Nothing definitive aside from Charlie Ro's website indicating an ETA of 3/10/2015 to their store, which coincides with the Lionel shipping schedule indicating a Feb 2015 shipment. Unfortunately, the Lionel website shipping schedule is useless all too often.
Most importantly for me... I had pre-ordered the MKT E8's to go along with the 18" MKT Texax Special aluminum 6-car set. Now that Lionel has cancelled those aluminum cars, I'll very likely cancel my pre-order for the MKT E8 locomotive set.
If Lionel can cancel delivery of the passenger cars, then I have absolutely no issue canceling my pre-order for the matching engines. It's just unfortunate that the dealers get caught in the middle.
David