Allentown's First Frost/OGR Forum Breakfast

Saturday looks OK, but I don't know that I'd leave the umbrella at home.

I don't mind rain, I can take a bit of it unless it is a big downpour. I haven't seen the whole news, just what the phone said. Ah, maybe it will move into tonight by the time I get home and tomorrow will be half and half.

Looks like I am going to have to miss the breakfast, she who must be obeyed informed me today that we have a conflict (basically have an appointment I was hoping would be able to be switched to the 19th if someone cancelled, doesn't look like it is going to happen). Saturday is supposed to be showers, the heavy stuff is tomorrow.

To those attending the breakfast, I have a large spool of flat cable, it contains 6 conductors of 26 gauge wire.  Its probably 700 feet or so.  If anyone is interested, they can have it.  Let me know and I will throw it in the car.  C ya in the morning.

@ITS TOY TRAINS FOR ME posted:

To those attending the breakfast, I have a large spool of flat cable, it contains 6 conductors of 26 gauge wire.  Its probably 700 feet or so.  If anyone is interested, they can have it.  Let me know and I will throw it in the car.  C ya in the morning.

Toss it in, I can use it.

John its all yours...c ya in the morning

All right, fellow night-owls--don't forget to pack it in at least a little early tonight so you don't oversleep!

Oversleep?  What's that?

Picked up my tickets from Grzyboski’s earlier today. Several others were coming in for tickets too. This will be my first time going to the Allentown show. Won’t be making it down for the breakfast though. Maybe in the spring. Safe travels everyone!

Here I am..getting ready!

It looks like there will be very early AM showers, but should be clear before the show starts.

Okay Chuck I'll make it.

BLT

Had a great time at breakfast, just enough to eat and drink. I did get my usual train show special, soft pretzel. Picked up 4 Atlas Reefers after wandering around quite a bit. Slowly building up a good steam era fleet of them.

Okay breakfast is over and everyone is at the big show.  When you get home or to the hotel, please share some photographs of the breakfast and the First Frost for us Northwestern Pennsylvania folks who have never made the trek!! 

Photos for us Northeasterly guys appreciated!

looks like a BIG show.

I didn't get to take any pictures while I was there. I guess I wasn't thinking, feet were hurting me a bit.

This is what I bought though. Four Atlas Reefers. Old Dutch Cleanser goes back to my very first Christmas train set from my HO days. Seeing those two brought back some great memories.

I also didn’t take any photos while I was there. Excellent sized show! I saw many deals, a few I passed over and went back for just to find out they were sold. I did pick up this Menards Morton Salt covered hopper and the entire Spirit of 76 set I spotted under a table and for a price I couldn’t walk away from. This is a show I’ll be sure to attend in the future. A few nice layouts on display along with train races for the kids! First time ever witnessing that! Definitely put a big smile on my face.

I didn’t take any photos at the show, because Connor was tired and became a bit of a handful (I think breakfast and the large show was too much for him). I do have photos of the two cars I bought. The LNE I have been looking for a long time. The Old Colony was an impulse, but I didn’t realize it was custom and I will have to do some work to make it presentable. I also took this photo outside of Connor asleep in the stroller (train overload?)

@CarGuyZM10 posted:

I didn’t take any photos at the show, because Connor was tired and became a bit of a handful (I think breakfast and the large show was too much for him). I do have photos of the two cars I bought. The LNE I have been looking for a long time. The Old Colony was an impulse, but I didn’t realize it was custom and I will have to do some work to make it presentable. I also took this photo outside of Connor asleep in the stroller (train overload?)

Excellent cars, but the photograph of Conner is the best one you could have taken at or after the show!  I’m glad you and Conner made it!!!

Had a nice, beefy breakfast, and made out pretty well at the show. Thanks very much to Chuck and friends, for making breakfast possible.  Finished off my KCC Streamliners set, and even found locomotives to go with them. Been chasing these for quite a while, so I have no clue what I will look for at my next train show.
I always pick up a little diecast when I go to shows, and for some reason I just couldn’t put Fat Albert back on the table. All in all, a very much needed day out at a train show.

Hey, hey, hey!  Scrambler81, you did great!!

Well, with my first Allentown under my belt I'd have to give it a solid 2 thumbs up! I went in with a wish/shopping list and planned to check out getting into Standard gauge but both never really panned out like I hoped. On my wish list the only things I found were the large Plasticville gas station that I'm planning to turn into my version of Baltimores Blue Point Crabs and I only found one Lionel 6-9788 Lehigh Valley boxcar, I didn't think I'd find 11 of them but I was hoping for 3 or 4. On the Standard gauge front I saw some really nice stuff that would have killed my budget and to be honest I saw some real junk that I simply had to pass on. I screwed up by not picking up a pair of really nice Lionel 222 switches for $40 because I still wanted to look around and when I came back they were gone, I know, buy now it if you see something you like!

I did find somethings I wasn't looking for but had to get...

Starting to see a pattern here? LOL

Got some lead figures for the Christmas layout...

At a parts table I found these and asked the guy how much he wanted for the Lake Mead suitcases, he gave me a blank stare but everyone else there got a laugh out of it...

And I found some more of my coveted Life-Like mountain paper, this now brings me up to 35 rolls/boxes of it and at the time of this writing I was still the high bidder on Ebay for 8 more rolls of the stuff...

I scored both of these for $3, that's like what they cost back in the day!

All in all, me and the grandson had a good time, not sure if I'll do the Spring Thaw show but I might.

Jerry

Jerry, What do you do with all that mountain paper?

Love the B&O flask set, very cool!

@BradFish1 posted:

Jerry, What do you do with all that mountain paper?

My game plan is to use it on my layout build since trying to make a reasonable copy of the stuff is not really working out like I had hoped. I can closely match the colors but to get the proper mica flakes I have to buy like a 50 gallon drum of the stuff when 5 lbs is way more than I'll ever need. Amazon has smaller amounts but they are either too coarse, too fine or not transparent as I'd need. I do plan to give some to my brother, he's going O gauge this Christmas under the tree and I'll never use all I have.

But it's like a lot of train stuff we all buy, there are just some things that we load up on whether we need it or not be it track, a certain kind of car, road name, etc.. I tend to get things that sporadically show up like Life-Like paper, Life-Like lamp posts, K-Line picket fence, TYCO light towers, Plastcville cattle pens that I know I can use but tend to either get lost easy or break easy.

As a side note, I did win the paper on EBAY!

Jerry

In all the years my son and I have gone (nearly 18 I think), this one was very disappointing.   There was no crowd which was nice for navigating the aisles, but no "gotta have it deals" that I could see.  Maybe all of you fine folks got the good deals yesterday?

The typical vendors seemed even thinner this year.  Nothing tripped our trigger, and sadly we left without buying a thing.   My son almost bought an Atlas freight car, then said, I'm just buying it to buy it, not that I want it.  Thought twice and said he could find better things to spend $55 on and put it down.  As we were leaving the ATMA table was selling tickets for next Spring for $15 each.  I realize that is most likely because their costs have gone up.  But if my son and I could not find anything to buy with a $20 attendance fee, I'm not sure we'll be anxious to spend $30 next Spring just to walk in the door.

We did our usual, Valentino's for Chicken Parm, a stop by the Allentown and Auburn to see their equipment followed by a stop at the Reading and Northern to check out their stuff.  All was pretty quiet this Sunday, but at least got to spend time with my son.  So that is a win.

Ron

Had all intentions of making breakfAst.  Right by Lehigh valley airport some idiot truck driver hit a construction barrier and blocked route 22 for two hours.  I had a cigar for breakfast and watched the fire trucks go by.  Finally made it to fairgrounds at 830

That looks like a ton of fun Ben!

Thank you everyone for showing us your loot and experience!  

Ron, thank you for your impressions of the lower volume of wares and folks.  Your son was smart!  I’ve done the same as him at some of the smaller Western Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio shows.

Ben, that’s a bummer for sure that you had that long traffic jam.  BTW, how do cigars taste in the morning.  🤪😄

Yeah, Ben hit that bad spot, heard about that at breakfast. I did manage to see Ben roaming around, that was around 10. I made my purchases and left shortly thereafter. I did pop into the farmers market. I told my brother yesterday that I should have picked up some fruit there. The reason I went into the farmers market in the first place was to have a look around and see if they had pumpkin bread. No dice on that, but I should've bought some fruit. It would have been a great snack yesterday.

Chuck, We had breakfast at the Ritz when we left the show on Sunday. My big purchase was the $10 admission fee! You are famous and well-known at the Ritz when I mentioned to the lady at the register that I was friends with the master of breakfast ceremonies, Chuck! It did not get me much but a thank you for eating there.

Ron, the $15 tickets are only for early admission and/or that is the new entry admission? At $15, Allentown show can keep their show, not worth it. York is that much larger for the same price.

@Dave NYC Hudson PRR K4 posted:

Yeah, Ben hit that bad spot, heard about that at breakfast. I did manage to see Ben roaming around, that was around 10. I made my purchases and left shortly thereafter. I did pop into the farmers market. I told my brother yesterday that I should have picked up some fruit there. The reason I went into the farmers market in the first place was to have a look around and see if they had pumpkin bread. No dice on that, but I should've bought some fruit. It would have been a great snack yesterday.

The fruits ok but there are two things in the farmers market that are awesome.  Marriannes donuts are the the best. Put Kristen Kremevto shame. And the other thing is made by the Amish girls. Pretzel pockets loaded with cheesesteak and a few other flavors

@Ted Bertiger posted:

Chuck, We had breakfast at the Ritz when we left the show on Sunday. My big purchase was the $10 admission fee! You are famous and well-known at the Ritz when I mentioned to the lady at the register that I was friends with the master of breakfast ceremonies, Chuck! It did not get me much but a thank you for eating there.

Ron, the $15 tickets are only for early admission and/or that is the new entry admission? At $15, Allentown show can keep their show, not worth it. York is that much larger for the same price.

Maybe she knew you were from Jersey and thought you just 'putting on the Ritz.' 

@CarGuyZM10 posted:

I didn’t take any photos at the show, because Connor was tired and became a bit of a handful (I think breakfast and the large show was too much for him). I do have photos of the two cars I bought. The LNE I have been looking for a long time. The Old Colony was an impulse, but I didn’t realize it was custom and I will have to do some work to make it presentable. I also took this photo outside of Connor asleep in the stroller (train overload?)

The box cars are great and your little boy is adorable!

Peter

@bluelinec4 posted:

The fruits ok but there are two things in the farmers market that are awesome.  Marriannes donuts are the the best. Put Kristen Kremevto shame. And the other thing is made by the Amish girls. Pretzel pockets loaded with cheesesteak and a few other flavors

Absolutely!  The best thing in The Farmer’s Market IMO.  Billy’s Pretzel Wraps.  Awesome Awesome Awesome.  I love the Buffalo Chicken wraps but the others are good too.  Worth the trip!  👍

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Love the B&O flask set, very cool!

These things catch my eye every year. Even the mugs from this vendor seem a notch better than the typical fare (sharper, more colorful graphics and such). One of these times...

@Ted Bertiger posted:

Chuck, We had breakfast at the Ritz when we left the show on Sunday. My big purchase was the $10 admission fee! You are famous and well-known at the Ritz when I mentioned to the lady at the register that I was friends with the master of breakfast ceremonies, Chuck! It did not get me much but a thank you for eating there.

Ron, the $15 tickets are only for early admission and/or that is the new entry admission? At $15, Allentown show can keep their show, not worth it. York is that much larger for the same price.

Ted, so you are saying it isn't worth me travelling 306 miles each way plus two nights in a hotel?  York is only 254 miles plus two nights in a hotel, but sounds like a better value for someone like me.  I hope to see you at York again someday!!

@Mark Boyce posted:

Ted, so you are saying it isn't worth me travelling 306 miles each way plus two nights in a hotel?  York is only 254 miles plus two nights in a hotel, but sounds like a better value for someone like me.  I hope to see you at York again someday!!

I pre ordered my ticket, it was 10 bucks (though they charge a processing fee, so was 11 and change).

@Mark Boyce posted:

Ted, so you are saying it isn't worth me travelling 306 miles each way plus two nights in a hotel?  York is only 254 miles plus two nights in a hotel, but sounds like a better value for someone like me.  I hope to see you at York again someday!!

Mark,

Some of us PIHR guys occasionally go to Allentown for Spring Thaw as a day trip (a loooooong day trip...), but it is manageable with taking turns driving and splitting the turnpike tolls and fuel cost.  We even visit a nearby hobby shop before returning.  We find it a worthwhile trip every other year or so.  If I were going by myself, I would drive out Friday, stay 1 night, do the show and drive back Saturday night.  I would only attend both days if I lived within a 1-2 hour drive.  It is a big show and a good show, but it is not York.

Andy

@Andy Hummell posted:

Mark,

Some of us PIHR guys occasionally go to Allentown for Spring Thaw as a day trip (a loooooong day trip...), but it is manageable with taking turns driving and splitting the turnpike tolls and fuel cost.  We even visit a nearby hobby shop before returning.  We find it a worthwhile trip every other year or so.  If I were going by myself, I would drive out Friday, stay 1 night, do the show and drive back Saturday night.  I would only attend both days if I lived within a 1-2 hour drive.  It is a big show and a good show, but it is not York.

Andy

Andy, I know you fellows make a lot of trips sharing the costs and driving.  I made a day trip to the Lansdale area for Harry Henning’s Run for Fun event with another modeler 6 or 7 years ago (a long day indeed).  Unfortunately I am not physically able to do day trips of that extent any more. I have to make too many stops to walk off the sitting.  On my last trip to York, I drove home in the evening, Friday.  I can’t do that anymore either.  My luck, I’m now retired, but encountered other restrictions!  😄  That's how life goes.

Mentioning tolls, at least living in Butler, I can now drive to both York and Allentown and stay off the Turnpike thanks to I-99 and other highway improvements in recent years.  As always, thank you for your input