For the first time, the club of which I am a member - the Miami Valley S Gaugers - set up their small portable layout at the show.
The show kicked off on Friday evening with initial vendor and layout set up. Jon Goins, President of the MVSG delivered the layout and unloaded his boxes.
Saturday
On Saturday morning. Jon commenced with the set up. I joined Jon just after 8:00 am. Together we finished the set up and tested the track configuration by running my American Models GP-35 around the tracks. Good thing too! We found a few minor rough spots that were causing derailments. A little judicious pushing and pulling got the track into alighment for operations. Jon set up his table adjacent to the layout, conveniently keeping the S layout next to the only dedicated S vendor at the show. |
| Jon Goins mans his table at the Lakota show. |
Turnout from the Cincinnati contingent of our club was excellent. Jay Reese, Mike Mitter, Bob Davis and Rich Boehm were in attendance throughout the day. Jay's American Flyer work train performed well for several hours and was followed by a great performance by Mike Mitter's American Flyer steamer pulling a mix of American Models tank cars with some classic American flyer rolling stock
I picked up a Plasticville factory kit from Jim Jaehnen for which he'd been searching for me over the past year. I promptly turned around and placed it on the layout.
John Gaffney (another S Gauger from Central Ohio!) was at the show to showcase his business - Lights 4 Models. John specializes in lighting for your models (duh) and has a great selection of LED and neon lights for all your modeling needs. I picked up several sets of lights to use as Flashing Rear End Devices (known as "FRED"). These model the flashing red light and sensor boom that replaced the caboose on most modern trains by the 1980's. John will be at the upcoming Dayton show if you missed him at Lakota.
Saturday's other purchase was two American Flyer by Lionel (or Flyonel) freight cars from the 80's - a Wabash 3 bay hopper and a BAR plug door boxcar. Nice cars!
The highlight of the day on Saturday would be the fire alarm being tripped just after 3:00pm and the entire building evacuated for about 30-45 minutes. As luck would have it, Rich and I had just sat down for lunch when the alarm sounded, forcing us to take our food outside to finish lunch (and shiver a little bit in the cool fall air). Turns out the cause was a popcorn popper that had caught on fire. From what I could see, most of the visitors to the show left at that point and traffic for the rest of the day was very light.
Sunday
On Sunday the show opened at 11:00am. Allen Smith led off the day running his American Flyer trains, including his pair of custom modified double headed Pacific locomotives. Later in the day, Bob Davis displayed his custom AF Pacific pulling a string of Pennsy heavyweight passenger cars. I want to give thanks to Bob - he pulled double duty supporting both the MVSG and the Pennsy trains club at this show. |
| Rich Boehm (left) and Bob Davis watch their trains run on the portable layout, on Sunday. |
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| Bob Davis loaned us the use of this station for the day. Its a great laser cut kit. |
Sunday's "deal of the day" were a pair of American Flyer Atlantics purchased for a total of $30. One was a 303 that Jon gave a good home, the other was a 21160 that came home with me. The 21160 was dirty as all get out, but when I put it on the tracks and fed it power, the old girl stumbled around the layout at a good pace, even if she did shudder pretty badly.
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| The 21160 right after purchase looking pretty dirty - but mechanically sound! |
Nothing that a good cleaning and a little time in the workshop won't fix. At some point this locomotive got a bit of a customized paint scheme.
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| The 21160 straight from the selling floor. |
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| The front of the boiler is actually silver rather than the gray you see in the picture. |
No fire drills Sunday, so the rest of the day was pretty peaceful. Ran into Bob Knecht and had an opportunity to catch up as I'd not seen him since Cincycon back in March.
A few more photo's from the show...
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| The Plasticville factory, with my Flyer running behind it on the inside loop. |
Turn out at the show on Sunday was a bit on the light side. Things were slow later in the day.
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| Jay Reese and Allen Smith watch the layout as Sunday winds down. |
And now its over. Well, the good news is that the fall train season is ramping up with Dayton just two weeks away and Springfield a month after that. For those that could not make it to the show, here's a short snippet of what its all about - S gauge model trains!
