01-27-2009, 10:32 AM
Sorry, I'm a lousy reporter! I did not bring a camera either. The show was huge! I went primarily to visit my friends Blake and Jim, who were working booths there. Pete, you met both of these guys the night you visited and we operated. Blake is the fellow who painted most of my steam, he was at the show helping man the booth of the Old and Weary Trainshop. Al, the owner of the O&W store, was a very nice guy. I had dinner with him adn the owner of Bethlehem Carworks Saturday night. Interesting to hear the problems they face with getting product made, as they do the design work but not the manufacturing. Jim Harr, the other fellow at my house that night, has started his own company producing structure kits, called Stella Models. Here is a link to his website. <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.stellascalemodels.com">www.stellascalemodels.com</a><!-- w -->
I did not spend any time looking at locos and rolling stock. Heresy, I know. I personally am not in the marlet for any and by avoiding these tables (with their huge crowds!) I was able to see every thing else easily. I went with the idea of buying only what I could use for my immediate project, the engine servicing facility. I bought windows for the roundhouse at the Tichy table. Tichy sure makes some awesome parts. I also bought one of their water column kits. However I was not able to buy a sheet of cinder block for the roundhouse extension. I couldn't believe it. The one vendor who had some sheets of brick had brick, tiles and some other item, and only like one of each! How do these folk expect to seel anything? He said he was short on time when loading the car to go to the show. Both of the LHS I can drive to have no stock and so I have had to order it and wait a week. Luckily I have other stuff to work on, but I was on a roll with the rear walls of the roundhouse.
Other stuff I thought was neat: Miller Engineering's booth. Their animated sighs are great! They had one for Westinghouse which is a company I plan to use on the layout, unfortunately I has planned on a vertical sign, and theirs is horizontal. So I was able to stay away from it, tho I intend to look into the possibility of changing my plans. I was drawn back to their table multiple times and eventually bought the Domino Sugar sign, for a rooftop. It was just to awesome to pass on. The letters in Domino light one at time, then the word Sugar. Then off and repeat. Just too cool.
There were several vendors with rock molds, some finished and ready to install. I was tempted, but the area I need these for won't be worked on for several years so I was good and walked away. I did pick up a Tsunami for a small steamer Blake will be painting soon, along with speaker and enclosure. I bought it from Tony's, and a bit later I was walking by the Soundtrax booth and I overheard a conversation about rebates, I got a $5 bill for showing my receipt for the decoder! This coverd lunch, a fried bologna sandwich. I had to try it, it sounded weird. I also talked to AJ from Digitrax for a bit, very nice guy. May pick up a UT4 throttle somday, but I need to recruit some operators before I need one.
There were a lot of layouts, some very nice. One was O scale, had a train with 6 modern diesels (sorry, I don'r know one from another, no interest in modern day) and a train of 56 hopper cars. I tell you, in O scale this was one long train! There were many very nice scenes on the various layouts, sorry but I have no pics to offer.
Gary
I did not spend any time looking at locos and rolling stock. Heresy, I know. I personally am not in the marlet for any and by avoiding these tables (with their huge crowds!) I was able to see every thing else easily. I went with the idea of buying only what I could use for my immediate project, the engine servicing facility. I bought windows for the roundhouse at the Tichy table. Tichy sure makes some awesome parts. I also bought one of their water column kits. However I was not able to buy a sheet of cinder block for the roundhouse extension. I couldn't believe it. The one vendor who had some sheets of brick had brick, tiles and some other item, and only like one of each! How do these folk expect to seel anything? He said he was short on time when loading the car to go to the show. Both of the LHS I can drive to have no stock and so I have had to order it and wait a week. Luckily I have other stuff to work on, but I was on a roll with the rear walls of the roundhouse.
Other stuff I thought was neat: Miller Engineering's booth. Their animated sighs are great! They had one for Westinghouse which is a company I plan to use on the layout, unfortunately I has planned on a vertical sign, and theirs is horizontal. So I was able to stay away from it, tho I intend to look into the possibility of changing my plans. I was drawn back to their table multiple times and eventually bought the Domino Sugar sign, for a rooftop. It was just to awesome to pass on. The letters in Domino light one at time, then the word Sugar. Then off and repeat. Just too cool.
There were several vendors with rock molds, some finished and ready to install. I was tempted, but the area I need these for won't be worked on for several years so I was good and walked away. I did pick up a Tsunami for a small steamer Blake will be painting soon, along with speaker and enclosure. I bought it from Tony's, and a bit later I was walking by the Soundtrax booth and I overheard a conversation about rebates, I got a $5 bill for showing my receipt for the decoder! This coverd lunch, a fried bologna sandwich. I had to try it, it sounded weird. I also talked to AJ from Digitrax for a bit, very nice guy. May pick up a UT4 throttle somday, but I need to recruit some operators before I need one.
There were a lot of layouts, some very nice. One was O scale, had a train with 6 modern diesels (sorry, I don'r know one from another, no interest in modern day) and a train of 56 hopper cars. I tell you, in O scale this was one long train! There were many very nice scenes on the various layouts, sorry but I have no pics to offer.
Gary