Trainfest 2011

I have to preface this with letting you all know I am a rather critical writer. I’m not negative; it’s just that I tend to tell it like it is without sugar-coating my words. I apologize in advance to anyone I may offend in this piece.

Also, you can try clicking on the images to make them larger (doesn't work in all browsers/resolutions)

We, my youngest son (Jack 31 yr old) and I, bought the Conductors Passes again for this Trainfest weekend. Actually it was his turn to pay for this father/son weekend so I had a free pass, so to speak. These “special” tickets allow one entry to the train show both on Saturday and Sunday as well as a special portion of the show held for 4 hours on Friday afternoon/evening to see the “Product Showcases” presented by 60 manufacturers and limited to only 200 attendees. The ticket also includes a sit-down catered meal on Friday evening with cake for dessert.

Trainfest is held in the Wisconsin Expo Center, on the Wisconsin State Fair Park grounds in West Allis, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee). The building itself is huge and has 4 humongous retractable room dividers which can be pulled back to allow for one - BIG - space, as was the case for Trainfest itself. But on Friday evening, one of these dividers is left in place so that only one quarter of the facility is used for the Friday product showcase. This limits us to only seeing what we are suppose to see that night and also allows the rest of the show to finish setting up for the weekend. If one actually wanted a sneak peak, they would need to go around to the back of the building where all of the hustle and bustle is actually going on. .. wear their special conductor passes (on the accompanying lanyards), and sneak into one of the many wide open doors and pretend they belong there until they are caught and told they should be on the other side of the divider. This is what my son and I did last year, but it was quite by accident. We were trying to find the back way in to the showcase, closer to where we had parked. We walked into the wrong doors and there we were, taking it all in, in all its magnificent splendor. At the time, the security at the gates didn’t appear to be very well informed on just whom should be where.

Another perk of buying the Conductor Passes is that they entitle one to a special train product gift bag (while supplies last). One could choose either an HO bag or an N bag. Again this year both son and I took the bag put together for N scalers. And again this year I asked them to start offering bags for Z scalers. I’m a firm believer in the old adage that “the squeaky wheel gets the oil”. The more Z scalers speak up, the more the manufacturers know we want things also made in our scale. This year’s N gift bags contained a thick Marklin catalog for 2011, a Walthers flyer for November (the same one we get in the mail), two nice little 12 page booklets from Model Railroader on Workshop Tips; Locomotives and Rolling Stock (Tune-Up Techniques, Troubleshooting Tips, Detailing Projects) and Workshop Tips; Essentials of Great Scenery (Learn How to Paint and Ballast Tracks, Make Trees from a Variety of materials, Model Realistic Creeks and Streams). Plus the bag contained a Special Issue of Model Railroader; How to Build Realistic Layouts (value $7.95 in the stores). Also included were the obligatory sales flyers, etc. and Jacks bag also contained an MTL N scale box car, while mine contained an N scale Water Tower Kit. These N scale items were both donated to my girlfriend’s 13 ½ year old son, Sam, so it worked out quite well for everyone all around. We arrived about a half an hour late otherwise I could have been able to get a rail car as well, but the early bird gets the worm, and yes, when they weren’t busy I asked if they had any more bags with the rail cars in them. They were glad to look – the folks here were really nice! Since the regular Saturday and Sunday tickets could be had for 10 bucks each, these $40.00 tickets had already half paid for themselves with the gift bags.

We spent Friday evening walking and looking and looking and walking. There were quite a few questions I had been dying to ask many of the manufacturers and this was my chance in relative peace and quiet to ask – the weekend ahead was soon to break an all time attendance record with 23,764 visitors.

As some of you already know, on Friday evenings trek I sought out Larry Larsen of NCE Corp. to ask questions on operating their Power Cab controller in other countries. I found him hard at work at the NEC display running trains and answering question after question from potential buyers. He told me he likes to check out each countries voltage/frequency, etc. before answering, and that he would answer me when he got back to work. I had emailed Mr. Larsen previous to this meeting and at the time of this writing I’m still waiting for his reply. I repeated my email to him 5 days after the show and presumably he is still too busy to answer.

From past experience when visiting manufacturers of small scale trains other than Z scale, I’ve found that when asked if they plan to produce any Z scale in the future, that a lot of them have the standard; “One never can tell what the future may hold” type answer. Now I don’t bother asking if they plan to produce Z, but as I pass by I instead simply ask them if they have any Z scale. Of course they say no, but at least I dropped the big bad Z word. Perhaps if enough people seem interested in Z scale, the manufacturers may think twice the next time they run new products up the flag pole. And if they do have plans for a future Z release, I’m pretty sure they’d mention it when I ask if they have any. With this in mind, there were actually very few manufacturers I was interested in enough to bother stopping to talk with.

I mentioned to Azatrax that they could make their Infrared Model Train Detection a bit smaller for Z scale, but they just proceeded to tell me how to make these huge things look less obvious. A thumbs down from me for that.

I shared a big chuckle with the owner of GCLaser (I’m sorry I forgot his name and it’s not on his business card), over the size difference between his Z scale buildings and his larger items.

Micro-Trains had really nothing to add in its track availability. The track is coming and the problems are worked out.

One thing I must praise is the way that Digitrax handled the question; Which DCC controller is better, Digitrax or NCE? The fellow (again, I didn’t get this fellows name either), said that they were both good controllers and that it was really a matter of which one you liked better. Considering that, from what I understand, Digitrax is quite a bit more expensive to start out, this was a rather diplomatic way to answer the question. He did add, however that with his system of dual knobs one could control a locomotive on each end of a train to the point where you could have slack in the middle of the train. He said that with an NCE Power Cab; “You can’t do that.” Since I was almost on my way out for the night, I didn’t go back to NCE to confirm this, but it might be something to ask if you’re thinking of buying one or the other.

Larry Leight, Project Manager at InterMountain Railway Co. told me the problems getting the new Cylindrical Covered Hoppers to market was not (is not?) the trucks, as I’ve heard so many people mention. But rather it seems that the same type of Chinese production problems that hindered MTL for a while also threw a monkey wrench into Intermountain’s original estimated delivery date. New estimated delivery date? Fall of 2012, or so I was told. I was also told they are using AZL trucks, by the way, and there’s no problem with availability.

I asked Lee English of Bowser Manufacturing straight out why he was selling off so much of his machining that it looks as though he could be selling a whole company’s production facility. His quick and straight answer? Because he hasn’t even turned any of it on in a year. Seems they just switched objectives and had no longer been producing any of the items they had previously been using this equipment (or molds) for. He also said that they had to do some changing around of where they actually do the producing of their locomotives… He said because of the way things are written with regard to imports and exports, the UNITED STATES forced him to produce both the chassis and shells of their locomotives in China. Previously he had been farming out the chassis to China and making the shells here, now both are made overseas. He was, however very proud to say that all of the WDW Full Throttle Z scale rail cars they make, are made completely in the U.S.A.

Lastly, and this should be of interest to anyone with a Marklin American Steamer locomotive (either the Pacific or the Mikado and many Marklin German locos as well). I talked with Jeff Stimson, Information Support Manager for Marklin, Inc. on the availability of a certain gear assembly (part number 261870) that is extremely prone to strip in many locomotives.

The Marklin website refers to the gear in assembly in question as a “Drive Shaft” on the Mikado and as a “Drive Shaft and Worm Gear” on the Pacific, but it’s the same part used on both locos. Marklin also refers to this part as a “Gear Assembly for 8807-08”. One can see how it might get confusing. I had originally been given this part number from a Marklin rep. as a replacement for 26187 (another number given by a Marklin rep.). It appears this part is no longer available. Mr. Stimson told me that he has been getting emails requesting this gear and there is nothing he can do (and nothing that Marklin will do), and that if, and that is a very big “IF”, Marklin creates another locomotive that just happens to use this same gear, then it will be made available once more.

Now, after doing yet more research on my own, it appears there may have been a screw up somewhere along the line with the actual part number that the Marklin representatives are giving out (or a new part number emerged replacing the old number). I’ve personally ordered and received this gear under the old part number of 261870, but now I might be on to something with a new/old part number of 261460 (on backorder everywhere, but supposedly in stock at the Marklin warehouse)… I will post more if I find good news. I mention this just to show how a company can get so big to where even the Information Support Manager for a company doesn’t exactly know what’s going on. This part should be available now, and if it has a new part number, Marklin should have been able to figure that out somewhere along the line… OK, back to Trainfest now.

One thing that bugged me at Trainfest (or anywhere really) is when a manufacturer is so pretentious that they don’t even bother to list what scale they are manufacturing. I find most of the time this is the HO manufacturer… as if they are the only scale out there. It really makes looking for something in your own scale rather difficult!

And that does it for the special Friday Product Showcases. Saturday and Sunday’s visit were much less critical and more filled with photos… And I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high guys. I didn’t go to Trainfest with the intension of writing a piece on it so I had no outline prepared. Nor did I have a string of prepared questions for anyone. I talked with a few people and asked a couple of specific things I personally wanted to know about. I didn’t take as many pictures this year as in the past because, quite frankly, it was pretty much the same as in the past... same layouts and in some cases even the same spots on the floor. As a matter of fact if I were to ever get the photos mixed up, I’d be hard pressed to tell one year from the next. This year, as I did last year, I concentrated on close-ups photos of things I might want to do in the future (or a variation on the same), so there were not too many long shots. I only took about 195 photos this year. Probably a third of that are duplicates (can never be sure of getting the shot right the first time). I’ve got about 22 or 23 photos for this article, so maybe there are 75 good shots (just a guess) that will not be used. So as not to clutter up the article, I was thinking of adding these other shots into a folder somewhere so others could see the rest of these if they so wished. Those other photos should follow soon.

On Saturday morning I ran into Ellen Shelton (EJShelton ) and Thom Welch (rvn2001), who a week earlier was heard saying it would take a miracle for him to make it to Trainfest. It was cool running into yous guys! I wish I would have thought of taking a pic or two.

I took a few photos of the Z scale layouts on hand (two of them)… here are a couple of shots of the WIZ KIDZ layout (above and below).
This end module of a small open pit mine of some sort, not connected to the rest of the layout this year but still on display, is one of my favorites.




These working N scale crossing gates look pretty good on this Z layout and I’m sure most of the public didn’t notice the size difference…




…but when eyeballed with a train going through, they do look a bit large, don’t they? I can’t wait to see Stony Smith’s Shapeway’s gates in action sometime – hopefully someone will get around to it soon!




Above and below here we have Metro Milwaukee Z Scale. Nice long coal train they have going there.




Metro really did have a very nice layout going.



More to follow...

Joe

I know a lot of people have been showing an interest in adding planes to their layouts so I took a couple of shots of these N scale layouts showing off planes in flight.




Depending on the angle, one needs to really look for the wire behind the layout curving over to hold up the plane hanging there on filament line.




It’s cool… and although it’s a working loco, I don’t think it’ll ever leave the ground.




And I know a lot of guys are into the big ships, so here's one... and three more in a row…













Think this is the last of the boat pics, big or little.




The whole layout wasn’t at Trainfest but at one time this N scale layout was huge! Click on the pic to make it larger for reading. This layout was pretty darn big here too. It curved in and out and in and out seemingly going on forever.




Oops, I guess I had one more boat pic in there. This one is N scale.




This was one of two working outdoor theaters on this large N scale layout.





More to come...

This N scale race track actually worked. I’ve never seen a working race track this small… It was soooo cool. Off in the distance next to the race track on the right was one of those bumper car type tracks (working as well). Both were great show stoppers.




I really liked NTrak’s module where the tracks (and the road) go over a section of the town using the three bridges.




I remember someone mentioning either putting something in front of a module, or they mentioned how one could display a mine. Here some HO scalers did just that.. put a big cut-away mine on the corner of a module.




They used Z scale track for the mining operation but didn’t have any ore cars in the mine. It looks like the elevator is also missing parts, but the whole thing was a rather impressive sight.




Lastly here are five pictures I put together as a panorama of the whole of Trainfest. I started about 2/3’s of the way down where I could find a place about 6 feet from the front wall. I turned my back toward the wall, turned left and shot a pic. I turned to the right just enough to where the photo would overlap the last picture just a little and took another shot. I continued this until I was facing the far right wall. When I got home I welded the photos together into one VERY long photo. You really need to click on the picture and enlarge it to see the whole effect. Hope You liked everything.


I’ll be adding the photos I didn’t use here in a gallery soon.


Joe (Zcratchman)

Thanks Joe- lots of good ideas!!!! It's fun to see how other modelers view their world!!.

Joe,
Great report! It's probably a good thing you didn't get a picture of me....it might have broken your camera and you wouldn't have had these great pictures to share.
Thom Welsch

Due to the large number of photos I took, it was easier to add them to one of my own sites and simply link to them from here;

Trainfest 2010

Trainfest 2011

Joe- I can't pull it up- just wondering if it's just my computer or there is a mix up in site.
Fred
Yup- works now thanks

All fixed now Fred!