great stuff Roy! John A. Albee, Realtor [email protected] Prudential Snyder Real Estate #1 Brickyard Drive Bloomington, IL 61701
Mobile 309-830-6097 Office 309-665-0787 www.johnalbee.com ________________________________ From: Roy <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 6:40 PM Subject: {S-Scale List} A Scaler at York I recently attended my first ever TCA meet at York, PA. I had heard for a long time how great the experience was and a TCA member at my church sold me on the idea of joining the TCA just to get to go to York and I took him up on it. I don't have a whole lot of Flyer left and much of it has been converted to scale over the years, but I retain a love for AF since like a lot of you, I cut my teeth on it starting in 1952 and stuck with S. Being a scaler, I didn't go with any great expectations, but was surprised as I still managed to acquire some needed items for my layout. First of all, the Thompsons were there for SHS and had a terrific sale going on and I took advantage of it. Some dealers had Artista S scale figures and I bought the two railfans to place at my favorite railfan spot on the layout. A visit to the Lionel booth was very encouraging in that they had their new catalogs available and some Flyonel on display including the Challenger. I think that we will all benefit from their enlarged commitment to S. I did ask a representative how many of the scale wheelsets for the U-33C were being ordered and he said that the sales were slow. I'm afraid that they will stop making the scale wheels available if that trend continues. There were multi-scale folks there like Scenic Express. Some dealers had SHS and AM for sale. It's ironic, but there was more useful stuff for scalers there because of the influence of all those AF collectors than at the average all scale meet like the one at Timonium, MD. All in all, I was pleased that the average scaler could indeed make out nicely at the meet. I ran into some old friends and was introduced to many of the other members and had a great time. The meet is every bit as awesome as described. I did do one thing though that would curl the hair of the rivet counters, I've always loved the realistic action of the oil drum loader and a friend from the South Jersey S Gaugers kept his eye out for one and picked up a nice one at a low price. I bought some new drums off of Doug Peck who was at York, and installed it on the layout after doing some painting and disguise work. There's a picture of it at: http://royhoffman.com/pwrr/projects.html Roy Hoffman
