Remember the rules:
1.) When reviewing an item just released, be certain that if anything’s wrong you don’t say ANYTHING positive about the model, lest you be seen as a company shill, or have folks think you didn’t actually spend a lot of time doing what you did, and just threw something together as a PR / Advertising trick. Be certain that you hate everything about it, and wonder why the manufacturer would ever push such a piece of junk on the unsuspecting model railroad community. Be sure also to test the model on all of the readers railroads, in every type of weather, and with every possible combination of grades, train length, and brand of track, lest someone call you out for being less than thorough.
2.) When reviewing an item just released, be certain that if anything’s good or right that you don’t say ANYTHING negative about the model lest you be seen as an overly negative so-and-so, who’s only trying to invent problems to further your own commercial interests. So what if the electronics are horribly flawed, or it’s geared wrong … if it looks nice on your mantel, and can pull itself around a circle of track without catching fire, the manufacturer is to be heartily congratulated and commended, unless you want to be seen as bashing a company that goes to great lengths to open new frontiers to the model railroaders they love so much.
So, is it better to be an unqualified, nepotistic shill who glosses over major problems, or a self-promoting naysayer who invents problems and claims the sky is falling?
Must be fun to be a reviewer.
Know what? I have this awesome locomotive. It looks GREAT. It’s “Scale Discrepancies” are actually a plust for me, as they make it properly scaled for everything else on my railroad which is also improperly scaled at a 1:20.3 ratio, and now that it’s been taken entirely to pieces, studied, fixed, and reassembled from the ground up with about a dozen things fixed, it runs like a swiss watch … except that it’s geared a bit high and therefore has some interesting handling issues. Even having had to pay enough to have the problems corrected as I would have for a second locomotive, I’m thrilled to death with it, and have run it daily since it arrived. So, I’d have to agree with the review … it’s a great locomotive, with some issues. If the nuts and bolts of those issues and how to fix them didn’t actually appear in the review itself, but a seperate link… well, maybe the how-to correct the problem wasn’t really in the scope of a “review” as much as a “technical bulletin” and provided a way for the reviewer to address important information (See #1 above) without upsetting the delicate political balance between the magazine and their sponsor. (See #2 above.)
The guy who fixed my locomotive it is also the guy who wrote the GR review. Whether or not he’s a legend in his own mind, he’s certainly outstanding in his field in mine… and others.
