Lionel's uninformative - to civilians - item number system has been an irritant to many for a long time; maybe forever. To those of us who are former catalogue junkies, and Hi-railers since dirt, it has not been a real problem, but to the newbies and those who have a real but more casual "internal data base" the numbers are no help.
Of course, "unlike MTH's system" is the next phrase, and rightly so - until you bring up 30- that can mean RK or RK Scale...still a better system, though.
Lionel's new system, if it is indeed going to be informative, does seem like a very belated change, and no real good to me at this stage.