Rocky Mountaineer posted:While at the MTH booth,......<snip>.................Generally speaking, I walked away with the impression that scheduling Asian factory manufacturing time is no small feat nowadays. Multiple importers have told me near-horror stories that none of us could ever imagine. Finding manufactures is getting more challenging. And when good manufacturers are found, they want more $$$$ each year to manufacture similar or identical product(s). Then each importer ends up adjusting and re-adjusting production priorities multiple times throughout the year, so production schedules are in a constant state of flux. Welcome to toy/model train production in 2016+.
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.......................... I saw TONS of 2015 BTO product at York on Thursday that was priced significantly below the pre-order prices for those items -- and that's something we thought we wouldn't see happening in the BTO era. One of the most notable and aggressive BTO bargains I saw was Lionel's NYC ESE passenger set for $1400!
If that didn't move by Saturday afternoon, then it just proves how over-saturated this market is becoming.
I wonder if Lionel will really feel the price push-back this year from model train enthusiasts. Time will tell. When I was grabbing these iPhone pics, three guys that looked to be in their fifties were commenting to each other that they were so glad they purchased many of their trains years ago when they did... because they didn't want to spend these kinds of prices for the new stuff. And they were looking straight at the Legacy steam locomotives Lionel had on display when they made those comments. I just smiled inside, because you all know those have been my exact sentiments for a couple of years now with Lionel.
The MTH challenges on production are interesting, only because MTH was so vocal about setting up their own factory to theoretically limit such issues years ago. Maybe it did help them to some extent when many other O Gauge manufacturers had their ties with production factories severed involuntarily due to higher level management/corporate decisions on the factory side, but it seems it was certainly not a cure-all.
I'm not sure none of us saw BTO reductions coming 
. Certainly some BTO items disappear if you don't order them, it's probably hit and miss. I think a lot of us discussed at the time how BTO is basically the latest flavor/variant of previous descriptions of "limited", "dealer allocated", etc. from the past. It's not really a new concept. I recall probably 10 or more years ago seeing the warning on a pre-order sheet that "company X is not making a lot of excess trains these days, so make sure you order what you want..". This was driven by the late 90's "in between" years when production jumped from a more manageable number of items in each catalog to the ginormous offerings we have today. Back then, the companies did "guess" a little more I think, as you could probably find most items in surplus at a meet like York with relative certainty.
The conversation you witnessed with the guys in their 50's at the Lionel booth is a bit telling, even if on a small sample space. Supposedly guys in that age range are Lionel's exact (or approaching) target audience. (kids grown, nearly out of college, mortgage paid off, etc.) Granted your observation was of only a small subset of people, and the other side of that coin is the excitement we see here once in a while like when the VL Big Boy was announced. Far more than a few people here went for that (many still happy with it, I think, though I was not a purchaser), even with it's large increment in price point (both MSRP and street).
While not a deep discussion, I have had a similar exchange with my main dealer a few times recently. I think he's asked me twice now if I still buy engines. I am still a relatively frequent customer in terms of pre-orders, but he's right that I have not pr-ordered an engine in a while(mostly rolling stock and accessories, and maybe a smaller diesel here and there). I'm not in Lionel's "sweet spot" target audience in terms of age (early 40's), but I am of a similar state of mind as the discussion you witnessed. In my case, it's a combination of the price increases with a few significant QC issues (now several years ago, but I have a vivid memory for such things) over the years. I find the combination of having enough items combined with the higher prices for "luck of the draw" QC on a few items in the past makes me hesitate. I am more willing to take a QC gamble on smaller orders for rolling stock and/or accessories.
On a bit of a side note, there is a very small subset of themes that if they were to ever offer what I would like I would jump at it, but for whatever reason Lionel is not going down that particular path. My specific example is Lionel and Disney. After all the changing in having or not having a license for the brand, there have been at least 2-3 "series" of new rolling stock offered in the last 10-15 years that have not had any motive power offered to pull them. A nice larger diesel with sharp Disney graphics (characters/company logo, etc) would be a sure thing for me, but I guess it's too much work for them to design a paint scheme to put on pretty much any existing larger model they chose to offer such a thing. The required investment would seem to be small since we are not talking anything prototypical here, and they could use existing tooling.
P.S. Good luck on your Dunham adventure if you pursue it. I know I will never be able to justify the cost of the show quality layouts they produce, but they are very nice. The pricing on the small layouts shown if scaled up to the size I would consider a "dream layout" would easily cost more than a decent sports car, so I am out of my league there. (I think the one you showed photos of was $5K, the Angela Trotta one to the right was somewhere between $9K and $10K.) Glad to hear your health scare is mostly behind you at this point.
-Dave
