There were two train shows this weekend in the greater Cleveland area and I hit both of them on Saturday. The first was the usual Trainfest at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed. Several of the larger dealers weren't there and there wasn't much in the way of quality to replace them. I ended up with an undecorated reefer (to convert into my private line -- I already have four reefers on the layout in the private road scheme), an undecorated tank (also to be converted to a private road) and two other reefers -- a Milwaukee Road and a Burlington Route. I didn't really need any of them, but the deals were good and I didn't see anything else I liked.
After Kirtland, I headed to the I-X Center, home of the $8 parking spot and the $10 admission fee, for the World's Greatest Hobby Tour show. (There are some miscellaneous pictures below -- I'm sorry to say my camera crapped out and took most of my photos with it, so there's not a whole lot to look at).
The show was an odd mix of train show dealers (some of the ones missing from Kirtland were here), manufacturer's reps set up like it was a tradeshow and things for the kiddies to do. It was a good size show and the place was packed, but it was hard to look because of all the strollers and people.
I will say the one modular layout (free-mo or something like that) was one of the best I've seen. Nice terrain, nice models, no dusty dinosaurs, no flying saucers no out-of-scale Hot Wheels cars. These guys were serious modelers with some nice modules (sorry no pics). There was a giant lego layout that was impressive and quite a few large scale layouts along with some local ho-hum layouts as well. There was a nice European themed layout as well. The manufacturers were strange -- all of them had displays of their latest stuff, but weren't selling. I'm not sure what they hoped to accomplish at the show.
Model Railroader had a booth there -- it consisted of some sort of raffle box and an empty table. For all their huffing and puffing about how we all need to promote "The World's Greatest Hobby", the douche bags didn't even have someone attending their booth. Typical MR: All talk, no action.
Anyway, I came out of there with some Walthers rooftop details (I was out of them)and some little storage tanks, also by Walthers, and three DVDs that were discounted pretty heavily. It was interesting to look, but the $18 price tag to get in would cause me to hesitate going back. All it really succeeded in doing was siphoning off a few of the better dealers from the Kirtland show, leaving one show weak and the other grossly overpriced.
After Kirtland, I headed to the I-X Center, home of the $8 parking spot and the $10 admission fee, for the World's Greatest Hobby Tour show. (There are some miscellaneous pictures below -- I'm sorry to say my camera crapped out and took most of my photos with it, so there's not a whole lot to look at).
The show was an odd mix of train show dealers (some of the ones missing from Kirtland were here), manufacturer's reps set up like it was a tradeshow and things for the kiddies to do. It was a good size show and the place was packed, but it was hard to look because of all the strollers and people.
I will say the one modular layout (free-mo or something like that) was one of the best I've seen. Nice terrain, nice models, no dusty dinosaurs, no flying saucers no out-of-scale Hot Wheels cars. These guys were serious modelers with some nice modules (sorry no pics). There was a giant lego layout that was impressive and quite a few large scale layouts along with some local ho-hum layouts as well. There was a nice European themed layout as well. The manufacturers were strange -- all of them had displays of their latest stuff, but weren't selling. I'm not sure what they hoped to accomplish at the show.
Model Railroader had a booth there -- it consisted of some sort of raffle box and an empty table. For all their huffing and puffing about how we all need to promote "The World's Greatest Hobby", the douche bags didn't even have someone attending their booth. Typical MR: All talk, no action.
Anyway, I came out of there with some Walthers rooftop details (I was out of them)and some little storage tanks, also by Walthers, and three DVDs that were discounted pretty heavily. It was interesting to look, but the $18 price tag to get in would cause me to hesitate going back. All it really succeeded in doing was siphoning off a few of the better dealers from the Kirtland show, leaving one show weak and the other grossly overpriced.
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