A Rant

[rrinker]

To be fair to Walthers, when I ordered repalcement gears from Life Like prior to the buyout, they shipped me 4 geared axles WITH the wheels. I didn't need new wheels. And there were/are people gloating on hobby message boards about how they got free nickle silve wheels to upgrade their Athearn locos. SO there were at least a few rather unscrupulous people using the known issue of cracked gears to get free upgrades to other products. I rememebr one saying how many dozen sets of wheels they got but they only owned 4 P2K locos. This kind of thing ruins it for the rest of us who have a legitimate need. But Walthers could have solved that by simply giving out JUST the gears - pretty much worthless unless you have a cracked one, there's no upgrade value there. And Athearn fixes the ones THEY made that have cracked gears, so there really is no incentive to cheat and get 10 locos worth of axle gears when you only have 4 broken locos.
I contrast the policy of disdain by Walthers for train shows and internet purchases with the attitude of Stewart (before the Bowser buyout). I purchased an AB set of F7's on ebay, seller claimed new in box. When I got them, they indeed were new - the bags around the chells were still sealed. However, there was a broken off step on the B unit shell, and it WASN'T in the sealed bag, so it didn't break off in shipping. I contacted Stewart expecting to pay for a repalcement shell, explainign exactly what I found when I opened the package. Indeed, the beginning of the email response I got mentioned the price of the repalcement shell, but then in the second paragraph they said to just supply my address, they would ship out a free replacement. Granted it's unlikely this dmaage could have occurred anywhere but between prduction and packing, but I bought this from an unknown individual on eBay, not a dealer or hobby store, I was not the original owner, and I had no real proof of purchase. Yet the folks at Stewart took care of it. A year or so later I ran into Steve Stewart at Timonium and thned him personally for the fine products and fine customer service. I've not had any issues with any of the other Stewart locos I've purchased so I have no idea if it's still the same or not. The good guys, I put mention of them on my web site, because generally all we hear about are the bad experiences.

--Randy