Quote from: Karhedron on June 16, 2014, 03:12:51 PM

The only manufactuer I know of test their wares are Union Mills but they are a concern on a different scale.

I think DJM has said this is part of his vision, but I don't know how big his production runs are.

Many consumer items do get run in before sent to you.  Car engines are pre run in, computers are mostly run in.

I wonder if you could do a burn in session with rolling roads?    you would get rid of the immediate fails , the gain in reputation by doing this would have an associated cost benefit over time but probably not worth doing unless running in lowered the cost associated with failed units which will be in Dapols bottom line cost calculations.

I wish these let you make several choices rather than just one, even if only one vote in each section, ie

happy with Farish locos
unhappy with Dapol locos
happy with Farish stock
happy with Dapol stock

this would surely give a more accurate idea of what each does well or badly, rather than deciding whish of the catagories is to receive your one vote.

just a thought

alan

Trying to achieve reliability through testing or quality control is just going to push up costs without solving the problem. If you want reliability it has to be designed in: Germany and Japan knew that fifty years ago.  Look at most current Dapol and Farish production: too many soldered joints, too many parts that have to be accurately hand-aligned during the assembly process. Compare to the Atlas chassis from 30 years ago under my NBL Type 2 - a child of five could put one of those together without trouble.  If you give a workforce, any workforce, a product that is easier to assemble wrong than right, you are going to get a high failure rate no matter how much time you spend on training people.

I suspect manufacturers feel under a lot of pressure to keep up a constant stream of new product releases: the move towards small batch production means they have to keep up a constant flow of new releases or end up with a big hole in their product pipeline and no money coming in. It also makes it harder to justify spending money on good quality tooling. And the demand for increased accuracy means they can no longer get away with using the same basic mechanism for half a dozen different locos like in the old Poole Farish days. So each loco chassis is a new design, and no-one has time (or the budget) to sit down and think ' right, how can we build reliability into this product at the design stage?' And if you are only making a couple of thousand of a particular model and it turns out a duffer, it isn't going to bring the company down anyway.

The problem is that none of the solutions are really acceptable.  Fewer new releases and larger batches?  Less detail, more moulded-on fittings traded for stronger mechanisms? Dimensional accuracy compromised to use existing proven chassis? No, we don't want any of these things.  I wouldn't fancy being an N gauge loco manufacturer.

I bought a Class 08 shunter new. Had to dismantle it and adjust the pick-ups before it would work properly. Why should I have to do that? If I bought a brand new car, any make for that matter, would it be acceptable for me to have to jack it up and adjust the wheels in my garage because they hadn't been put on properly, or retune the engine? Of course not.

I cannot remember who is pushing the point on here, but I agree with the poster who says send your complaints to FarBach EVEN AFTER EXPIRY OF 1 YEAR WARRANTY and explain that product is not fit for purpose and you have the law behind you in expecting the fault to be corrected at no cost to you.

All of that said, I have a lovely BachFar class 24 and 25, both beautiful runners. I guess it's the inconsistency that peevs me and ultimately outs me off buying as many new models as I otherwise would. Buying a new BachFar is a bit like sticking your hand in the Quality Street tin at Christmas time - you never quite know what you are going to get!

Personally, I'm content with the compromise of the Poole built farish diesels and locos. No they are not as detailed as the new stuff, but I sure as hell know how to fix em' and can get common parts for them and interchange bits between chassis. Very versatile from an engineering perspective.

With the new models, I feel it's just like most things in today's society: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, throw it in the bin.

And yes, the old stuff can be made to run well if you have the confidence to strip them down (ok, not as good as the new stuff, but not terrible). Oh, that and I can get three Poole locos for one new one!

I'm not saying Poole production was better in terms of quality control (I hear it wasn't), just that the durability of the design was much better in that I can swap out parts and keep the fleet running due to their common components. If I was a rivet counter, on the other hand, I'd probably be pulling my hair out by now!

My message to Bachmann: get your quality control in order.

EDITED TO REMOVE COMMENT RE: AVAILABILITY OF BACHMANN SPARES.

Dan

Quote from: DesertHound on June 17, 2014, 12:01:38 PM
My message to Bachmann: get your quality control in order and let people buy parts so they can fix their own locos if they want. Why is it that's grafar used to sell chassis only and spare parts, but I do not see any of this with BachFar.

I think this is unfair on Bachmann. Call their service department, and you can generally buy spares from their helpful individuals at reasonable prices. That on top of those that BR Lines and Peters Spares offer.

Best,
Alan

I too have bought spare complete bogies and other bits directly from bachmann and they have been most helpful

Ah, ok Alan, maybe I'm being a bit harsh and to be fair, I'm not an authority on BachFar models (or any other for that matter) so perhaps I should edit the post above.

But am I correct in saying that you just cannot repair the newer locos like the old ones? PCB boards to contend with, differing wheel sets and gears for each loco, motors which may, or may not be interchangeable (I'm not sure on that one).

I know it's the march of technology. Mechanics bemoan these days that cars are computers and they cannot fix them. I called the AA once, the guy came and plugged a laptop into my car!

I guess there are benefits to the march of technology and probably on balance it's what people want. It's the niches (such as me who like to fiddle around with the locos) who perhaps get left behind.

Right, going to edit the above to redress the balance a little.

Dan

Right guys

I think I was setting myself up for a grilling there and on reflection of your comments (those of you that have dealt directly with Bachmann) I have edited my post. On reflection for me to say "you cannot get spare parts" was perhaps factually incorrect. Sorry for that Bachmann.

Still, I stand by my points of quality control issues (why should one have to put up with adjusting something that should run out of the box) and also the interchangeability of spare parts (this last point isn't really a criticism, more a preference, since some prefer accuracy over interchangeability of spares - probably most actually, and I know businesses have to cater to the market).

Can I take my tin hat off now 

The impression I get from this forum is that Farish are rather better than Dapol for reliability and service, and I wonder if Dapol, a fairly small manufacturer without a big American company behind them, are just trying to do too much, too quickly.  Constant stream of new products in three different scales, a new coupling system, working signals - slow down guys, take a bit more time to make sure things work properly and your customers will be a lot happier.

The march of technology is unstoppable, has been since the first caveman
made a clay pot. This should give better products with advanced features
at lower prices, eg tv, laptops , phones etc. Perhaps the N gauge manufacturers
are not getting the design and quality control (if any) right. Since UK N gauge
manufacturers (Except UM) depend on far eastern factories which probably
also churn out snow globes and musical birthday card chips the present situation
will probably continue especially with the constant stream of new models which are in the pipeline for long periods.

Quote from: belstone on June 17, 2014, 12:48:34 PM
The impression I get from this forum is that Farish are rather better than Dapol for reliability and service.

That is the problem with trying to gauge oppinion from a forum like this. The figures are self-selecting and a small number of problems can appear much larger than they are because the silent majority often do not post about the good locos they have bought.

As I mentioned earlier, Hattons report that the return rate for Dapol and Farish locos are pretty much identical at around 5% each. This suggests that neither is particularly better than the other.

On a personal note, I have only bought one faulty Dapol loco out of over a dozen (motor overheated). It was repaired by Dapol (through DDC Lines) in 2 weeks at no cost to me (not even postage). I certainly would not fault their service department.

Quote from: Agrippa on June 17, 2014, 01:04:07 PM
The march of technology is unstoppable, has been since the first caveman
made a clay pot. This should give better products with advanced features
at lower prices, eg tv, laptops , phones etc. Perhaps the N gauge manufacturers
are not getting the design and quality control (if any) right. Since UK N gauge
manufacturers (Except UM) depend on far eastern factories which probably
also churn out snow globes and musical birthday card chips the present situation
will probably continue especially with the constant stream of new models which are in the pipeline for long periods.

Agree with you there Agrippa with regards to the march of technology. It has, without doubt, improved the quality of our lives immensely since the caveman and if you name nearly any product today, it is superior than say, fifty years ago (I know someone is now going to come up with a long list of products which aren't  ) Also, from a price perspective, certainly in the consumer product area and "mass market" goods, it has been beneficial.

However, I would comment that this has come at the cost of durability, especially in the case of electronic goods. It used to be the case that you had things repaired. It now seems the case that you just throw it away and buy a new one - they're cheaper to produce that way. I'm not saying it's like this with model trains yet, but I feel it is going in that direction as the gubbins become more complicated and "loco specific".

Perhaps I'm drifting slightly off-topic with my points here. After all, the thread is about how bad (or good to be fair) Bachmann or Dapol are. My points are more related to my interests in servicing locos and pulling them to pieces and putting them back together again. I'm not singling out Bachmann here - it's the same across all industries, as we've just established. Kids used to play with Meccano and Lego, today it's Playstations and iPads (guilty on the iPad front myself). There doesn't seem to be an interest in inquisitive pursuits (and yes, I did grow up in the computer age myself).

So, from that perspective, Bachmann are just moving with the times like everybody else in that most products aren't designed for you to fix them yourself anymore. You might well be able to fix them, but the knowledge to do so is becoming more and more specialised. On balance, the detailing of the bodies is out of this world in comparison to the Poole built detailing so thumbs up to Bachmann there.

Perhaps if I was in charge of Bachmann I wouldn't do things any differently to them. They have positively surprised me in many ways with what they have done with Graham Farish, and like others said, we sometimes point out the negative more than the positive (I can be guilty of that just as much as the next man). My particular interest in servicing the locos is not the interest of most collectors / modellers so really, why should Bachmann cater to my specific needs when there's a larger market out there? So for that I'm not having a dig at them, I'm just commenting on my views of products today.

Lastly, and trying to bring the thread back onto topic, if there were no quality control issues then there wouldn't be so much of a need to try and fix them yourself.

"Since UK N gauge
manufacturers (Except UM) depend on far eastern factories which probably
also churn out snow globes and musical birthday card chips ... "

Now that really made me laugh! I'd love to see inside a Grafar factory in China!

Dan

Quote from: DesertHound on June 17, 2014, 01:27:47 PM
I'd love to see inside a Grafar factory in China!

Some snaps of the Kader (Bachmann factory) here:

http://www.railexclusive.com/index.php?category=23

Cheers,
Alan

Thanks Alan

Good to see those pics. Bringing it round to the QC issue, someone else said the difficulty lies in the human element when you have people assembling items (or something along those lines). Seems from the pictures that the manufacturing process (or should we say assembly process) is still largely human - I can see in one of the pictures the lady has tools, such as pliers by her side, another is screwing something down.

I guess in that context QC is going to be difficult. Or should I say, it's not the QC that is the difficulty, but the consistency in craftsmanship. QC is the reaction to, not the root cause of quality issues.

The article even mentions the human element ...

"However, these lines are not like those found in automated factories that can turn out thousands of items an hour. Model railway products have to be carefully hand-assembled, passing through various stages needed to build up each item."

Then again, think of the tooling costs to make automated production lines for such relatively small production batches. It's simply not worth it - labour is so much cheaper.

So, with that in mind, how do you tackle these QC issues? (Genuine question).

Dan

Very interesting, Alan - thanks for posting that.

"When assembled, each loco is quality inspected and given a trial run in each direction on the test track benches. Only after passing rigorous inspection can the model move to the packing area"