MTH Proto 3 locos

[healey36]

MTH L-1 Mikado:



Equipped with Locosounds...haven't had any issues, and it's got nearly twenty years on the clock.

Healey

[chuck]

Loco Sounds wasn't a bad option if you didn't care about sound. You got a good looking train that ran great. It just sounds like sh*t. I remember working on one and I almost took a screw driver to the speaker. The sounds were digitally synthesized. It sounded like a cheap digital wrist watch.

[healey36]

I would agree, it's awful. I haven't run this thing for awhile, but it seems to me there was a way to turn the sound off or at least reduce the volume such that it wasn't too obnoxious. Still, for ~ $300 new, it looks pretty decent (especially after Sarge weathered it for me).

[Neil]

Nothing much to add, except that I think that younger folks who are buying into the DCS system will find themselves in 5-20 years or so with a system that is not supported with parts or new equipment. I think there is probably no real future for MTH after the Mike Wolf era ends. There is no one at the company who will take over apparently, and there is no way he is going to get the asking price for the company I'd guess he'd expect from a lifetime's commitment and his overweaning ego . The good news is that PS3 locomotives (and PS2) are pretty good in conventional mode, and they are beautiful as stated. At my age it doesn't much matter, but I've sworn off MTH locos for most of the last 20 years since the PS1 fiasco. I remember well the MTH loyalists on the AOL Board arguing that PS1 was better than TMCC. Shows how good we are at believing what we want regardless of reality. As has been said, PS1 can be bought dirt cheap and upgraded to ERR ± Railsounds for about $200 if you do the work yourself, or another $100 for someone else to do the work. These are often mechanically sound and beautiful locos and a reasonable alternative to spending twice that or more for new production.

Lionel seems to be doing pretty well, judging from the ambition of their newest catalog. Huge variety of novel and even newly tooled product. Even the unhappy boys at the "forums of dissatisfied former Lionel fans" seem to be grudgingly admitting they will buy some stuff . At 25 years after the initiation of the train wars, it's clear who ultimately won. MTH had a nice run, but they shot themselves in the foot too many times with product disasters like PS1 and DCS's initial teething problems. No doubt Lionel's brand name advantage and customer loyalty made a big difference. Good that MTH stimulated competition, but the future is bleak for young adults with DCS as their only belief system.

[rogruth]

Yeah, Dave. And YOU made it. From what Lionel pieces?
Looks great!

[healey36]

It would be interesting to be able to see what Lionel would have looked like without MTH ever entering the market. My memory of the Kughn era was a company cranking out $1200.00 toys for a demographic just beginning to contract, surely not a sustainable model for the long haul. While MTH made some expensive toys too, they made some that were much more reasonable and actually looked relatively decent. I can't recall any low-end Lionel gear in the Kughn era that wasn't just a recast/knockoff of one of the Cowen era postwar pieces, but maybe my memory fails me.

Lionel had the branding, which was a huge advantage. I always thought "Mike's Train House" was a dumb name, but that's just me. Regardless of whether it's Lionel, Atlas, MTH, or whoever, it will all be crap when those printed circuit boards start delaminating.

Healey

[rogruth]

If Lionel continues to produce systems that will operate everything they made they will be ahead.
I do read on some other forums that as long as Lionel has such poor quality control according to some posters they will not buy any Lionel.
One of the funniest things, to me about this, is I have read criticism of Lionel about a color shade made by some and read a few posts later
what a great job Menards is doing. Personally I like the Menards stuff because I can afford it and little things don't bother me.

[healey36]

I would recommend pulling the battery and replacing it with the BCR before trying to fire it up. You can try giving it a temp charge first which is the recommended procedure when replacing the battery with a new one. If you go this route, use a separate transformer and test track, no connections to anything else that might generate a spurious signal to the processor. This involves allowing the old battery to charge up for about 15 minutes.

You should NOT put the loco on anything except a test track (aka nothing else connected to the transformer) and follow the power up procedure outlined in the PS-1 manual. This means 10 volts for 2.2 seconds (enter and clear RESET, two bell clanks?), then switch to neutral (as in F-N-R) and power up to 2/3 power (~12 volts) and let it sit for 15 minutes. Power down and then swap the battery for the BCR.

Follow the BCR manual for proper startup procedures.

The trick for PS-1 is, in general, to avoid any voltage swings or DC (+ or -) while in reset mode unless you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. A Z-4000 is about the only sane way to fiddle with the feature set on a PS-1 loco.

Anyway, thanks for that, Chuck. I'm going to get that and the 9E down off the shelf sometime in the next couple weeks and get them sorted.

[Neil]

"I do read on some other forums that as long as Lionel has such poor quality control according to some posters they will not buy any Lionel."

There have been some high profile screwups, but relatively speaking perhaps <1% of products. That said, the same unhappy little boys who are defaming Lionel are praising MTH to the skies. Yet if you look at the production reality, Lionel is still doing new tooling, MTH pretty much not at all. MTH is reusing their library of tooling rather than doing anything new or innovative. I find Lionel's catalogs fairly entertaining and MTH catalogs pretty much without imagination or play value, eye candy appeal. Everyone's mileage differs.

At one point MTH was selling about as much in dollar value as Lionel (back in the late 1990s). Now MTH has contracted in size and sales significantly and Lionel has maintained or increased theirs apparently.

What is most important to the future of the hobby is that Lionel's main business is still set sales, and they have innovated and kept their prices relatively affordable. LC and LC+ are much more reliable and inexpensive systems than DCS. MTH sets are high quality (if screwed up by not including any kind of controller) but substantially more expensive. You don't need DCS and PS3 for a Christmas tree layout, which is what most sets are sold for.

I wouldn't be surprised if Lionel LionChief sales in sets and additional purchases are 20-100 times that for MTH sets. Doesn't matter if it's explained by brand recognition, pricing or technology but that's the reality as far as I can tell.

In the long run, DCS is doomed by these factors. And justly so, given its unpredictable, kludgy nature. May take 10 or 20 years, but there is no long term future for that system. The New Jersey High Railers are going to be relying on the secondary market for their equipment replacement and maintenance within the next 10 years I'd guess. No one will be making PS3 boards or TIUs if and when MTH closes up shop for good. Mike Wolf turns about 59 this year I gather. I think his appetite for working in this declining industry is likely much less due to that which naturally occurs with age. No inside information, just a guess. DCS is not a particularly robust system in my view, in any case. No one is going to step in to provide replacement parts if MTH goes away in 5-10 years. Maybe 15-20 years at the outside. Many of us won't live to see this, but I think that's what's in the cards.

Mike Wolf will either sell the company, or wind down the business in the next few years, and then it will be like what happened after JL Cowen and AC Gilbert retired. The next generation of MTH staffing or owner likely will not have the phenomenal drive and energy Mike Wolf possessed, by which to salvage much of anything in a static or diminished market. To the contrary, Lionel probably has a few generations to go before toy trains become a rarity/irrelevance. All things pass.

[Neil]

"It would be interesting to be able to see what Lionel would have looked like without MTH ever entering the market. My memory of the Kughn era was a company cranking out $1200.00 toys for a demographic just beginning to contract, surely not a sustainable model for the long haul. While MTH made some expensive toys too, they made some that were much more reasonable and actually looked relatively decent. I can't recall any low-end Lionel gear in the Kughn era that wasn't just a recast/knockoff of one of the Cowen era postwar pieces, but maybe my memory fails me."

That seems a fair assessment. The key issues were that when Kughn and Young introduced TMCC, it was pretty much reliable and a game changer. MTH waited too long to come up with PS2 and DCS, and when they did it was unreliable, poorly implemented and almost dead on arrival. Finally, more recently, Lionel introduced LC and LC+. Experienced hobbyists, especially MTH fans, were contemptuous. However, it allowed Lionel to become the low cost provider of command equipped sets and locos. One now finds that MTH is less expensive, if you are looking at Premier vs. Legacy stuff, but they have no low end starter sets or locos you can buy for less than $200, or even $300. Lionel has the Thomas franchise and many other tie-ins that long-time hobbyists who favor MTH deride. But one has contempt for public taste and preferences at one's peril, as MTH has found out.

[rogruth]

I agree that MTH seems to re-run the same things over with different names or colors and also offer some odd stuff. I am a big PRR fan but
I don't have room on my shelves for S1s, S2s, Q1s, Q2s, or any other large loco that will not run on my O-42 curved layout. I could go on but
I am sure you get the idea.
I also agree that somebody at Lionel must know what to do with train sets because the only Lionel some hobby shops sell are sets and they
seem to sell most that they get in rather quickly. The Lionel "outfits" are where most of us got into trains.

[ScaleCraft]

Yeah, Dave. And YOU made it. From what Lionel pieces?
Looks great!

675 boiler (after I researched and found "The Standard Railroad" used the same boiler on the K-4 and the L-1) with the as-delivered PRR high headlight smokebox front. Found one with broken class lights, what I wanted, filed and filled, added new class lights in the smokebox aft of front. 671 or 681 chassis, consisting of frame, drivers, motor, gears, siderods and e-unit, machined to fit the machined access in the bottom of the 675.

Stretch on some of the valve gear bits, but it works. I think we scratched the pilot (cowcatcher), but lead and trail trucks again, straight Lionel.

[Mitch]

Roger, PS1 was QSI electronics. It's the only MTH engine that will crash with a battery failure. They used to sell a chip that you could use after a new battery was installed to reset the electronics, but isn't available any more 'less us can find someone who has it. I don't remember it as being a one time only fix. The PS2s don't really have battery problems, unless and old battery would leak and corrode. If you have a Z transformer, you can access some of the features without having DCS. But the MTH engines run fine in conventional. The PS3s don't use batteries, and most are dual electronic control. You can use DCS or DCC. You'll get up to 25 of the engine's features with DCC, but DCS will give you all of them. DCC will be around for a while. But the big flag today is wireless control using your smart phone or I-pad. If you're cyber stupid like me, you'll avoid that.

[rogruth]

Mitch,
I had a lot of help setting up TMCC on my layout and then found I didn't like it much so I stayed with conventional'
I use a Z-4000. If I ever get an MTH loco I feel sure I will run it conventionally. I have three Lionel TMCC locos that
I run conventionally.

[healey36]

Yeah, Dave. And YOU made it. From what Lionel pieces?
Looks great!

675 boiler (after I researched and found "The Standard Railroad" used the same boiler on the K-4 and the L-1) with the as-delivered PRR high headlight smokebox front. Found one with broken class lights, what I wanted, filed and filled, added new class lights in the smokebox aft of front. 671 or 681 chassis, consisting of frame, drivers, motor, gears, siderods and e-unit, machined to fit the machined access in the bottom of the 675.

Stretch on some of the valve gear bits, but it works. I think we scratched the pilot (cowcatcher), but lead and trail trucks again, straight Lionel.

Nicely done. The results remind me of the work of prewar modelers who rebuilt tinplate Lionel gear into representations of something more realistic and prototypical.