This must be the season!!!
We (LHS) set a new record this past week for delivering to a waiting customer....3 months shy of TEN YEARS!
Yep, Broadway Limited...the HO folks...announced a brass hybrid version of the Great Northern S-2 steamer back in 2006. The customer order the two engine numbers in May of that year. Just this past week they were both delivered!!!! Needless to say, the order card on file was a tad brown and ragged around the edges, the ink a bit faded. The customer had insisted through the years that we keep the order active.
Our staff was so amazed and ecstatic when the engines arrived that they cued up the Hallelujah Chorus (Messiah) by the Royal Philharmonic on You Tube at the Trains counter in anticipation of the customer's daily visit. It was one heck of a greeting/delivery!
While not O3R, the engines were beautiful to behold. Since he's somewhat a counter-of-rivets and picker-of-nits, our customer had us breathe a sigh of relief....he deemed them 'gorgeous'!! (We're still awaiting an operational report, though!......which, hopefully, will not take another 10 years!!!!)
Not all of our lengthy customer waits have as pleasant an ending. One customer, having waited 4 years for an O3R item, had gotten out of the hobby altogether, the response not worthy of quoting. Another, awaiting a particular HO track item, we found to be deceased when calling with the notification of arrival.....a 3-year lapse.
Such be the fringe foibles of the hobby biz.
KD
