GS4's lack quality products

@Walter Anderson posted: lve Lionel Trains.

This brand new out of the box GS does not run.

Before jumping to conclusions perhaps you could explain this in more detail.

Define "does not run".

Mike

Looks like the tender might be missing too.

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Before jumping to conclusions perhaps you could explain this in more detail.

Define "does not run".

Mike

I'm pretty sure he did define it pretty well!

@Walter Anderson posted:

The engine revs but the wheels don't move. I suspect the motor is not connected to the drive gear.

Sounds like something that has been discussed here before.  Either the flywheel or the motor mounts are loose, and the dogbone driveshaft has fallen out.

“Jumping to conclusions” gotta love it!

@Walter Anderson posted:

The engine revs but the wheels don't move. I suspect the motor is not connected to the drive gear.

Anyway, Lionel has been letting too many poorly produced prducts make it to market.

Many here have been very tolerant of this problem.

I hope the Lionel brass will get ahold of their quality control issues. There are way too many.

Again I am a great fan of this hobby and brand. Things have got to get better.

@gunrunnerjohn,

The above lines were not in the original post when I responded to it.

I can only assume that Walter edited it to include them afterward.  Serves me right for not copying his entire post into mine before I added my comments.

I, and many others, have been editing copied posts when using "Reply with Quote" in order to save readers the the repetition, especially when there are many photos.

It won't happen again.  You'll get the entire post from now on, even if it's lengthy.

Mike

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

It won't happen again.  You'll get the entire post from now on, even if it's lengthy.

A bit of an over-reaction Mike, there's no need to do that!   I obviously didn't see the post without the description, I'm sorry I insulted you if that's how you took it.

Could be another victim of damage during shipping from Lionel to the dealer or dealer to customer.  Just sayin'   I think from the evidence of reports on the forum there are a substantial number of products damaged by rough handling.  One reason I say this is that I have yet to have anything (trains or otherwise) damaged in shipping in my neighborhood over the last 10-20 years.  And I would estimate I receive >100 packages per year, of which perhaps 10-15 are trains (mostly N gauge and O gauge).   That's a large sample, and local friends have similar experiences.  Why would some folks have 50% or more of their shipments damaged or dysfunctional and there are people like me with a 0% damage or dysfunction rate?  I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that the Fedex, UPS and USPS employees are more careful with packages in our very prosperous village, which has a large proportion of lawyers, doctors and business execs who know how to complain loudly and effectively .  A hypothesis, perhaps unproven, but with some evidence.

Walter,

I have to speak up.  As far as we know there are only a handful of folks who've had this problem, let's just say 12 hypothetically, based on previous postings.

How bad is the problem?  The answer is "We can't tell".  Why?  Because we don't know how many were made we can't tell with the failure rate is.

None of those who were satisfied with their purchase have commented, neither on this forum nor in this thread, because they have nothing to complain about.   You're missing the bigger picture as a result.

If Lionel made 1,200 and there were 12 bad ones the failure rate would be 12/1200 which is 1%.

This is actually a very acceptable rate for this kind of business-- unless maybe is you're one of the folks that receives a bad one.  Even if it were 36 it's only three times that (3%), which is till not bad.

Now if this were automotive, 1% is very bad.  Ford Motor Co. makes about 750,000 F-150 pickup trucks a year.  If 1% were bad last year, for some particular reason, they would have made 7,500 bad ones.  Ouch!

High volume production, as in automotive, makes quality control much, much easier to accomplish.  The GS4's are not made in high volume.  They're essentially handcrafted, and therein lies the challenge.

Have some patience.  Realize what the nature of the business is, and that on this forum you've only heard from those who received a bad one and taken issue with it, whatever the failure was.

Mike

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

A bit of an over-reaction Mike, there's no need to do that!   I obviously didn't see the post without the description, I'm sorry I insulted you if that's how you took it.

It wasn't taken as such.  I'm actually thankful that you pointed out the weakness in the system so that I compensate for it in the future.

Mike

As John pointed out its simply a loose flywheel set screw or loose motor to mount screws that allowed the dogbone to fall out. Shouldn’t  happen but its an easy fix.

It has nothing to do with number of units produced. Pretty much all large scale engines going back to the 1990s have the same mechanical setup.

Pete

I know folks will say there is no evidence of damage to the carton or the loco.  No crushing or distortion.  But dropping something from a five foot height doesn't necessarily damage the packaging or cause physical damage to the exterior of the loco, but can knock things loose, internally or externally.  The same thing can happen to the human brain in head injuries.  There are unfortunate patients with little or no damage to the external skull or skin who have fatal brain injuries with massive internal bleeding or contusion damage to the brain.  I remember a young man who fell off a car going about 10 mph in a parking lot, hit his head. He was without a blemish and died within hours of a brain injury. Same thing could happen to a locomotive's drive train or exterior. Box is fine. Loco is decidedly not.

Bottom line, send this one back to the dealer for exchange or refund, or if you wish, to Lionel for repair, although that incurs the same shipping risk you have experienced, in all likelihood.  My sympathies. 

"If Lionel made 1,200 and there were 12 bad ones the failure rate would be 12/1200 which is 1%. This is actually a very acceptable rate for this kind of business..."

"This kind of business" ???   You mean the business of selling supposed 100% reliable, very expensive, very sophisticated, electro-mechanical models?  I don't know...I would think that one out of 100 blueberry muffins with too few blueberries might fall under the heading of "a kind of business" where that is an acceptable quality failure.  But not in this hobby.

(With apologies to Mr. Di Nero.)

Send it back to the place of purchase. No need to make yourself sick over this misfortune. They can deal with Lionel.

"You mean the business of selling supposed 100% reliable, very expensive, very sophisticated, electro-mechanical models? "

I'm not sure that reality exists.  Consumer Reports routinely reports 2-5% failure rates of common consumer purchases.

@Arthur P. Bloom posted:

"If Lionel made 1,200 and there were 12 bad ones the failure rate would be 12/1200 which is 1%. This is actually a very acceptable rate for this kind of business..."

"This kind of business" ???   You mean the business of selling supposed 100% reliable, very expensive, very sophisticated, electro-mechanical models?  I don't know...I would think that one out of 100 blueberry muffins with too few blueberries might fall under the heading of "a kind of business" where that is an acceptable quality failure.  But not in this hobby.

(With apologies to Mr. Di Nero.)

Arthur,

You're assuming that these products have to be 100% reliable.  Neither Lionel nor any other manufacturer has ever made anything approaching 100% reliable.  Such a success rate is neither claimed, nor offered, nor implied, by any of them.  It's not in the catalog, not on the website, nowhere.

What has made you assume that this is even possible for any product?

If your expectations are shaped by your perception of other products, like automobiles, or appliances, or fine china, then it's only because, with those other products, you haven't recently bought one that turned out to be bad.  But every industry makes at least some bad ones, or they wouldn't need to offer a warranty.

Even glorious Lionel, back in the day, made bad ones.  Why else would they have had such an extensive service network and offered a reasonable warranty?

Mike

BTW -- Consider this: There is one product/service I can think of that has been near-perfect with respect to reliability, and it is P.O.T.S., otherwise known as Plain Old Telephone Service.   Not to be confused with the Cell Service most of us use today, which is clearly not.  In all of my 63 years I've only lifted a receiver off a standard telephone, and not gotten a dial tone, perhaps five times maximum, outside of storm damage.  Now that's reliability.

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Even glorious Lionel, back in the day, made bad ones.  Why else would they have had such an extensive service network and offered a reasonable warranty?

Mike

I just looked through a couple of my 1950's era Lionel catalogs.  Nowhere was there mention of any warranty...

Rusty

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

It wasn't taken as such.  I'm actually thankful that you pointed out the weakness in the system so that I compensate for it in the future.

Mike

Truthfully, your "solution" is no solution at all IMO.  Repeating a posting with twenty graphics is ridiculous to prevent a remotely possible misunderstanding.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

I'm pretty sure he did define it pretty well!

Sounds like something that has been discussed here before.  Either the flywheel or the motor mounts are loose, and the dogbone driveshaft has fallen out.

I had a friend bring me one of these and it did the same thing, when I opened it up I bust out laughing...Told him it must be a "B" unit. no motor. Lionel is sending out a motor on request and lots of arm pulling. Followed by photo's. On another note John I hope you did not take my comments as personal about the GG 1 side frames. There was a few people who sold them in composite and no longer do, it will be a complicated set up by I think I can do it with my printer or fall back CNC machine. It just hit me making it from a mold is fast becoming old school.

I know this is a disappointment, but let me leave you with a word of advice I used to tell coaches when I was a football official."When your team plays a perfect game we will officiate one". Mistakes happen, be grateful its not a 60 grand car.

@Rusty Traque posted:

I just looked through a couple of my 1950's era Lionel catalogs.  Nowhere was there mention of any warranty...

Rusty

For most of Lionel's history a warranty card has come in the box with the product, or the warranty has been printed in the user's manual.

Here's an example from 1954-55 (sorry for the low resolution):

Mike

I have a Lionel Vision Line GS4 item # 2031520 that I just got back from warranty repair.  The initial problem was that the motor mounts were loose and the dog bone fell out. I placed it on the track today and I cannot get it to run.

I was able to program the engine ID# and added the info using my programming track although that took several attempts. The engine will start but will not accept any other commands IE: bell,whistle,shut down etc. The smoke does work. I’ve deleted the info twice using the eng #,info,clear command. Didn’t help.  I reprogrammend the eng # a couple of times. Didn’t help.

I moved the engine from the program siding to the main line thinking it may be a ground issue. The engine moved forward about 1 foot and stopped then wouldn’t receive any commands again IE bell,whistle,shut down. It does the same thing for both the remote and wifi app with an ipad.

What else can I do to trouble shoot or should I just send it back to Lionel for another warranty repair.   My other Lionel engines work fine both on the program track and on the main line.

This GS4 has been a real boooooger.

@ThatGuy posted:

I know this is a disappointment, but let me leave you with a word of advice I used to tell coaches when I was a football official."When your team plays a perfect game we will officiate one". Mistakes happen, be grateful its not a 60 grand car.

That made zero sense……**** the difference of a 60K car, or a 2K model, if someone pays for it as advertised, shouldn’t they get it??…..some folks can’t and won’t open up their models,……

Pat

@harmonyards posted:

That made zero sense……**** the difference of a 60K car, or a 2K model, if someone pays for it as advertised, shouldn’t they get it??…..some folks can’t and won’t open up their models,……

Pat

Makes complete sense, things happen. Yes it’s upsetting but life is far to short to b****. Lionel has banked for years that most engines never get run…..your surprised by this?

@ThatGuy posted:

Makes complete sense, things happen. Yes it’s upsetting but life is far to short to b****. Lionel has banked for years that most engines never get run…..your surprised by this?

Do you make this stuff up as you go along, or did you work at Lionel and have this info first hand?…..that has to be one of the silliest statements I’ve ever read on here…..so all the folks at Lionel sit around praying nobody runs these models?…..and they pack them with features THAT ONLY WORK when they’re actually running, still hoping and praying nobody uses them??……you go on believing that, …..have fun….🙄

Pat

It's a shame this has to come up again.

For better or worse, I predict yet another thread being locked down very soon...

Mark in Oregon

Agreed.

Mike

@harmonyards posted:

Do you make this stuff up as you go along, or did you work at Lionel and have this info first hand?…..that has to be one of the silliest statements I’ve ever read on here…..so all the folks at Lionel sit around praying nobody runs these models?…..and they pack them with features THAT ONLY WORK when they’re actually running, still hoping and praying nobody uses them??……you go on believing that, …..have fun….🙄

Pat

You prove all of my points, you take this far to seriously, do I think Lionel sits around hoping no one opens the engine they bought................. no I don't. But I am sure they also have an idea how many are shelf queens. You need to lighten up.

@Strummer posted:

It's a shame this has to come up again.

For better or worse, I predict yet another thread being locked down very soon...

Mark in Oregon

I do too, some people take this stuff to seriously.

@harmonyards posted:

Do you make this stuff up as you go along, or did you work at Lionel and have this info first hand?…..that has to be one of the silliest statements I’ve ever read on here…..so all the folks at Lionel sit around praying nobody runs these models?…..and they pack them with features THAT ONLY WORK when they’re actually running, still hoping and praying nobody uses them??……you go on believing that, …..have fun….🙄

Pat

I know a lot of guys who buy high end engines and never take them out of the box.  If they come out of the box, the engine goes directly on a display shelf.  I think that all of us have engines or cars under the layout or in storage that we have never run.  I certainly do.  

I have asked some of these guys to bring their equipment to my or the club layout to see it run.  They decline.  Their goal is to own a perfect collection of high end models including some that cost thousands.  

Yes, it is sad but true, the best train customers for manufacturers and hobby shops are the ones who never run their equipment.   There is never a warranty problem with these purchases nor are there any complaints unless the equipment is obviously damaged.  I won't claim that manufacturers pray that their equipment isn't operated but it certainly helps the bottom line.  NH Joe

I routinely read of new Lionel locos having problems out of the box here on the forum.  I have no proof but have the impression that quality went down when Lionel started producing their products in china.    I buy a lot of used locomotives with stated problems and expect to repair them but when I pay a thousand dollars or more for a new locomotive I expect the manufacturer to have tested and repaired any issues before it was shipped.                                       j

@ThatGuy posted:

You prove all of my points, you take this far to seriously, do I think Lionel sits around hoping no one opens the engine they bought................. no I don't. But I am sure they also have an idea how many are shelf queens. You need to lighten up.

Clearly you’re the fella the mfr.’s pray for, …..evidently you’re ok with receiving broken products. …..prove your points??….your points are pointless…..I’ll lighten up when you get a grip,….it’s easy to be an armchair referee, but the bottom line in the case of this thread is clearly the OP WANTS TO run his new locomotive, ….so as usual, instead of offering USEFUL information, we get replies like the one you started with the football cliché……yeah, ….that brings a lot to the table …..try offering sound advise. Then you’ll get better replies……😉

Pat

@harmonyards posted:

Clearly you’re the fella the mfr.’s pray for, …..evidently you’re ok with receiving broken products. …..prove your points??….your points are pointless…..I’ll lighten up when you get a grip,….it’s easy to be an armchair referee, but the bottom line in the case of this thread is clearly the OP WANTS TO run his new locomotive, ….so as usual, instead of offering USEFUL information, we get replies like the one you started with the football cliché……yeah, ….that brings a lot to the table …..try offering sound advise. Then you’ll get better replies……😉

Pat

How about this, it’s a toy it will be fixed. To be this upset and defensive is amazing. As for him wanting to run his train,I run all of mine. Yet when I get a new one and it has a defect I deal with it. Some of you forget there are many more pressing and dangerous things going on, it will be fixed that is my point yours is what……..yell scream stamp your feet.  

Defects happen.  Only Lionel knows how often they really happen (especially with these very expensive locos), and whether or not they actually have a real QA problem. 

The Internet absolutely magnifies all speech.  One person posting about their issues potentially multiplies the perception of how big an issue there actually is.  Having said that, I've personally had issues with brand new out of the box Lionel Legacy steam -- twice.  But my account is anecdotal, just like this one.

However, I don't think the Lionel Defense Force coming to the rescue and brushing off, minimizing, or hand-waving every report of a problem with a $2k engine is helpful either.  People have and will continue to Jump in and spend their own money, and form their own opinions.  And when they drop that kind of cash, if they're not happy, you're going to hear about it.

In my opinion, as someone who owns a number of Legacy locomotives -- could Lionel tune up their QA?  Probably.  Some additional stateside testing would probably fix 99% of the stuff that's getting reported here, especially on their most complex and expensive models.  There's really no excuse for a $2,000 engine to show up DOA.  The question is, are people willing to pay another 10-15% on top of what these very expensive toys already cost for that additional testing?  Then again, if they're already willing to drop $2k on an engine, what's another $200?

Heck, why not add $400 to the price and give it a lifetime warranty?

“Lionel Defense Force”   Hilarious.

Lionel tried that “lifetime warranty” thing previously.  When the “Heritage Line” was announced, the products in that group were supposed to have a lifetime warranty, and prices reflected the improved support.  That didn’t last long.

Lifetime warranty!      Lionel won't even warranty a brand new locomotive purchased from an authorized retailer past 3 years of the date of manufacture. Lionel's warranty is one year from date of purchase or 3 years from date of manufacture whichever comes first. If you buy a brand new locomotive from a retailer that is past 3 years from the date of manufacture lionel will not warranty it. Your only hope would be to get the retailer to take it back. To bring this back around to the original Poster's statement, doesn't sound like Lionel has much faith in the quality of their products. Definitely not the longevity.

And might I also add all of my trains are Lionel Legacy, with some Sunset 3rd rail mixed in.

@shasta posted:

Lifetime warranty!      Lionel won't even warranty a brand new locomotive purchased from an authorized retailer past 3 years of the date of manufacture. Lionel's warranty is one year from date of purchase or 3 years from date of manufacture whichever comes first. If you buy a brand new locomotive from a retailer that is past 3 years from the date of manufacture lionel will not warranty it. Your only hope would be to get the retailer to take it back. To bring this back around to the original Poster's statement, doesn't sound like Lionel has much faith in the quality of their products. Definitely not the longevity.

Sounds more like a New car Bumper to Bumper warranty instead of a real LIFETIME WARRANTY.  Maybe Lionel should go into auto manufacturing too.  

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Now if this were automotive, 1% is very bad.  Ford Motor Co. makes about 750,000 F-150 pickup trucks a year.  If 1% were bad last year, for some particular reason, they would have made 7,500 bad ones.  Ouch!

By the way, Ford just recalled 185,000 2021/22 F-150s for a transmission issue.

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Have some patience.  Realize what the nature of the business is, and that on this forum you've only heard from those who received a bad one and taken issue with it, whatever the failure was.

Mike

Mike, you must have the patience of a saint....Lol

There are 2 YouTube videos of GS4's with bent draw bars. Yes it's only 2. But it illustrates a common issue with this model. They wanted to show off there nice new engines. When you pay 2k for a product. You should expect it was tested(@factory) before packing to ship.

Statistics. Lionel thought it cheaper for customers to ship all Challengers to N.Carolina for a re-flash. How about the chance of more damage with constant re-shipping to fix a problem? A problem that should be addressed at it's source?

Whoever Lionel is paying overseas responsible for quality issues. They should be replaced with one who does their job!

So now with new cars, many have complained about cars not coupling/uncoupling problems.

If Lionel wants cheaper overseas production. It should also have cost effective quality control.

I have patience. When it's too be expected. If I pay top dollar for a product. I expect top quality.