"Delayed" Lionel Catalog = Delay in Production...Right?

Only Lionel knows.  No one here can answer your question with any certainty.

It depends on what is made.

Sometimes items are already built and being shipped in containers as the catalogs are being printed.

Andrew

Perfectly phrased.

T4TT- People will speculate here, and that is all it will be.  There may only be 2 guys on this board who would know (we know who they are) and I doubt they know either.  

I hope we don't see a delay in engines.  I for one am tired of waiting on preorder rolling stock from a yr ago.... 

Marty is absolutely correct.  Nobody on this forum can answer your questions with any degree of accuracy or certainty.

I suppose I was hoping that Mike or Jon would chime in.  I know Mike is making this catalog his personal mission, and therefore I am confident it will be stellar.

It would be cool if they would do something that Atlas does....state which quarter the product will ship.  That would help many of us that budget for engine purchases. Of course the Atlas O timelines are generally useless because they seem to be perpetually delayed.  I would obviously like for Lionel do provide this information more accurately to their consumers.

"First off there, there are already delays in Lionel's ability to deliver product to the market in a timely manner.  But with the new build to order approach, isn't logical to assume that none of the Legacy engines that will be advertised in the in the 2014 catalog are not yet in production?"

There's a big difference between the first two sentences here. The first sentence is Lionel product in general, but in the second it is clarified to the Legacy engines.

Truth is, it depends on what kind of product you are looking for. Lionel has been very very good on delivering product from the Ready-To-Run catalogs. Almost everything I have sought has been on time and in some cases, actually ahead of schedule. I think a couple items got pushed back a month, but that's been the worst of it. And sometimes the Lionel schedule will say it is a partial shipment, but I've still had no trouble or lengthy waits.

So Lionel has NOT had problems delivering everything. I have no doubts again, that anything I am looking for from the R-T-R catalog will be available as timely as they have been over the past 5-6 years.

Yes, I should have been more specific, the delays I have experienced have been with scale items, for example the UP E7 and the SP tractor trailers.  Those are just two examples of scale items I am/had been waiting to pick up.  

I have not purchased any products from the RTR catalog.  I have only purchased from the Signature catalog.

I did not mean to imply that Lionel has had problems delivering "everything".

Thats questionable.

No it's not...Somebody knows...Whether they say or not is another story.

Its an "ancient chinese secret".

My husband some hot shot...  I loved that commercial.

You obviously passed on the Gingerbread Gateman originally intended for Christmas 2012 (not sure if the catalog he was in was RTR or Christmas, but he certainly is not a Signature item).  I believe he just recently shipped after missing Christmas 2013 as well.

Exceptions to the exceptions.

-Dave