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Trainz News
It’s the Holiday Season, and Trainz is ready to help you expand your railroad
November 1st marks the traditional beginning to the model train Christmas season. Here at Trainz, we’re ready with a large variety of pieces already in stock and many more arriving every day. Just this week the Lionel 24226 Santa’s Toy Shop arrived, and a large stock of MTH buildings arrived just last week. We’re also fully stocked in all O Scale track lines, along with the usual vast selection of engines and cars. Have fun looking around, and always feel free to ask us if you cannot find something you’re looking for. Postwar Lionel Now Arriving at Trainz.com With the launch of our new, redesigned website, we at Trainz.com are planning to place many more Postwar-Era Lionel Trains on our site. As many of you know, in the past we have auctioned most of these items off on eBay without placing them on our site. Beginning in November we are placing more vintage pieces on the site for an extended duration. Accessories, cars, reconditioned transformers, and lots of other favorites from the 1940s, 50s and 60s can now be found on the Trainz website, along with our normal wide assortment of newer pieces. Be sure to check it out! Trainz is pleased to announce the acquisition of a significant G Scale inventory in mid-November. Truckloads [literally] of LGB, Aristo-Craft, and USA Trains will soon be on the Trainz.com website, and some on eBay as well. Like our Postwar Lionel, we plan to place most of these G Scale items on our website for an extended duration on www.trainz.com. If G Scale is your interest, then prepare to go nuts. And please tell your fellow G Scalers to check us out, too. As those of you who shop on EBay know, the online auction site announced that effective November 1st, 2008, eBay sellers can no longer accept checks and money orders, and that all payments must be made by credit card or through Paypal. We just want to communicate to our customers that this was an eBay decision, and was not one made by Trainz.com. If you disagree with this new policy, please feel free to contact ebay customer service at: http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ShowCUPortal&_trksid=m38 Problems with New Website Resolved
The unveiling of our new Trainz.com web site was for the most part a success (thanks for all of the positive comments we received!), but we did run into some technical problems around the start of November. We heard from several customers that they were having problems viewing photos on our site, and that some photos on our eBay auctions were not showing up as well. We have fixed the problem, but below is an explanation of what happened. Thanks for your patience! Time for MTH 2009 PreOrders Running Out!!
The MTH 2009 Volume 1 Catalog preorder deadline is November 21! We have all the items from this volume posted on our preorder website at http://store.trainzpreorder.com. We invite you to browse our preorder website and enjoy special preorder pricing and cash in on the savings with FREE Shipping! Please note—we will continue to take orders for MTH 2009 PreOrders after November 21st, but following that date we cannot confirm availability. This month’s Special: Atlas Ready to Run O Scale Train Sets
Just in time for Christmas, Trainz is running a fantastic sale on Atlas O Gauge Ready to Run Train Sets. These sets, new for 2008, include everything needed to get started--track, transformer, engine and cars. The locomotives have operating whistles and smoke units, ad the transformer included with the set is first-rate. Atlas O Trains are 100% Lionel-compatible.
To view the complete line of Atlas sets on the Trainz.com web site, just click the Atlas button under the 'Search by Era' button in the upper right of the Trainz homepage. The Standard Catalog of Lionel Trains 1970-2000 Now Available
We are pleased to announce that we have received in stock the Standard Catalog of Lionel Trains, 1970-2000. The first comprehensive guide on MPC and early Modern-Era trains produced since 1991, this indispensible volume thoroughly covers 30 years of Lionel production with values, descriptions, listings of variations, and over 2,000 crisp photos—many contributed by Trainz.com. |
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Question: I’m trying to assemble a Lionel Mickey Mouse Express set from the 1970s, and I’m having a hard time finding the 9667 Snow White car. I have heard it is almost impossible to find. I ran into the same problem while putting together my Spirit of ’76 set—it took me forever to find the Virginia car. Why does this always seem to happen with sets like this?? Answer: We get questions like this one all of the time from frustrated collectors—there always seems to be one car from a set or series that is much harder to find than the others. The theories given over the years range from the casual (‘You’re not looking hard enough’) to the conspiritorial (‘Lionel does it on purpose to drive up demand’). Actually, the truth actually lies somewhere in between. Sometimes, it’s a case of production miscalculation. An example of this is the Series One 6464 boxcars from 1993 (number 19247). When Lionel first announced it was reissuing the 6464s, it was uncertain of demand and thus was conservative in the number of sets made. When the cars were released, demand was much higher than anticipated and the cars disappeared from store shelves rapidly. When the 2nd set of 6464s came out in 1994 (set number 19257), Lionel increased production and made enough cars to satisfy demand. It is for this reason that 6464 Series 2 through 10 are worth about the same, but series One is worth much, much more. Another reason is set breakups. Dealers will take some Lionel sets and break up the components to sell individually. This often happens with expensive, limited-edition sets. Many times, one car or the locomotive will be in much higher demand than the rest of the set, and if a collector goes to reassemble the set years later, he’ll oftentimes find that one piece is a lot scarcer than the others. An example of this phenomenon is the 9432 and 9433 Joshua Lionel Cowen boxcars of 1980. Both cars were part of Limited Edition sets, and were the last cars in a special series commemorating Lionel’s founder. As a result, many of these cars were sold separate to collectors who didn’t want the entire set but wanted to finish their series. This practice caused Lionel a lot of friction with collectors, and they stopped putting ‘series’ cars in sets about 10 years ago. Question: I use Fastrack on my layout, and the other day I purchased a Postwar-Era block signal that included a 153C contactor. I took it home and found that the contactor does not work with Fastrack, and that the 12029 Fastrack Activator section will not properly operate the signal. Apparently my only choice is to purchase a 14111 Infrared Contactor. Is there an alternative? Answer: Actually there is, and this fix works for Operating Giraffe cars, Operating Cattle Cars, and Operating Brakemen cars as well. The trick is to purchase two Lionel 12040 Fastrack Adapter Sections, and a couple sections of regular Lionel 65501 O Scale Straight Track Sections. All of these accessories and contactors will work with regular Lionel O track but not Fastrack. So just take a short stretch of Fastrack, and replace it with the two adapters and the straight track sections, and connect the accessory to the O Sections. This solution costs about ½ the price of a 14111 contactor. |
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