Well the Thursday before the Chicago O Scale show was a travel day for me. As the image above shows, a twelve hour drive. Thankfully it was uneventful until the last 60 or so miles. Then it was rush hour in the Chicago area. Not fun.
But this was a welcome sight. Next day started out simple enough. Set up started around 1 pm. and the unpacking started for everyone.
Lots of things showed up on the tables at this show. This really is THE BEST O Scale 2-rail show of the year. Here are some highlights.
Below we have a simple set up, one USH hobbies hopper, 5 Pacific Limited cars and 5 Robert Parri cars. And just so you know, not all of them sold over the weekend.
The above image was hard on me. Those Key B&O E units looked great. The ABA set was nicely priced. I’m glad these went to a good home.
Below were some of the models from John Dunn’s collection. I know that they moved a lot of his models at the show.
The show is not all about brass models, some tables it’s fun to watch the models get unboxed. Here Jim Zwernemann is unboxing a beautifully built Chock Ultra Scale Northern Pacific Reefer with custom made brass trucks.
Next was a Rails Unlimited SFRD reefer that Jim reworked the walkways and added many extra parts. He did a great job of building a fine model.
Jim also put out on his table a LV gondola that was scratchbuilt by Jim Hickey. I remember seeing photos of the car on the Proto48 website 20+ years ago. It still looked great!
This next scene made me laugh when I walked past it. Precision Scale imported a PRR H27 which was the only offset hopper car the PRR owned. It was a one car class. One car compared to the 40k+ cars of the H21 classes. I always said to myself what is the likelihood of EVER seeing one of those cars pass you if you were to be trackside during the time they were on the railroad. Not very likely. But here we have TWO of them in boxes at the show side by side. What is worse is there were at least two other models of the same car on tables at the show. Four models at the same show of a ONE car class.
Mike O’Connell, former owner of Chooch Enterprises Inc. had a group of tables with various things on the tables. He had parts, converted 3 rail cars, partially built kits and fully built cars.
Much more in the next posts, I still need to recover from the drive.