linux-generic-lts-trusty for ppc64el

It seems that you are mixing up things.

You have to distinguish the Ubuntu release number, and the installed HWE kernel packages.

If you have installed 14.04 from the .iso installation kit and let the system perform the updates, your system should already show itself as being 14.04.2 (What is the output of "lsb_release -crid"?).

Another thing is switching over to the next kernel version - in your case from trusty's default 3.13 to 3.16 that also comes with utopic). For that you would have to install the HWE package with the name of the release whose kernel you want to have, for 14.04 that would be linux-generic-lts-utopic for a server (or linux-generic-lts-utopic xserver-xorg-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic libegl1-mesa-drivers-lts-utopic for a desktop with xorg packages).

linux-generic-lts-utopic does exist for pp64el see https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-meta-lts-utopic

The package linux-generic-lts-trusty was a package to upgrade a trusty (12.04) system to the 3.13 kernel that comes with trusty. This is not relevant for your system.

See also https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

I originally tried to upgrade my 14.04 system to 14.04. uisng the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

BUT: That brought the system to:
Welcome to Ubuntu 14.10 (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-24-generic ppc64le)

I need to stay on Trusty (I cannot upgrade to utopic at this time) so had to reinstall 14.04 since from what I read, I cannot downgrade the server easily. Now I dont want to redo that so tried this command:
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-trusty

So now I'm back to:
lsb_release -crid
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

Just run "sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-utopic", or reinstall from 14.04.2 media.

"sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" won't upgrade you to 14.10 unless you've altered your /etc/apt/sources.list to point at utopic instead of trusty. If you avoid making that change to sources.list, and don't run do-release-upgrade, you'll stay on the 14.04 series.

"Welcome to Ubuntu 14.10 (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-24-generic ppc64le)" is a contradiction. An Ubuntu 14.10 release will come with a kernel 3.16.

What Ubuntu version do you want to have?

If it is 14.04.* then you have to start with any 14.04 installation medium and you will be fine.

Neither "apt-get upgrade" nor "apt-get dist-upgrade" will change a 14.04.* system into Ubuntu 14.10 (as William Grant has already written). Executing "do-release-upgrade" is the only possibility for converting from 14.04 to 14.10. Did you try that command? (The other possibility for initiating a release upgrade would be manually changing the release name inside /etc/apt/sources.list which is absolutely not recommended at all. Have you done that?)

Just to repeat if my previous message was not clear enough:

If you install from a 14.04 or 14.04.1 medium, your system will be Ubuntu 14.04 with a 3.13 kernel. When you then do apt-get update / apt-get upgrade, the system will show itself as 14.04.2 ("lsb_release -crid")
To get on the 3.16 kernel, you can install linux-generic-lts-utopic but even then it is still Ubuntu 14.04.*

If you install from a 14.04.2 medium, you system will be showing 14.04.2 and have the 3.16 kernel from the beginning.

It appears that didn't work.. Do I need to pull in another repository or uncomment something
:~# lsb_release -crid
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty
root@bd02dn04:~# cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease
3.13.0-24-generic

root@myserver:~# apt-get update
Ign http://<myDNS> trusty InRelease
Hit http://<myDNS> trusty Release.gpg
Hit http://<myDNS> trusty Release
Hit http://<myDNS> trusty/main ppc64el Packages
Hit http://<myDNS> trusty/restricted ppc64el Packages
Ign http://<myDNS> trusty/main Translation-en_US
Ign http://<myDNS> trusty/main Translation-en
Ign http://<myDNS> trusty/restricted Translation-en_US
Ign http://<myDNS> trusty/restricted Translation-en
Reading package lists... Done
root@myserver:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@myserver:~# lsb_release -crid
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

Thanks! I changed the line in the /etc/apt/sources.list from:
deb http://my server repo/install/ubuntu14.04/ppc64el trusty main restricted
to: deb http://my server repo/install/ubuntu14.04.2/ppc64el trusty main restricted
 lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

It is quite unusual to have your own repository set up in the way that you have.
Usually the packages for ppc64el are fetched from http//ports.ubuntu.com

Some of my servers are not yet on the network so we had to download the iso files to a local repository.