I will be attending this show tomorrow. I dont think there will be too many changes or differences than the previous shows. I’ll write tomorrow night and let you know what it was like.
I’ll be driving down on Sunday. Saturday is the train show at Springfield, MO held by the Ozark Model Railroad Association. They have home layout tours and lots of fun things to go see. So, Little Rock has to wait until Sunday.
Trains all weekend! I’m in heaven!! [angel]
They have better organized the show this year. Previously it was chaos everywhere but it was not so this year.
I reckon in the Hall of Industry building there was about 2 acres of train stuff.
half were toys, and a 30 foot circle with minature handcarts for kids to wear themselves out on. It was quite popular. A quarter of the floor were stalls devoted to N/HO scale. The rest of the space was O scale and larger.
I think 40 people showed up before opening at 11 am and as the day progressed, many families arrived.
I noticed a increase of young folk interested in trains this year. Perhaps something good is coming. Now, the prices. Some of the dealers gave us about 20% off with a half off here and there. Virtually everyone knew what the retail MSRP of every item and they were able to give a little bit off in quanity but you paid near what you would in a hobby store.
Blue box athearn kits were virtually non existent. If you dug deep you would find them. I got to look at the Clinchfield Y3 from Proto 2000 and it sounded really nice and moved well. I am glad I have one of these on order.
The traveling layouts showed a great deal of work and progress over the past year. Occasionally you had a loose desiel running about on DCC while the crew fiddled with another engine on a train. Great fun. Almost like corralling horses. One or two will get loose.
I took a few videos no stills. The noise level in the place was apparent when a large O scale Niagra stomping away from the yard with 25 cars in tow could not be heard more than 10 feet away. The kids would follow the smoke units. The smoke oils used this year definately improved. Instead of clouds of smoke, they would smoke from the stack and within 5 feet dissapate.
I managed to get a few things namely a few Bachmann Log Car Flats with log loads for less than retail. And that was about it. I did come looking to shop this year but there was little to buy believe it or not. M