The Christmas Story Sets are here!

Just in time for Christmas, we have received Lionel's O Gauge Christmas Story train set. I just finshed adding them to our system, and they will show up on the website later today.

This is another addition to Lionel's recent run of 'themed' starter sets, along the same lines as the Polar Express and Harry Potter train sets. The Christmas Story set uses the standard 0-8-0 steam engine with smoke and whistle, and has four cars decorated for various scenes from the famed 1983 film. It also includes the standard CW80 transformer and loop of FasTrack.

It is definitely an eye-catcher and will gain attention circling around under tree. Even better, if any of your Christmas guests see the train and wonder what 'A Christmas Story' is, you can flip over to TBS while asking them what rock they've been living under for the last 15 years.

We have them for $264.99 with free shipping on our site. Hurry, quantities are limited and we only have a few left after filling preorders.

Also, the Lone Ranger Wild West set and the Amtrak HHP-8 sets are also now available. We have the Lone Ranger set for $354.99 and the Amtrak set for $424.99.

The Lone Ranger set has Trainsounds (I am curious how Lionel fit the Trainsounds speaker and circuit boards into that small Old West-style tender) and a lot of action. The Amtrak set has Trainmaster Command control, but does not have Trainsounds (the engine has a horn). The Amtrak set is one of the most up-to-date sets produced by Lionel and is a great choice for a fan of contemporary railroading.

Like the Christmas Story set, quantities of these top-of-the-line sets are limited.

Over 800 Items on Sale Now!

We have just added over 800 items on sale at Trainz now to help you stretch your train budget dollars. You can either click on the sale banner on the homepage, or just enter the word "sale" into the search box. That will them sort out all our sale items by manufacturer, category, sub-category, and price. We hope you enjoy the hunt and find some great bargains. This will be a regular feature of Trainz.

New Features of the Trainz website

We have been working on our new website and we launched it last week. It is loaded with new features and I want to provide you with an overview of what we have done:

New Search Functionality - Whenever you search for anything, our new search results pages serve you up not only what matched your search, but items that are close matches, and it displays them in the most relevant order. Also the search results are sorted by Manufacturer, by Era & Scale (O-Postwar) , then by sub-category (Freight Cars) within each scale, and by price range. All of these can be used in combination with each other to filter out exactly the results you may wish to see. You can also sort results in these filters by popularity, price, an how recently we added them.

Most Popular & Recently Added - On the home page we now have the top ten most popular, and most recently added items by era/scale. Since we usually add over 200 items/day this will provide you with a very easy way to see what we have added in your favorite scale and also to see which items has been viewed the most.

Faster Checkout & Personalized Account Access - Now you elect to create an account for yourself and log in quickly with your user name and password. Here you also have access to view order status, shipping tracking information and past orders.

Free Informative Articles - Click on the newsboy icon and let us know what scales you are interested in the future we will only notify you of interesting information in those scales. We are still building out this process. You will also get access to 19 different articles that we have written about toy trains, from collecting MPC Era reefers to our guide to using Fastrack and building scenery.

Shipping Pricing - We have also implemented a new method of calculating your shipping charges based on the total weight and dimensions of your order. Once you look up the price of any item by entering your location with zip code, then every item will be priced when you look them up. As you add more items, shipping charges will be recalculated based on all your items. We believe you will find this much better matched to your combined orders than our previous method. International, Alaska, Hawaii, next day and second day shipping are all now automatically calculated for you - you no longer need to email us for shipping costs.

Extended Hours Phone Sales Support - We have also concurrently implemented a network of train knowledgeable sales people to help you find what you need and to provide you with train expertise. Look for the blue "I'm Available" icon to be lit up on the homepage, which tells you we have at least one agent logged in.

We have a quite a bit more on the way including recommendations and product reviews. Stay tuned.

What do you think of it so far?

Nice Lionel Display at Wal-Mart

Well Lionel has pulled off a nice marketing deal with Wal-Mart. Here is what I saw in the Findlay, OH Wal-Mart yesterday right in the front of the store in the jewelery department. Milinda noticed it as soon as we walked in the door. They are pushing the battery powered sets hard, but they did have a couple basic O Gauge sets for $175. They also had Lionel Tee-Shirts, backpacks, the new DVD movie and some other stuff. Let's hope this will help get the next generation of Lionel enthusiasts stoked!

1200+ G Scale Collection Just In!

If you are a G Scale Collector or Operator, you will love this! We just picked up an enormous collection with a huge emphasis on USA Trains reefers. There must be over 90% of every single reefer that USA Trains has ever made in this collection! We will be listing these both on our website and eBay over the next couple weeks. They are now loaded up in our wish-list database, so you can go to our wish-list page and enter the model numbers (without the preceding R in the model number), or just enter a keyword (like Sun Maid) and then add it it to your wish list. As soon as we list them, you will get an email with a link to them. You can also now easily keep up with us using the handy new inventory windows on our homepage, just click G Scale to see the most popular items and the most recently added 10 items. Then by clicking on the "See All G Scale Trains" link you will see all of our G Scale Inventory sorted by the ones we have most recently added, or however else you might want to sort or search for them as well. Enjoy!

Lionel Retail Store Opens in NYC for the Holidays

(Thanks Skip for the photo)


The new store is located at Located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza (on 50th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues). It opened November 12th and will be open through January 5th. Here is a link to several great pictures and comments hosted on the OGR forum.

Lionel's official press realease is on PRNewswire.

Great Price on Lionel's Area 51 Train Set

Just in time for Christmas, we are offering a special price on Lionel's Area 51 Train Set! We have lowered the price from $189.99 to $154.99 with free shipping. (The manufacturer's suggested retail is $229.99.)

If you are new to model trains or know of someone shopping around for a train set, the Area 51 set is fun, different, and full of neat features. The engine is the reliable 0-8-0 design and the cars all provide additional excitement to the set. The tank car has a liquid load, and the goo inside the car swirls around as it goes around the track. If you are looking for something other than a basic freight or passenger train, this could be the set for you. It even includes six alien figures.

To read more about the set, just click here. To see the full list of Lionel starter sets available at Trainz, click here.