I never had problems with any of the MTH steamers I had, and one SD70ACe diesel did have a bad motor that they replaced free of charge. They also replaced the body because it had partly melted. For me, their repair service was outstanding.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for the post, if MTH would talk to me we could start to get this sorted.
Maybe they will contact me soon.
Regards
Peter.
Hi Maxman,
Thanks for the reply and info, l am thinking along the same lines as you, l am
just hoping that MTH will contact me to sort this out.
Let you know how l get on.
Very clearly, your new locomotive's decoder is toast. The information you read in the instructions, although detected late, seems to be highly instructive.
I like BLI's method in years past of throwing a small slip of paper with a tech notice on top of the foam rubber that is visible once the top of the box is lifted. Pretty hard to ignore that in-your-face approach. Maybe MTH can adopt that practice...and not feel they have to sue BLI later for the privilege.
I bought one of the Yellowstones last year. When I received it, the packaging was all broken, and parts of the locomotive were broken off. There was a rag stuffed into the plastic packaging where the packaging was broken off. At first I was pretty upset, but the hobby shop I bought from and MTH worked together to get me a new replacement. They even paid the return shipping, as they should have.
I'm pretty sure the box does have a slip of paper, separate from the manual, that shows how that switch should be set.
I recently picked up a Con-Cor Aerotrain. Included in the 4-unit set were a number of informative articles that discussed the history of the train, as well as information about the model itself.
One sheet was from the owner, who wanted to bring to the customers attention the importance of making sure that the cars were connected together properly. The sheet had "If you read nothing else, read this" in large font across the top and included clear photos of a correct and incorrect connection, what will NOT work if the cars are connected incorrectly, and its consequences (melted shell).
IIRC, it was the first sheet on top after you removed the lid and/or foam rubber padding. That attention to detail and pre-emptive customer care impressed me.
If there's a potential problem due to a thrown mode switch or inadvertent thrown switch, I'd like to know about it before hand.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
My problem with MTH is that they insist on using 3 rail logic in a real the two rail world. Why else would you even have DCS in an environment where DCC is standard. By the way I don't think there is such standards in the three rail world.
Joe Staten Island West
I sadly have to say that MTH service and quality is poor. Over the past 1.5 years I have purchased a number of items to build up my brother's train set. While some things work out just fine, on balance I am quite unhappy about the experience and I am considering abandoning my current "marriage" to MTH. I have had an HO and O steam engines arrive DOA, even returning an DOA HO a second time because it didn't work with DCS after first repair. The repairs take a minimum of 2 months, which of course counts against your warranty time.
I purchased an O locomotive and power supply at the same time. The locomotive sat parked for 5 months waiting for it's power supply to arrive, with the warranty time ticking away (the locomotive refused to work with a Lionell power supply).
I had a HO diesel die after several months. On a (cheap) MTH power supply, the lead connectors were misaligned.
In general, operation by DCS is flakey. It is not uncommon for an engine to start off fine, only to run away at max speed after several minutes. If you are not careful about how you power down/up your engine it will become confused requiring you to cycle power on the entire layout. I have a new A/B unit that I have great difficulty getting them to work as a team (they want to go different speeds or directions).
In summary, I have my brother operate his set in conventional mode, without the nice lights and sounds. When I see him I experiment a bit more with DCS with the hope of someday finding a reliable configuration. I would probably be a lot better off getting $35 - $100 conventional engines and quit trying to get this stuff to work.
joe323 Why else would you even have DCS in an environment where DCC is standard.
Why else would you even have DCS in an environment where DCC is standard.
Well, to lock their buyers in, of course. However, for that to work as intended, DCS has to be superior in features and at least equal in terms of reliability. Since I don't own any MTH products, I'll refrain from commenting on the actualities.
CG
Well, I now have six MTH engines, four steam, and have had mixed experience with them on my DCC system. The K4 is kinda a dog, but my Yellowstone and Triplex do well. My GS4 was touchy about switch frogs, but benefitted from un-springing the pilot frame, adding some weight on it and more under the front. I called parts, looking for a shorter drawbar for it, and got a helpful guy, so it looks better now.
I have 25 BLI steamers, and had to return one and get them to send parts for three others. The decoder in the 4-12-2 couldn't match the driver rotation, so it had to go, replaced by a WOW. My latest, an S-2, needed the truck pickups cleaned and adjusted before it would run 10 feet. Don't like the Paragon 2 or 3 decoders much, because they made the chuff in most sound as if the valves are out of adjustment.
Twelve Lifelike steamers, nice lookers with minimum problems. Good thing, because service and parts for them after Walthers aquisition seemed to get tricky.
Four Athearn steamers, three of which had the early MRC disasters. I didn't bother calling them, just replaced the decoders with WOW and Tsunami.
Thirteen Bachmann steamers. The small belt-driven ones don't run smoothly at slow speed, nor pull much. My EM-1, ATSF 3780 and Shays seem good. They exchanged one engine for me for a fee.
My best-made steamers are probably my Trix BB and Mikado. Also nice: my two Rivarossi Alleghenies, far and away better than their others.
I think, generally, diesels are less trouble, but LL's, which I bought mostly used, seem to get noisy and crack gears.
Hal
I have >10 MTH O guage locomotives. Of these I have had to take one back to the dealer where I purchased (this was 10years ago) to have it repaired, due to a pinched wire which was shorting out against the diecast boiler (or some such, I dont remember). It was returned in working condition. Other than that I have had 0 problems with my DCS system and locomotives. Note I do not have HO scale DCS locomotives, as DCC is more than adequate, and you allways have compromises when you try to do both.
I thought the DCS/DCC switch was on all MTH dual mode locomotives (or maybe its the proto3 ones).
I generally beleive that many Oguage types may not want to repair their own equipment, due to the high cost of the Locomotives/rolling stock. Also non-working Oguage couplers are quite bit different than a Kadee coupler on an HO scale car. They are not easy nor inexpensive to repair or replace (you end up replacing the attached truck, which will cost you about $20 for a MTH product if memory serves).
hdtvnut My best-made steamers are probably my Trix BB and Mikado.
My best-made steamers are probably my Trix BB and Mikado.
Hal,
Gotta agree with you on the Trix Mikes. I have both NYC versions and they run like well-oiled machines.
Wanted to double-head them but haven't found a good way to mount a replacement coupler on the front end yet. Will have to look at that again sometime.
tstage Hmmmmm...Seems like folks are on the MTH-bashing mission this week on the forum. Tom
Hmmmmm...Seems like folks are on the MTH-bashing mission this week on the forum.
Hold the phone. How is relating ones experience bashing? IMHO bashing is something else altogether to be reasonable and fair.
Credit where cedit is due and critisicm where due. I have never dropped $600 on a loco and if I did I'd want it to be right or it would be the last I'd buy from that company. That is old school accountabilty.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
rio,
IIRC, when that quoted post was originally written (nearly 3 years now) there was at least 2 or 3 other MTH-related posts in a similar vein. That's all my comment was directed towards...
riogrande5761 tstage Hmmmmm...Seems like folks are on the MTH-bashing mission this week on the forum. Tom Hold the phone. How is relating ones experience bashing? IMHO bashing is something else altogether to be reasonable and fair. Credit where cedit is due and critisicm where due. I have never dropped $600 on a loco and if I did I'd want it to be right or it would be the last I'd buy from that company. That is old school accountabilty.
I couldn't agree more. My biggest gripe about this hobby is there is too much poor quality merchandise being sold and some of it is being sold at premium prices. When one pays for quality, one expects quality in return. Too often that is not the case. If someone criticizes a company for poor quality control, you can pretty much count on someone rushing to the defense of the company and blaming the customer.
As for MTH specifically, I don't have a lot of their equipment but what I do have is very reliable. From my limited experience their passenger cars are way superior to what Walthers offers. I also have their streamlined Empire State Express Hudson and it is one of my favorite locos. That's not to say everyone's experience with them has been as positive as mine. Sometimes one person gets a quality piece of merchandise and somebody else will buy the same product and get a lemon. A company really shows their colors with the way the respond to fix a problem. I don't expect perfection from any company but I do expect them to fix their mistakes.
cjcrescent But what does surprise me, is no one seems willing to learn how to do these repairs themselves anymore. My opinion of this is, too bad. Just think of the money and time you'd save by doing it yourself. Even where I have had to do an almost complete rebuild of some locos, it took less than a week and most repairs cost a couple of bucks at the most.
But what does surprise me, is no one seems willing to learn how to do these repairs themselves anymore. My opinion of this is, too bad. Just think of the money and time you'd save by doing it yourself. Even where I have had to do an almost complete rebuild of some locos, it took less than a week and most repairs cost a couple of bucks at the most.
Hold on now. I have an H10s that's an MTH horror story. I get it, things happen, but I've only been able to run it like 5 times since I bought it 10.5 months ago. So when the remote coupler broke, I took it to my hobby store. It's under warranty, and I figured that they would have an easier time fixing it than I would.
They broke the whistle off, couldn't get the tender to couple to the drawbar without extrenuous force, and on top of all that, they couldn't fix the coupler. And these are people who are more quilified than I am, and who fix these things on a daily basis.
So, I take issue with your assertion. There are some locos that just shouldn't be looked at the wrong way by anyone aside from the manufacturer.
TheWizard cjcrescent But what does surprise me, is no one seems willing to learn how to do these repairs themselves anymore. My opinion of this is, too bad. Just think of the money and time you'd save by doing it yourself. Even where I have had to do an almost complete rebuild of some locos, it took less than a week and most repairs cost a couple of bucks at the most. Hold on now. I have an H10s that's an MTH horror story. I get it, things happen, but I've only been able to run it like 5 times since I bought it 10.5 months ago. So when the remote coupler broke, I took it to my hobby store. It's under warranty, and I figured that they would have an easier time fixing it than I would. They broke the whistle off, couldn't get the tender to couple to the drawbar without extrenuous force, and on top of all that, they couldn't fix the coupler. And these are people who are more quilified than I am, and who fix these things on a daily basis. So, I take issue with your assertion. There are some locos that just shouldn't be looked at the wrong way by anyone aside from the manufacturer.
Is your hobby store an "authorized MTH repair center"? MTH has a repair center search function. Try that on for size and see if you get a better result.