Everyone,
Unfortunately we discovered a production error the day before the shipment was scheduled to leave the factory. The roofwalk artwork was inadvertently mirrored before etching and the half-etched roof support plates are even with the top of the roofwalk (instead of on the bottom face so that the roofwalk grating would be present above it.
It will take five weeks to etch corrected roofwalks, assemble and paint new roofs, and replace the current roof assemblies. Fortunately the model is very modular and the roofs snap in place. The error becomes apparent only when looking from above under strong light, so a lot of people missed the error until the shipment was being prepped for pickup. Fortunately it was caught at the point where it costs us only a month, so we are now looking at a mid December delivery which should have the cars in modelers hands by Christmas.
We realize the additional delay is disappointing, but late and correct is better than on-time and wrong. Ironically, we had a similar scenario with the N scale XIH regarding some of the body details which caused an initial release delay.