as I know the universal remote only works for lionchief engines, it doesn't work with Legacy engines and definitely not TMCC.

I think the Universal remote will control Legacy engines with Bluetooth. So, the same restriction as the App, it must be a newer one with a Bluetooth receiver in it.

From the moment Lionel announced that the Base 3 was coming and the 990 was going away, they disappeared really, really fast from dealers. I was at York in October 2021, and I didn't see any 990's there, and none at the later Yorks either. If you saw them, they were on Ebay going for a thousand bucks or more, and not new (I suspect people bought up the 990's when Lionel made their announcement, some to have backups for themselves, others to make an expected killing on a 'collectors' item).

Yeah, a few folks have painted it as if there wasn't a shortage of the Cab-2s before the pandemic. I had searched high and low for one before the pandemic, but could never find one. Most dealers were sold out. I think some of the smaller shops that didn't do online sales had a few. But how was anyone to know that a random shop, three or more hours away that doesn't do online sales had one?

So at that time, I was just biding time until Lionel did another run of them, and would purchase from a forum sponsor here.

Once the announcement came through that they Cab-2 was out, I called about 25 dealers until I found one, and I paid full retail for the pleasure. Oh, and it had to go straight to Lionel so that I could update it to the latest firmware since it had version 1.0 on it!

It's at moments like this that I'm reminded of famous disasters of biblical proportions.

"Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”"  Bill Murray as Dr. Venkman in Ghostbusters

Or even better:

"The horror, the horror..." Conrad's Colonel Kurtz

I do hope sincerely that all who are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs can find temporizing solutions and peace of mind by whatever means possible.  I paid full retail for my 990 and 993 too, and my ancestors are probably turning in their graves, but what the hey.

@Dennis-LaRock posted:

Wow!  This thread certainly got lit up!   What other 'HOT' items can I pre-order and not receive for a couple of years???

Anything from the old MTH. 

@RoyBoy posted:

Anything from the old MTH. 

The new "legacy equipped" old MTH items have been arriving on time for the most part.😉

Hi @MartyE, Marty, I talked to Lionel customer service this morning (as I said yesterday) asking for them to service my two Cab 2 remotes that go to my expansion sets and told the lady my issues and they emailed me an RA right away. She indicated the Base 3 would probably make it mid to late this year, 2023…. So, Jodi in Lionel customer service made my day.
@MartyE, I sent you an email and wondering if it arrived. My email is in my profile. Please give me a shout. Happy Railroading Everyone

So  after a page and a half of panic. Lionel is still repairing cab2's and the cab 3 is still due mid 23 sometime?

I guess it may be best to steer clear of Rumors.

Yes, @RickO, I believe you nailed it, Rumors are not always correct, now, my thinking is to see what Dave and Ryan, the Lionel duo have to say on the 12th…. The new catalog debut should be interesting and hopefully by that I’m hoping they can give us the answers we are looking to hear. Cab 3 is on a lot of folks minds and Lionel needs to give an accurate update on when it will be available….. Happy Railroading Everyone

@RickO posted:

So  after a page and a half of panic. Lionel is still repairing cab2's and the cab 3 is still due mid 23 sometime?

I guess it may be best to steer clear of Rumors.

I agree Rick.

When I originally made this thread, one of the big dealers had the date as November. To me that wasn’t rumor.

They’ve since moved it up to July, while another major dealer has September.

Hi Wow Pat, beautiful layout and thanks for all your help with my comet!

Alan Mancus

Mth Wtiu on one major train dealer shows April 23. I think that probably is going to be close to accurate. I say this because April is only 3 months away. They have to be in production by now to deliver in April. If MTH knows there is a delay, they would have updated by now.  

My main issue is how will any of us newbies in the hobby be able to afford to run both Lionel and MTH engines. $499 for a base 3. $399 for a WTIU plus a Lcs  ser2 and $100 for a brick at minimum equates to at least $1000.  

lionel needs to offer an affordable legacy base solution like the base1L was.

right now I’m gonna order a WTIU AND Z1000 brick and call it a day. As much as I love Lionel engines, I have to choose 1 or the other for the time being.  And as it seems the MTH one will available first, it’s the logical choice.

@Pugsly14 posted:

lionel needs to offer an affordable legacy base solution like the base1L was.

Do keep in mind that most if not all Lionel engines now have Bluetooth and can be run with the free app on a smart phone or tablet. You can also purchase the universal remote and run up to three of any Lionchief or Bluetooth equipped engine with basic movement and sounds (Whistle, Bell, Crew Talk). While this doesn't help if you have or want older Lionel stuff without Bluetooth, it's at least the future of their product offerings.

@H1000 posted:

... while this doesn't help if you have or want older Lionel stuff without Bluetooth, it's at least the future of their product offerings.

@H1000,

You're right.  This is not at all helpful, unless you only have new engines, which in fact is not most of us.  We do care about the future, but not so much when compared to the past.

This is largely because of our existing collections and, going forward, the need to spread our new purchases out over years so as to make them affordable.

Mike

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

@H1000,

You're right.  This is not at all helpful, unless you only have new engines, which in fact is not most of us.  We do care about the future, but not so much when compared to the past.

This is largely because of our existing collections and, going forward, the need to spread our new purchases out over years so as to make them affordable.

Mike

Agreed Mike, The backward and forward compatibility with Lionel is a jumble and left some of the previous premium offerings out in the cold with this newer tech.  Way back around the time Lionel introduce Lionchief, there were calls already back then to make a Bridge device between this new proprietary control system and existing TMCC/Legacy base technology.  It's finally almost here... kind of reminds me of the Free Guy movie trailer Ryan Reynolds made to deal with announcing a new movie that was constantly delayed.

Anyone know for sure how many people at MTH and Lionel are working on command control?  I'm guessing 1-2 at MTH and maybe 2-4 at Lionel.  Talk about shoe string operations .  These are tiny companies. We have local restaurants with more employees than all of Lionel, and food trucks with more employees than all of MTH.

The WTIU is basically just a repackaging of technology MTH has already delivered.  Hopefully that will make it easier to deliver even given all of the supply chain issues that both have experienced.  I'm wondering when we'll really see the Base3 from Lionel.  My gut tells me next year.  Hope I'm wrong.

Given that the years are going by faster and will continue to accelerate at a geometrical rate, I have decided no more new technologies or associated systems going forward.

I am content with MTH ps-2 & ps-3 along with TMCC and some dearly loved though old, conventional. I will cede the future of locomotive control and options to those smarter and more open minded than myself.

I believe there is and will continue to be a prodigious market of used equipment at reasonable prices. With my failing eyesight the equipment looks as good as something expensive and promised in catalogs for tomorrow.

For now, the race between how many years I have left on the planet and the last used but working TIU "for sale; is on.

Wish me luck!

kevin

I like reading about the new technologies, but I prefer to be an observer.

@Landsteiner posted:

Anyone know for sure how many people at MTH and Lionel are working on command control?  I'm guessing 1-2 at MTH and maybe 2-4 at Lionel.  Talk about shoe string operations .  These are tiny companies. We have local restaurants with more employees than all of Lionel, and food trucks with more employees than all of MTH.

@Landsteiner,

Are you implying that the delays we're seeing are due to a shortage of people and not a shortage of parts?

Based on the continuous flow of comments and suggestions to this forum what we clearly don't have is a shortage of well-intentioned suggestions for fixing the situation, regardless of cause.  It's good that we have a vibrant peanut gallery.  In most cases varying opinions are genuinely helpful.

However how many of us in it actually have experience designing, manufacturing and delivering electronics?

Some, but not many?  Maybe we all need to leave it in the capable hands of the experts rather than pushing speculation ad nauseum.

Mike

"Are you implying that the delays we're seeing are due to a shortage of people and not a shortage of parts?"

I'm suggesting that whatever shortage of parts or development delays could be more difficult to deal with given the very small number of staff involved at Lionel and MTH.  A company like Apple or Subaru probably has hundreds or thousands of people working on their development of a given technology or innovation.  Might help and can't hurt.  Scrounging around for substitute parts and alternate suppliers, testing of prototypes, etc., takes time and effort, and there is no substitute for more bodies.

Agreed.  If you can accept the hit to the bottom line.

We're already complaining that stuff is too expensive as it is.

Mike

When have people ever said that Lionel is too inexpensive?  H**l would have to freeze over, thaw and freeze over again for that to happen.  Complaining about prices probably began in Mesopotamia in 3000 BC .

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

However how many of us in it actually have experience designing, manufacturing and delivering electronics?

Present, both in my professional life, and now in my little cottage business with model train electronics.

Was involved in the manufacturing of semiconductors for 10 years, problems with supply chains can't always be solved with more people. The first response to to ever higher pricing is to reduce the labor costs.

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

@Landsteiner,

Are you implying that the delays we're seeing are due to a shortage of people and not a shortage of parts?

@Landsteiner posted:

I'm suggesting that whatever shortage of parts or development delays  could be more difficult to deal with given the very small number of staff involved at Lionel and MTH.  A company like Apple or Subaru probably has hundreds or thousands of people working on their development of a given technology or innovation.

@Darrell posted:

Was involved in the manufacturing of semiconductors for 10 years, problems with supply chains can't always be solved with more people. The first response to to ever higher pricing is to reduce the labor costs.

There’s some truth in both sides of these views.

Having some depth on the bench can allow you to “surge” on a problem. This is how some manufacturing and software development methodologies work. Read up on Kanban if you’re not already familiar. Another aspect is that sometimes there are narrow windows of opportunity to complete something. With just-in-time manufacturing, all the parts need to be available, and if your small team is slow to adapt a change, then that window is narrowed further.

If a particular part is discontinued, say a transistor for example, and your design uses 100 of these in different locations on the board, you might be able to assign “regions” of the PCB layout for engineers to update simultaneously. Great.

On the other hand, not all work can be done in parallel. If a critical IC or micro is discontinued and now you have to rework one area of the board extensively and also go back and do testing and simulation, some of that must happen sequentially. In those cases more people won’t help.

Bigger question, where is the Cab3 app to replace the old and very dated iCab app?

It was supposed to be able to be used with Legacy and LCS Wifi. While sure, some features were Cab3 Base specific, again to me, releasing the app would sell hardware- trains, accessories, and bases.

@Vernon Barry posted:

Bigger question, where is the Cab3 app to replace the old and very dated iCab app?

It was supposed to be able to be used with Legacy and LCS Wifi. While sure, some features were Cab3 Base specific, again to me, releasing the app would sell hardware- trains, accessories, and bases.

Unless it's not ready.  I don't want it released until it's as near perfect as it can be. 

I did notice, and I'm not sure it was mentioned before, the 4 digit addressing is stated to be 100-9999.  Makes perfect sense but I hadn't seen that in print before but I could have missed it.

@rplst8 posted:

There’s some truth in both sides of these views.

Having some depth on the bench can allow you to “surge” on a problem. This is how some manufacturing and software development methodologies work. Read up on Kanban if you’re not already familiar. Another aspect is that sometimes there are narrow windows of opportunity to complete something. With just-in-time manufacturing, all the parts need to be available, and if your small team is slow to adapt a change, then that window is narrowed further.

If a particular part is discontinued, say a transistor for example, and your design uses 100 of these in different locations on the board, you might be able to assign “regions” of the PCB layout for engineers to update simultaneously. Great.

On the other hand, not all work can be done in parallel. If a critical IC or micro is discontinued and now you have to rework one area of the board extensively and also go back and do testing and simulation, some of that must happen sequentially. In those cases more people won’t help.

This is all in line with the concept of the mythical man days, that if one person can do something in 4 days, 4 people can do it in one, and it doesn't always work. Surging on a problem, for example, requires that the work can be parallelized, which sometimes it cannot be. The other thing is larger teams can also slow down progress, where they end up stepping on each other, it all really depends on the nature of the project.  IBM at one point had this concept of 'competing teams' working on the same problem, and to say it had mixed results would be an understatement (among other things,the way they had it set up, the competing teams didn't know the issues the other team had, they often stumbled on the same problems, when had they known wouldn't have attempted it).

From what the MTH guy told me at York and from what has been out there about the Cab3, most of the problem was in the supply chain, either delays in getting critical components or having a supplier mysterious say "no mas" on them. Having more people might have made redesign easier and faster if that was needed, but I suspect the delays were such that having more people wouldn't have helped (on the MTH/Lionel side of things). It doesn't sound like it was the design of the new units, debugging them, etc. While companies are notorious for vaporware, I don't think Lionel/MTH would have announced their new products (now almost 3 years ago) if they were in the design phase, they likely had working prototypes and already had the manufacturing in process (just my guess)..and then it all went to H***. Again, I doubt having more people would have helped, not that the teams involved with this were ever large to start with.

Re: "Unless it's not ready.  I don't want it released until it's as near perfect as it can be."

The App is software.  It will never be "complete" or perfect.  I don't want to wait forever for these products.

Put Neil Young on it . Someone who has the ability to forward think 20 years into the future.😉

@bigkid posted:

IBM at one point had this concept of 'competing teams' working on the same problem, and to say it had mixed results would be an understatement (among other things,the way they had it set up, the competing teams didn't know the issues the other team had, they often stumbled on the same problems, when had they known wouldn't have attempted it).

Well, IBM's competing teams actually worked better than you might imagine, one of the products that came out of that structure was the IBM 360 computer architecture!  I actually worked for IBM back in those days.

@RickO posted:

Put Neil Young on it . Someone who has the ability to forward think 20 years into the future.😉

20 years after TMCC came out (and 10+ years after legacy), Lionel had built many sets and Lionchief engines that still didn't work with either of those devices. Finally after 10 years of waiting and asking we get a device that can control 3 Lionchief engines with our Legacy based remotes / app.

However, he didn't have a crystal ball to tell him where technology trends were going to be in 20 or even 30 years in the future.

@H1000 posted:

20 years after TMCC came out (and 10+ years after legacy), Lionel had built many sets and Lionchief engines that still didn't work with either of those devices.

Many of the Lionchief locos today were originally offered with Tmcc. Pacifics, Berkshires etc, even the Mikado in the new catalog. They were offered in sets as well as separate sale. Lionel deleted the catalogs prior to 2010. I actually started in o Guage with the Tmcc semi scale mikado and berkshire back in 2005.

Tmcc was deemed obsolete the reappeared as Lionchief 2.0. And of course, the cab1L is the Tmcc cab 1 handheld minus an external antenna.

Lionel created its own incompatibility issues, then rectified them with 2.0

The cab 2 still manages to access all of the  latest whiz bang features of the newest vision line stuff.

@bigkid posted:

From what the MTH guy told me at York and from what has been out there about the Cab3, most of the problem was in the supply chain, either delays in getting critical components or having a supplier mysterious say "no mas" on them. Having more people might have made redesign easier and faster if that was needed, but I suspect the delays were such that having more people wouldn't have helped (on the MTH/Lionel side of things). It doesn't sound like it was the design of the new units, debugging them, etc. While companies are notorious for vaporware, I don't think Lionel/MTH would have announced their new products (now almost 3 years ago) if they were in the design phase, they likely had working prototypes and already had the manufacturing in process (just my guess)..and then it all went to H***. Again, I doubt having more people would have helped, not that the teams involved with this were ever large to start with.

In the case of the Base3 / Cab3 App, wasn't that announced not 3 years ago, but in January 2022, 1 year ago???

Also, when Lionel announced the Base3 / Cab3 App, the App was pretty far along for controlling engines, but they hadn't even started with functions such as switches, routes, trains, etc. Apart from manufacturing challenges, the software development is a larger undertaking than we might think.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Well, IBM's competing teams actually worked better than you might imagine, one of the products that came out of that structure was the IBM 360 computer architecture!  I actually worked for IBM back in those days.

It can work, but in practical reality what often happens is the teams, rather creatively competing to come up with a better product, end up spending more time angling to make themselves look better and get more resources. Kind of like spy agencies that often were doing things to get allocations rather than doing effective intelligence work *lol*. I met Gene Amdahl many years later when he was promoting galenium arsenide as a replacement for silicon and was working on supercomputers and feuding with Seymour Kray *lol*