Lionel Trains

In the past few days, I had some hands-on experience with a new Lionel train set.  When I was a child, I used Lionel trains exclusively in my model railroading hobby.  I actually had a large model railroad in our attic.  By high school, I had progressed into more realistic trains in N scale (realistic track, realistic slow speeds, realistic direction control, realistic and detailed trains, etc) but I continued using my large Lionel model railroad on the other side of the attic space.  

Sometime in the 1970s, Lionel started producing more toy-like plastic trains including their locomotives.  I'm sure they still had some of their higher end, highly detailed metal trains but I only had access to my friends' lower end new Lionel trains.  Unfortunately, my experience just the other day was with very low end, almost what I would consider junk, toy-like plastic Lionel trains.  This train set is very toy-like and, worse yet, likely to prove to be easily broken by a child.  

This train set would not even run smoothly and operating at slow speed was impossible.  It would lurch forward from standing still.  It would lurch in reverse from standing still.  It slowed down on curves.  Nothing about operating this Lionel train set reminded me of realism by any stretch of the imagination.  

For the past decade or so, I've been using MTH trains and even their lower end RailKing trains are of good quality.  The RailKing line lacks some of the more detailed parts that you would find on their Premier line but the quality is still there on their lower end product line.  The sound quality is exceptional too.  These MTH locomotives are exceptional at realistic slow speeds.  I could get them to crawl smoothly at 1 mph from an idle.  These locomotives have momentum just like the real locomotives.  Everything about the MTH locomotives scream realism.  

On the other end of the spectrum is this new low end of the Lionel trains which they call their LionChief line.  This line completely lacks any detail.  What little detail is provided on these trains is just poorly molded-into-the-body chunky details which aren't really details but only resemble details.  Additionally, the sound quality is noticeably lacking especially when compared to MTH trains with their Proto-Sound 3.0.  The Lionel sound quality is rather toy-like just like the appearance of these rather cheap trains.  It really is quite a disappointment.  

Another disappointment is that I really love my MTH O Scale trains but MTH is no longer in business.  The owner and founder of MTH Trains retired this past spring.  Atlas purchased some of the O scale MTH line but we still have not seen any products since Atlas purchased them.  I'm not too confident that the line will thrive as it did when MTH produced their own products.  In fact, I will be shocked if Atlas produces more than just half of the MTH line.  The loss of what Atlas decides not to produce will hurt the hobby terribly.

Because of the sale of MTH, I decided to try some of Lionel's current offerings.  After all, I might need to start purchasing whatever is available.  My opinion about what I am seeing from Lionel, putting aside Lionel's small but high end Legacy line, Lionel's current offerings are toy-like garbage.  Lionel will not be a replacement for my MTH trains.

This hobby is very noticeably dying a slow death.  Ironically, all hobbies have thrived through the pandemic yet model railroading seems to be choking and gasping for air just like those of us who suffered from this infectious worldwide virus.  My opinion is that this is due to gross mismanagement by the product manufacturers just like we witnessed with Kodak mismanaging their photography business model through the transition into digital.  Kodak died a slow death and now I am watching a whole hobby, model railroading, die a slow death across the board affecting most manufacturers and, in many ways, due to most manufacturers.

More bad news in recent weeks is that I also recently read that my major railroad track supplier for all scales of track is now for sale (Micro Engineering).  This is dire bad news.  

Honestly, it is bad enough to clearly see a loss in quality in this hobby but I'm not sure this hobby can survive through a loss of manufacturers as well.