Timonium

[Adelie]

Randy, I haven't been to Timonium in ages. If you want to meet up at MB Klein (gulp) at some point, let me know. I think I sent you my cell phone number, but sometimes those don't work well in buildings like these. I'll probably be there between 9:30 and 10. On the safe side, if you want to meet up around 11:30 or so in the event we can't connect by phone, that works.

[rrinker]

Yeah you sent me your phone number. We're planning to arrive somewhere around 9:15. After we get in, the first thing we do it go across that top row ending back in the corner at Klein. So if your phone works (my old one did, last year, dunno about this new one, different service), give ma a call when you get in. If I don't hear from you, I'll make my way back to the Klein area at 11:30 - that wlll probably get me down one rown and up the next so I'll be there anyway.

I'll be wearing grayish khaki shorts and a red/orange t-shirt. And I'll be with an older guy who's bald on top and looks about a foot shorter than me. LOL.

--Randy

[SpaceMouse]

Mark. I'm going. Email me your Phone # and I'll email mine back.

[Adelie]

OK, I see we are getting serious here. Chip, Randy and whoever, I'll be wearing jeans and a black polo type shirt advertising Paramount's Kings Dominion. If we don't hook up until 11:30 at MB Kleins, I'll probably also be carrying a bunch of stuff and me looking at the N-scale section, probaby with a 12-pack or two of Atlas metal wheel sets!

[SpaceMouse]

I'll listen for the rattle.

[Anonymous]

If any one has been to the show today, please post the details.

[Anonymous]

Just got back. Great show, took me 4 hours to walk it, and I'm not even into HO (O main, N secondary). It was worth the rainy/accident- scene drive (1 3/4 hrs to get there, 3 hrs to get home). Had pre-ordered some things from Scenic Express, and they had them waiting for me. Really enjoyed looking at the HO structures that some very talented people had made. If you can, try to make it Sunday. Can't compare it to other "scale" shows since this was my first. Joe

[Anonymous]

Thanks Joe for the update !! I In the morning around 6.30 AM, it was raining very heavily and had to return after travelling 20 miles. I believe it takes approx 3 hrs from Richmond, VA. I will plan to visit tomorrow. Is any thing worth buying ( prices matching internet) for HO.

[jacon12]

Mapquest tells me it's 741.06 miles and I could make it in only 12 hrs 1 min. Gas here is about $3 and my Civic averages around 32 mpg. Hmmm... thats about $140 round trip and 24 hours straight driving.
Ya'll drink one for me!
Jarrell

[dave9999]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jacon12

Mapquest tells me it's 741.06 miles and I could make it in only 12 hrs 1 min. Gas here is about $3 and my Civic averages around 32 mpg. Hmmm... thats about $140 round trip and 24 hours straight driving.
Ya'll drink one for me!
Jarrell

1039 miles and 16 hours one way for me. My Ramcharger averages about 15 mpg on the
highway. Let's see... 3 bucks a gallon @ 15 mpg...calculating... $207.80 one way.
$415.60 for gas alone! Y'all drink one for me, too. I'm going to the LHS, it's only
a quarter mile from my front door[:D]. Hope you all had fun, I love shows. Dave

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kenneth19usa

Thanks Joe for the update !! I In the morning around 6.30 AM, it was raining very heavily and had to return after travelling 20 miles. I believe it takes approx 3 hrs from Richmond, VA. I will plan to visit tomorrow. Is any thing worth buying ( prices matching internet) for HO.

I'm afraid I'm only "tuned-in" to O-gauge pricing, and have only recently gotten into N-gauge. HO I know nothing about. Overall, this did not look like a "price slash" event like some of the O/S oriented shows (Greenberg, York, etc.), but I could be wrong. At least there are test tracks for the older items. Saw a N-gauge GG-1 I would have bought had it been tuscan instead of green. About $50. higher than the one sold this week on eBay, but at least I could have tested it. Joe

[rrinker]

It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.

Hit it!


Chip, Mark - good meeting you guys. Hope you found a gear, Chip. I finally saw a place that had soe odd gears, bried in among some detail parts, but I didn't run into you again to tell you - they were in the middle room.

I made a good haul - from Springhaven I got a Soundtraxx DSD100LC so i can foola round with sound, and a coupel of the new Walthers code 83 turnouts - I think I'm switching from Atlas. Towards the end of the day i spent about an hour chatting with *** Bronson from RR-CirKits (the Locobuffer guy), he had hat new Tower Controller up and running on a demo layout. Great guy, he spent a lot of time telling me all the features of this new controller - wow! I'm definitely going to be using some of those for my signallign and detection. He's got a great detector board that goes with the Tower Control, sensitive enough to detect you hand pressed to the track with only power feeder passed directly through the current transformer - no looping! Awesome! And he settled my pushbuttons vs toggles dilema, AND the features of the Tower Board make it PERFECT for what I need - computer off normal manual operation of the railraod, and computer on dispatcher lockout of critical turnouts. Also AWESOME! He thinks of all the little things, too - on his detector card there is an optional input for DCC track power - when it goes off, all blocks report occupied and the last status of each block is latched for when power is restored.
haha sorry, I'm rambling, but when two geeks get together and have a chat session it can drag on - haha he even had me pull up a chair behind the table with him. At any rate, check the RR-CirKits web site soon for updates, I thinkt hey are ready for production now. This is gonna be a GREAT Digitrax add-on - and yet another reason for making Digitrax the RIGHT choice. Oh yeah - one of ***'s accessory cards makes each port completely emulate the Digitrax SE8C, witht he exception that the LED dropping resistors are on his card, so you don't need the special Digitrax signal bases, just connect your signals right to ***'s board.
All this for far less per port than the C/MRI - and it's all fully assembled! All to be supported in DecoderPro for effortless configuration.
Now I'm sounding liek a ocmmercial - well, this thing is THAT good. I did buy somethign from ***, he's clsing out all the old TCS decoders he has to make room for the new X series models - so i got an A1X cheap for my Atlas/Kato RS-3. Now that I have ONE set of decals so I can finally finish one of the two RS's. And FINALLY Walthers shipped my paint to the LHS. Guess I knwo what project I'm gonna work on next. I'll even try to remember to take photos of the body mods and decoder installation,a s well as the trip to the paint shop.

--Randy

[Adelie]

I can't say I saw any drop-dead deals, although I didn't walk out empty handed, either. I walked out with a few freight cars and a Kato ATSF F3A/B Warbonnet set. Both of those purchases happened in the first hour, and I expected to give both those vendors a little of my money.

Randy and Chip, great meeting you both face to face. Chip and I roamed around until around 2:30 or so. Stopped and had a bite and then hit the road.

Chip found his gear, sort of. There was a booth that had 4 different NWSL gear sets for MDC, and just deciphering the difference between them was tough enough. Of course, we had no idea which actually fit his loco. Although, given the fact that the gear is one of the center gears (not attached to the motor), any of them might have worked. So, he did not buy one, but knows where to get them. I'll let him chime in later on his freight car inventory.

Overall, very worthwhile. I'm sure I would have bought more had I not just bought 11 decoders for my fleet. As it was I almost pulled the trigger on 6 more, but I'm still a little undecided on which I want to use. I would have definitely walked out with more, except MB Klein drew a blank on me (no N-scale metal wheels at the show!). I'm sure I will go back to at least one of next year's shows.

The drive there was not terrible, even though it was raining pretty hard. The drive back was much worse traffic wise.

[tstage]

Randy & Mark,

Thanks for the low down on the Timonium show. I'm sure we'll be hearing for Chip shortly. Glad you guys had a good day separately and corporately. [:)]

Tom

[SpaceMouse]

Apart from hanging out all day at the MTH booth, Mark and I hit everything about 3 times. My big score was a $4 item. I have an IHC Hinkley 4-4-0 that runs well but had a broken section of the tender. I found a tender shell. Now I can convert it to DCC and get it get it working on the layout. I must have picked up 15-20 MDC old time cars at $3-4 each and then as we were leaving (and I found my $100 bill that I had misplaced. I picked up two cases of metal wheels.

Mark, the 2-6-2 that "Runs Good" doesn't. The light lights, but the engine isn't turning over. Looks like I have another project.

All in all it was great meeting Mark and Randy. (I even saw Randy's father-in-law from a distance. Couldn't see his horns though.) Mark took good care of me and found most of the good deals for me. Wouldn't buy anything for himself but some cool wire strippers.