Hello Tom I am going to Railfest on Saturday I have good luck fining stuff there. If I have time and money left I may try and make the IX show I live in the middle of both shows. I will be wearing a blue flannel jacket with a black nit hat. If I can get my dad to go we will be the ones holding up traffic sorry dad does not move real fast. If anyone see me/us say hi. Have a nice day Frank
I remember our last two run-ins at the Berea show so I already know what you look like. I would enjoy meeting your dad though, whenever that is. Hope you are able to find some good deals at Railfest.
Those attending the WGH may be interested in meeting my friend, Bill from Paducah. He will have tables selling books of fallen flag railroads and other stuff. The name of his business is Classic Trains and Ferraris. He’s a very interesting guy to meet. Please tell him “hello” from me. In no way am I suggesting you buy his stuff, but if you need a Ferrari, you may talk to him about that. [:)]
Thanks for the note. I am planning to drive up from Columbus for the WGH show on Saturday. Looks like I’ll swing over your way afterwards for Railfest. Nothing wrong with a long day and two train shows.
My grandson and I intend to hit them both. The WGH show on Saturday and Railfest on Sunday.
Can’t pass up the opportunity to see the WGH show. It doesn’t get up this way very often. But we haven’t missed Railfest in years. I always find a bargain or two there and I’m looking for a few things this year.
If I can find it I’ll wear my black NYC hat, it’ll be too cold for a BRVRR tee shirt.
Hope to see you all at one or the other of the shows.
For anyone going to Railfest, you should also make plans on visiting The Western Reserve Model Railroad Museum in Mentor, Ohio. It is just 2.5 miles north of Lakeland.
My brother and I are going to hit up WGH on sunday. Anyone have any inkling of what hit I’m going to take on parking, just so I have time to come to terms with it?
Your thread is getting more attention so I will post here if that is ok?
Went to the railfest show today (saturday) and thought it was pretty good. I would call it average for this show. I do have a suggestion for anyone with little kids. All of the vending machines had “Out Of Order” signs on them. They obviously want money from the concession stand. Normally I would not care but this meant that my 4 year old had a choice of soda or soda. Bring juice if your children will want it.
It was $8 for parking at the IX Center. I looked for you but never saw you. I was there in the afternoon today. I hit both shows. Both were packed with people. That was great to see but moving around became difficult at times. I bought a few things but the WGH show was a little light on the vendor selection. It was good to talk to the manufacturers and see a few future offerings. I pinned down the Digitrax reps about the duplex radio shipment dates. They commited to this summer. They said the move put them further behind than expected. The MTH SD70ACe in BNSF colors looked very sharp, even though I model NS. I picked up some very fine paint applicators at Railfest which should make painting the step edges on my locomotive shells much easier to do. I am going to give them a try tomorrow.
I really enjoyed the WGH show today. First off, the show was VERY well-attended with lots of adults and children. Although the front area where the manufacturers were did get a bit congested at times, the aisles for the most part were “passable”. I attended the WGH show 2 years ago in Monroeville, PA, and the aisles were much narrower and harder to get around because of the crowds.
I talked to a few of the manufacturers (Atlas, BLI, Bowser, Caboose Industries, Digitrax) to inquire about some things. Here are some of the highlights of the show for me:
Atlas - I got to see their HH600/HH660. Very nice looking unit. I asked the Atlas rep about whether or not they might be releasing a NYC version in any upcoming runs. He wasn’t sure.
BLI - I was disappointed that they didn’t have a pre-production sample of their NYC 4-8-2 L-4 Mohawk at their booth, which is due out in June. Ken told me that the company the is making the hybrid is very slow but very good. Although I’ve been waiting over 2 years for this unit, that’s music to my ears. I’ll take accuracy over speed any day of the week. I also got a little better understanding about their transition from QSI to Blueline to Paragon 2.
Bowser - I just wanted to mention to them how much I appreciated and enjoyed the smooth operation of their Buehler & Cannon drives.
Caboose Industries - I talked them about an issue I was having with installing the tip on their 220S ground throws. The fit is tight between the two parts and I end up splitting the end on the ground throw end in order to get the two parts to mate.
Digitrax - I talked to one of the reps about their Soundbug to get a better understanding of how it worked. I also inquired about the expected release of their Duplex system. The rep told me that they are anticipating a late spring/early summer release.
I went with my wife on saturday. Parking is $8.00. Got out of that by going to the first drive with the booth and told them I was going to atlantic jet center to pic up some friends. Hey I am a pilot and go in there a lot so what the heck right!! I was impressed with the layouts, my wife liked the marklin loop that was up. I liked the logging one in the bachmann booth and we both enjoyed the leggo layout… Pretty cool what you can do with leggos now a days. As far as vendors. Do yourself a favor and leave the spendin money at home. Everything was marked WAY up. I saw an ahm rs-2 in lakwanna paint with single truck drive and horn hook couplers for Get this $65.00. Even the junk fixer uppers were at least $20.00 overpriced. I walked out with a new panel scriber for $6.00 to replace my bare metal foil scriber. The other thing we bought was pack of Bush tulips for 14.00 with the tax. Like I said the layouts were cool, The crowd of 10,000 people packed in a 10,000 sq foot space in a sprawling 10 million square foot building gets old quick. Lots and lots of kids that really had no interest other than to touch when told not to touch(that annoyes me to no end). I did enjoy the woodland scenics booth where they taught you how to decorate scenery with there product. I was expecting more of that as well.
Disney had a big booth there as well showing cartoons and giving the history of disney and his trains, it was packed for every show.
All in all glad that I went to experience it but it will probably be the last time. $20.00 to get in and got nothing than $20.00 of nothing.
Sorry we missed one another. Looks like you and I ascended on the manufacturers with the same purpose. My initial understand was that Digitrax hadn’t moved yet. However, on reflection, that would make more sense from a couple of comments the rep said to me in conversation.
I talked to a couple of other individuals, who also attended Railfest, that would concur with your findings about the crowds. Great to see but harder to get around.
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