I took a ride with my brother Bob today. We went to a train show in Clark, NJ held in the Mother Seton High School. He always calls the show just simply “Mother Seton.”

The show is what we used to call a “paper show.” Meaning there would be lots of photographs, books and also railroad documents but not much in the way of models on the tables. The supply of railroad produced material was in very short supply at this show. Definatly not what I remember from back in the day.

Mother Seton was one of the first shows I remember traveling to back in the 80’s. I haven’t been to one in about eight or ten years. The trading halls were in two large rooms in the High School. The opening photo shows the first of the two rooms.

Suprisingly, there was some O scale on the tables. I did see some Intermountain kits on one table and even two pieces of O scale brass on another table. There was a little three rail on one or two tables, but most of what few models that were on the tables were HO or N scale.

One of the Highlights of the show was talking to John Green of Bethlehem Car Works. John is an HO manufacturer that just released a 3d printed Lehigh Valley switcher kit. It is designed to fit over a Bachman 44 toner drive. Of coarse I was trying to talk him into outputting that switcher in O Scale.

Just as our time at the show was winding down, my brother wanted to make the rounds to a four or five people to say good by. The first of which was a book dealer that lives in the same town as him, down here in South Jersey. One thing lead to another and somehow we each picked up a Car Builders Cyclopedia from his table. Mine was a very nice 1940 edition and Bob picked up one from the 1930’s. My 1940 was in better condition than any of the others I have and it was half the price I’ve paid before.

It was a good show, but one of the nicest parts of the day was the one hour drive each way up and back. I was able to have a nice conversation with my brother. Something you don’t always get enough time to do.

My new 1940 Car Builders Cyclopedia opened to the page with drawings of the Creco double doors like were shown in my brother’s sketch of the RDG XARa boxcar.