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Atlas O and Lionel had plenty to announce at the open house.  First up was Atlas O’s Jim Weaver.  He ran down all the interesting and new offerings for each of Atlas O’s three product lines.

Atlas O Master Series:

• Atlas O’s first steam loco will be an USRA 0-6-0 switcher.  See my post here for more info.  Initial road names will be Pennsylvania, Burlington, Jersey Central, Union Pacific and unlettered.  Locomotives will be detailed specific to each road name.  Shipping is scheduled for April ‘07.

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Continue to read TCA Fall '06 Open House - Recap Part 3

Sunset Models/3rd Rail and Weaver Models presentations were good but they didn’t compare to the excitement generated by Mike Wolf, owner of MTH.  Mike started off by announcing that the 2007 Volume 1 O Gauge catalog was the best MTH has produced and the Tinplate catalog is the largest tin plate catalog MTH has produced.

Shortly thereafter Mike and the crowd turned their attention to the pre-production model of the Coors Light locomotive.

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Continue to read TCA Fall '06 Open House - Recap Part 2

I never tire of visiting the TCA Museum.  I could spend hours examining all the fine models on display and the great layouts.  Today the TCA held it’s bi-annual open house at the museum.  The open house is always held the day before the Spring and Fall TCA Eastern Division train meets in York, PA.  If you’ve never been to the open house you need to attend at least one.  It’s a great event because most of the influential leaders of the O Gauge industry present their "wares" to the their core demographic and plant the seeds of anticipation by showing pre-production models and hinting at things to come. 

Compared to the Spring ‘06 open house (my first) I thought the attendance was about the same, maybe slightly lower.  Sunset Models/3rd Rail, Weaver Models, MTH, Atlas O and Lionel were all represented as well of Marklin (HO).  In my opinion, the presentations at the Spring open house offered up more interesting and new information.  Nonetheless, there was still some good info to be had.

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Continue to read TCA Fall '06 Open House - Recap Part 1

Atlas O made two announcements this week.  First, they announced the offerings in their monthly "mini catalog" which includes 2 new items in the Atlas O Trainman line. Items include:

• 40′ 1937 AAR Single Door Box Car in new paint schemes and road numbers
• New Atlas O Trainman RSD-7/15 Locomotive in high and low nose versions.  The low nose version looks very cool.
• New Atlas O Trainman AAR 70 Ton 3 Bay Open Hopper
• New O-72 roadbed pieces

Atlas also announced they will be doing something new at the Fall ‘06 TCA York meet.  "Behind the Booth" seminars will be held at 2:00 pm on Thursday, 10/19 and 10 am on Friday, 10/20 at the Atlas O booth (#LL-1, in the Orange Hall).  Limited seating will be available and will be first come, first serve.  The seminar will consist of 3 20 minute presentations.  According to the Atlas O news flash email, speakers will be:
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Continue to read Atlas O Announcements

Last week, Farmer_Bill on the O Gauge Railroading forum posted attendance figures for the Train Collectors Association - Eastern Division Spring train meet in York, Pa that he received from the TCA’s president, Clem Clement.  To recap, there were 14,094 people registered to attend, 9,242 of which where TCA members or about 30% of the TCA membership.  The TCA show is held in the spring and fall of each year and registrations for the Fall ‘05 meet totaled 14,107.  The number of registrants for the fall show usually outnumbers the Spring registration by about 1,500.  Here are some other Spring ‘06 figures:

Continue to read York '06 Attendance Figures

This is the last post about my visit to the Spring ‘06 York show.

For the first time at York a modular layout was on display.  It was located in the "black" hall and was a huge layout built by the National Capital Trackers out of the Washington, DC area.  The layout must have been over a 100 ft long and it had some very neat equipment running on it.  The day I stopped in they were running a Union Pacific Big Boy and Challenger lashed together pulling numerous Union Pacific boxcars and coal hoppers, probably close to 40+ in total.  It was a sight to be seen.  They also had a C&O M1 Coal Turbine sitting on a siding with a large consist of streamline passenger cars but I didn’t get to see it running.  I also enjoyed their version of Lionel’s "disappearing" layout where the train enters a tunnel, disappears on a loop of track under the layout and appears exiting the same tunnel it entered a few seconds later.

O Gauge Railroading magazine held it’s semi annual Grandstand meeting on Friday and there was a great turnout.  OGR invites folks to sit in the Grandstands at York to listen to a number of speakers from the industry.  This is where Walter Matuch of Ready Made Toys unveiled his BEEFs and PEEPs.  There was some other interesting news as well.

Continue to read York Roundup Part 3