World's Greatest Hobby on Tour

Spent today manning the NASG booth at World's Greatest Hobby show in Cincinnati today. The show had great turnout with easily over 200 people lined up to get in when the doors opened at 10:00am.

The NASG booth was manned with a contingent from the Miami Valley S Gaugers  - Jon, Mike, Rich, Jack and Ray rotated duties answering questions about S Gauge and keeping two trains running on the MVSG layout. Rich's AF 300 performed yeoman service and ran most of the day pulling a consist of old AF cars and some new custom built flat cars that Rich constructed.  Mike and Ray split time on the outer loop with a mix of modern equipment. Mike's Trainmaster and Ray's GP-35 (both American Model) ran like champs, but Ray's Lionel U-33C kept stalling on the outer loop (It ran like gangbusters on the inner figure 8).

As you might expect the WGH show is a major regional event with advertised on television in the days leading up to the show. Several vendors with their S wares were present including Lionel, Pikeville Models and several hobby shops.

Big news of the show was Lionel's release of the new stand alone American Flyer catalog - not only new, but packed with surprises! New 2-8-8-2 steam locomotives and new road names for the U-33C and a bevy of NEW SD-70ACe in a broad cross section of road names. AND MORE! Lionel appears to be committing to American Flyer in a big way. 

The final day of the 2012 World's Greatest Hobby on Tour show Sunday from 10-5