It is not necessary to adopt a sour-grapes attitude to the present LGB regime and their openly-admitted striving to re-establish themselves and re-capture their place in the truly enormous European market, but it's also important to know that a huge number of the 'Euro's' model only US-outline LGB stock. I'm just one of about thirty or forty that I know personally - ALL model nothing but the older or more modern US locos and cars. One guy I know has over 500 cars and 100 locos on his 2500ft trackage - ALL LGB. I only now model the WP&YR as far as LGB is concerned, but I bought all I could ever want or handle years ago.
It's also important to know that here in UK I have not detected more than the slightest hint of shortages of stock either, nor, if you look at the pages of adverts in the American GR, does there seem to have been any shortage of stock stateside - I'm not going to name names, but full-page spread after full-page spread of tiny printed lists of LGB stock does not shout 'shortage' to me. True, my local LGB dealer has expanded his stock interest into other makes, sure, but his shelves have never been less than full of LGB stuff.
It may well be that I've been looking in the wrong places, and for sure there has been a noticeable shortage of LGB track in some quarters. Having said that, an enthusiastic newbie recently bought himself over $6000-worth of LGB track from one dealer, who told him that far from buying him out, he actually could do it ten times over if he had wanted to.
An awful lot has been written over the last year or so - rumour and counter-rumour, hints and suggestions, innuendo and downright cr&p. My suggestion is that someday a book needs to be written about this episode/glitch in the long life of EPL. As for the 'facts', well, there are rumours and downright lies, and the truth, as ever, is somewhere in between./DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/whistling.gif
My $0.02
tac