Trainz.com Newsletter

In This Issue:

  • Arrival of huge collection
  • Trainz.com Support Page
  • Trainz.com Blog

2 50 Foot Tractor Trailers + 45 Pallets = ONE unbelievable collection! It’s no secret that Trainz.com buys train collections from all over the country and abroad, but this one is extra nice! This collection was acquired from the new Canadian owner of the Trost Hobby Craft Distributor who was based out of Chicago. Trainz purchased the O, G and Marklin inventory from the new owner. The majority of the collection is unboxed MINT or Like New Lionel, K-Line, Aristo-Craft, LGB, and Bachmann. You can find the collection on both our Trainz.com website and in our eBay auctions. You just may find what you’ve been looking for in this group, years of model numbers span from 1990 to the present!

Trainz.com has a brand new way to communicate and a whole new way to get the answer you are looking for, without having to wait. Welcome to the Trainz.com Support Page! It is easily accessible from the Ask a Seller a Question link from our eBay auctions or you can access it by going to support.trainz.com From here you can access a myriad of questions and learn everything you ever wanted to know about Trainz! Try it! We think you’ll like it!

We’re excited to announce a new addition to our website – The Trainz.com Daily Blog. You can find the Blog in the upper right hand corner of our website right below “What’s New”. We’ll be adding posts daily, with the latest happenings at Trainz.com. If you subscribe to our Blog, you’ll receive alerts of new posts on your computers homepage! Just click here to Subscribe to the Trainz.com News Feed. What is a blog? Take a look at Wikipedia’s definition of blog.

The Lionel 2008 Volume 1 Catalog Preorder Program has begun at Trainz.com! The deadline for Lionel orders is March 17th, 2008. As always, we will continue to accept preorders after the deadline, but securing your preorder before that date is the best way to guarantee availability. Items can sell out even before they are released by the manufacturer. Preorder now for the best savings!

Note: We missed a few model numbers since posting the 2008 Lionel catalog to our website. We have just recently added 40 more model numbers to the line-up.

We are still taking orders for the MTH Ready to Run catalog. MTH’s Ready to Run Catalog deadline was March 1st, 2008. As the items are released by the manufacturer they will no longer be available for preorder.

MTH 2008 RTR Railking Sets and Accessories Mini Catalog

MARKLIN 2008 PreOrder Program Coming Soon! We are excited to announce the addition of Marklin Trains, featuring HO and Z scale toy trains, to the Trainz.com PreOrder program! Trainz.com is an authorized Marklin dealer. We expect to have these items posted soon. We’ll make an announcement in our Trainz Blog.

Our preorder program here at Trainz continues to be a success, thanks to all of our loyal customers! As always, we encourage our customers to preorder to benefit from the discount pricing and Free Shipping!

PreOrder Tips:
Sometimes it may seem like a long time before your order arrives, be assured that we will send you an email when the item arrives and is ready to ship, so you’ll always know when we receive your item.
We just want to emphasize a few tips to remember while waiting for your preorders to come in

  1. Check the Lionel or MTH shipping schedule often for release date updates
  2. If your credit card on file changes, contact us as soon as possible
  3. If your address on file changes, contact us as soon as possible
  4. If your phone number changes, contact us as soon as possible
As long as all of your information is up to date and current, your preorder is secure with Trainz.com.

For a limited time we will be offering the following NASCAR products up to 73% off retail prices! Get them now before they're gone!

Auran Trainz Classics PC Simulator Game
The new 2008 3rd Edition of the Trainz Simulator has been released! Trainz Classics 3rd Edition is sure to appeal to both steam and diesel enthusiasts alike. Trainz Classics 3rd Edition will feature the famous U.K. based route of Settle-Carlisle centered around the 1960s in the North of England. Auran follows the successful release of Trainz Classics 1st and 2nd Edition with this highly detailed and prototypically accurate route. Each new release of Trainz Classics is centered around a particular period in railway history, a particular traction type or a prototypical route. Settle-Carlisle will focus on steam and diesel freight and passenger operations around the late 1950s and '60s. This PC game operates on Microsoft Windows XP and 2000.

Evans Designs HobbyCal InkJet Decal Paper
Create Vintage Signs for your buildings! From Evan Designs, HobbyCal paper makes it easy to create and transfer any type of advertising signage for the sides of your buildings. In fact, any image you can print from the internet can be turned into a beautiful image to decorate your structure with. Please see our video that we created to show you how easy it is!

This month, at the station, we celebrated Dave’s Birthday. Wishing you the best Birthday ever Dave!!!

Wondering what happened to the February newsletter? Well you’re not alone, many of you have asked, and we are sorry for the delay. Instead of forgoing February, we went with the old adage “Better late than never!” So we've made this our Feb/March Newsletter!

Trainz.com offers a full line of Train Artwork. Robert West is a popular painter of trains, and we carry a large variety of his artwork on our website. Robert was recently interviewed for a series promoting Black History Month on CNN here in Atlanta, GA. You can read the article and view the video here.

Trainz.com is going to YORK, Pennsylvania!!! That’s right! The crew will be there to talk to old friends and meet new ones too! The York show is for TCA members only, if you’re not a TCA member yet please sign-up we’d love to sponsor you!

eBay Announcement
By: Ina Steiner

To nobody's surprise, eBay announced that they will be expanding their SMI (Safeguarding Member ID) project to all auction-style listings on the site. Previously SMI had been used on listings of $200 or more. EBay Australia made a similar change to its site over 2 weeks ago. Ebay spokesperson Nichola Sharpe also provided us this background:

This is part of our overall commitment to making a material difference to tackling online fraud on eBay.

As eBay continues to grow into a global online marketplace we are a natural target for online fraudsters. We need to continue to stay one step ahead of their increasingly sophisticated attempts to defraud our customers.

This initiative directly improves an existing safety feature we already had in place to prevent online fraudsters from guessing our users email addresses.

 We've found that a high percentage of eBay buyers and sellers have nearly identical email addresses to their eBay User ID. This made it very easy for online fraudsters to guess email addresses and pose as genuine sellers, convincing people into a fraudulent transaction and sending their money to them - what we call at eBay, 'fake Second Chance Offers'.

For over a year now, we had the first phase of this safety feature in place, where we were able to mask the full identities of the buyer's bidding on an eBay transaction but still give the buyers some transparency they requested. This was only effective for auction-style listings of $200 or greater on eBay.com.  
 
As this first phase has proved very successful in decreasing the amount of buyers being targeted by online fraudsters, we are now increasing this safety measure to cover all auction-style listings. Also, we have noticed fraudsters are increasingly targeting auction-listings of lower amounts.

This also provides a benefit to the majority of trustworthy sellers as their buyers are less likely to be targeted by online fraudsters and lured away from the safe confines of the eBay site and the great customer service they will deliver.

On-going consumer education is also key, so we are constantly educating both buyers and sellers about the importance of unique email addresses and have aggressively targeted our eBay users who have more risky ones.

Spam Filters & Junk Mail Folders
Folks, if you haven’t heard back from us via email, please check your Spam and Junk mail folders. More than likely, that is the cause of undelivered emails. If your email program is blocking us, please edit your options by accepting our emails from Trainz.
Weird Emails From Trainz?
No, we are not in Romania, we don’t use Western Union and we most certainly did not send you a second chance offer! If you have been receiving these “spoof” emails, we know how annoying they can be. The best and only defense we have to these types of emails is to report them to eBay and to block them in your email program. A “Second Chance Offer” or “Best Offer”, are terms and features used within eBay. We do not choose to use those features. Generally, if we do not receive payment for an item, our system will automatically cancel the sale and relist the item to our website or eBay. There have only been a few instances that we have contacted the 2nd bidder to inquire if they would like to purchase an item before relisting it due to non-payment. If we ever contact you concerning a Second Chance Offer, we will send you an email and ask that you call us. If ever in doubt, check with us first.
What’s the best way to view Trainz.com?
Did you know that if you set your computers resolution to 1024 x 768 or higher, you will view Trainz.com at its very best. Right-click on your Windows desktop and click Properties, then select the Settings tab and scroll the arrow to 1024 x 768 pixels or higher. Click “OK” and you are done! Or you can go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, and then Display. Everything will now fit conveniently on your screen, no more scrolling back and forth for those of you who were set at a lower resolution.
Fraud on eBay - Second Chance Offers, etc.
Just a quick reminder to let you all know that if you ever receive a second chance offer to purchase an item from us after an auction has closed, do not respond to it. In very rare cases, we may send a second chance offer depending on what the item is, but in most cases we just relist the item if we have a non-payment issue. If you receive one of these offers and you are unsure if it is us, contact us and we will validate the email. Do not click the reply button to the email you received, create a New email.
News Flash ... Cash Back!
If you use Paypal, you'll be interested in knowing that Trainz is participating in the My Store Rewards program. With this program our customers will receive cash back on their purchases, just by making your payment with PayPal, and agreeing to receive custom email notifications from MyStore rewards about other products you may be interested in you receive 1% cash back on all your purchases! To learn more about this great program please click on this link for more details http://www.mystorerewards.com/msr/rules.htm.

If you haven't heard by now, Myspace.com is the leading site on the web for networking with all types of people and a place where you connect with friends with the same interests... Like Trains! If you have a Myspace account please stop by and add us to your friends list and check out our page.
Visit our friends at O Gauge Watch for exciting news & updates on the latest happenings in the O gauge world of model trains!

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Trainz
2740 Faith industrial Dr. Suite 200
Buford, GA 30518
Standard Gauge Z Scale N Scale S Scale G Scale HO Scale O Scale