I’m going to be there on Saturday if anyone wants to meet up.
Tom
Nope, not for $12 to get in and $11 for parking!
Rick J
Hi Tom . . . Paul in Stow here. Came on to see if it got a mention. How’s it compare to the NMRA event in October? Knew it was $11 to get in for one day . . . forgot the part about parking. A little stiff. Forecast to be a nice day. Maybe I’ll get inspired with some sunshine. Would like to meet the CSRs from Walthers if they’re there. Dunno . . . maybe.
Paul,
I went to the last one here in Cleveland back in 2008 and enjoyed it very much. (Spent nearly the entire day there.) While WGH does have vendors and layouts like the Berea show, there are more manufacturers present, which gives you opportunity to see new product and talk to the reps.
What I enjoyed the most from last time was the layout from the KS(?) Fremo group. I must have gone back and looked at it a 1/2 dozen times throughout the day. (I didn’t see them mentioned on the list this time around though. [:(]) I also enjoyed chatting with the owner of City Classics, as well as a few of the forum members from this neck of the woods.
Yea, paying for both admission and I-X parking stinks but I found it enjoyable, nonetheless.
Tom
I also enjoyed chatting with the owner of City Classics
Aha! That adds a point of interest. I have at least a dozen of those bldgs waiting for paint & assy. Would love to chat about some things I’d like to see them make. Disappointed to not see Lunde showing. He designed most of the Magnuson line and others. Hmmm. Now it’s a definite ‘maybe’. Thanks
I’m sorry that we won’t be there this weekend. It just falls too close to the WGH show in Philly and the Amherst Railway Society show in Springfield, MA later this month. But we will be in Cleveland for the National Train Show this summer.
Jim S.
City Classics
Spent a little over 3 hours at the World’s Greatest Hobby (WGH) show today. In general, it was a well-attended, with a number of familes coming with their young (and not-so-young) children.
I found a couple of items that I was looking for. Picked up an Exactrail Milwaukee ribbed boxcar for a decent price. I was looking for the “Hiawatha”-version but they only had the “Olympian”. It fit my era so I bought it. I also picked up some Woodland Scenics (fine) iron ore. I’ll be kitbashing some loads for that this evening.
Had an opportunity to talk to one of the MTH reps about whether any more 20th Century Limited cars might be in the works - in particular, an additional diner and baggage car. The rep told me that there have been a number of requests made for another diner. So, hopefully, that means that will come to fruition in the next couple of years. I also made sure I thanked them for making those available and praised them for their efforts in releasing such a nice product. I don’t care as much for MTH locomotives but their passenger cars are quite nice and well detailed.
I also talked with Ken Silvestri from BLI for a little while. I asked him about whether they might re-release the NYC Brass-Hybrid Mohawk; anticipating what I thought he would probably say. Not surprisingly Ken told me that the Mohawks didn’t sell well and that the brass-hybrids - in general - would cost too much now to manufacture.
I also asked him about the Blueline locomotives. I told him how much I personally liked the concept, as I could install a motion decoder of my choosing in order to achieve really slow motor control. Ken said that the Blueline series sold well but the sound/motor control DCC-ready decoders are also much more costly to manufacture.
I know some folks on here hated the Blueline decoders because of the problem of programming the separate sound and motion decoders
I went today with my inlaws, wife and 1 year old son. in general I think it was a pretty good show. The kiddo did really well taking it all in with no melt downs. Can’t say that about some other kiddos. Found the ho stuff to be pretty high in price and there was a fair amount of tyco and ahm “collector” stuff there at silly high prices. There was a lot of junk I guess if you wanted to kitbash stuff with old outdated things. My father in law picked up a lionel NYC hudson with railsounds made in 2000 for 185 and a 1955 hudson for $275 with original boxes. The new one is a $500 engine and was brand spankin new, never run so that was an awesome deal but not sure about the 55. All the layouts were very good this year. There were a couple from 2008 that I would have liked to see again this year but the massive sectional layout filled that void pretty quick. It was cool to see one of the wives runnin a 3 train heritage fleet pulling 60+ grain cars with her daughter. Alll in all it was pretty good. I did not walk out with anything, thougn a bachmann 2-6-0 with sound for $99 caught my eye as did a heisler but they stayed with their vendor.
Agreed, Mike. Most stuff I saw as near or full MSRP. I also saw a BLI Mohawk for $200 over MSRP. I only picked up the Exactrail ribbed boxcar because they are so hard to find on the Internet.
Tom
Saw the mohawk and laughed. Vender asked what was so funny. I just shook my head and walked away. By that point I had heard the " hard to find" and “collector” enough times I did not want to hear it again. There were a few things but they were few and far in between. Don’t blame you for picking up what you did.
Mike,
I already have a BLI Mohawk (the exact same one the vendor was selling) and would love to purchase another (so that I can double-head them) but I’m NOT going to pay those kind of prices. If the vendor where I had bought the Milwaukee ribbed boxcar had charged the same percentage over MSRP as the vendor who had the Mohawk, I would have turned that down, too. And I’ve seen some prices on eBay for similar locomotives that make that look like a bargain.[%-)]
Tom
I went sunday afternoon and was disapointed to say the least. For the hype about it being at the IX center I expected a very large show. I’ve seen bigger shows at high schools.
Over priced (as any show at the IX is) for what amounted to maybe 3 dozen vendors and 5 display layouts. True the layouts were nice but some vendors just seemed to thorw whatever stuff they had onto a table and sat back.
I couldn’t find any Bowser Centuries though I did find a couple DVDs and a copy of the VO story. I was looking for leads to hobby shops within a driveing distance, many vendors had no signage, only a few had business cards and or contact info posted. Surprisingly some of the big name booths appeared to be unmanned (Bachmann, Walthers and even MRR!) It’s hard to sell anything if you don’t try.
I can see folks thinking “If this is the worlds greatest hobby, I want no part of it”
I don’t know what time you went on Sunday afternoon but I’m wondering if the impending weather had a lot to do with that. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some vendors/reps would have darted out early just to get ahead of the arctic front.
Tom
I got there shortly after noon. It’s not that there were empty booths, just not many booths and several had no reps present.
Having been in the area all my life, I don’t think the weather was such a big factor. Cold for sure but not dangerous conditions. There was a good crowd of visitors, covered the age range and a few surprises (a couple guys looked like gang members but had bought stuff as evidenced by their bags) It takes all kinds and that’s not bad for the hobby (surprising but not bad)
I guess my gripe is it didn’t come near meeting the hype of being a large show with lots of vendors.