I have barend shifters on my tourer and love them and have put thousands of trouble free miles on them. Make sure you look at Kelly Takeoffs for shifters, I have heard good things about them. As far as racks go, make sure you look at Tubus, their cromoly racks are extremely well built and handle heavy loads very well. I built up my tourer from the ground up, just like your doing and if you going to use the LHT for some really serious touring, dont skimp on componants, buy the best you can afford. My set up is something like this:

Mavic open pro 36H rims with schwalbe marathon tires, 28"s
Shimano XT hubs front and rear
Shimano XT Front and Rear deraileur
TruVativ Elita Triple crank, 50, 42, 32
Crank Bros Eggbeater pedals
Sram pc59 chain
Custom rear cassette
Brooks B17
Shimano Dura Ace barend shifters
Shimano road brake levers
Performance inline brake levers
Avid Shorty Six brakes
Chris King headset
TruVativ GigaPipe Team Ti bottom Bracket
TruVativ Rouleur Handlebar....(flatened top)
TransX suspension stem....(new addition...not sure if i like it yet)
Nokian brake and shifter cable set..
1-X Racing seatpost

This is all set up on a cannondale T800 frameset, and it has seen many many many miles of trouble free riding.