Our club displayed this weekend at the Asheville Train Show (this was the 24th annual) and the crowds were very heavy - moreso than I've ever seen here in 5 years attending. Lots of families and lots of small kids who didn't want to leave our layout. I spoke with several young dads and related to them the wonderful relationship that model trains afford them in developing life skills and teaching opportunities with their son(s)/daughters. Several seemed surprised when I mentioned some of the fields of lessons available like electricity, building things, painting, photography, history, lessons in commerce/business, and other life skills that they can teach while making it 'fun'. One young dad's face literally 'lit up' as the revelation of this seemed to hit him!
All in all, a great day. I've been a prudent train hobbiest for the past 6 months or so and haven't bought anything new due to the expenses associated with starting up in real estate. My resolve was broken today and I bought a beautiful ABBA set of Premiere SOUTHERN F3's that are new in the box at a price that I couldn't resist. At first I thought these were the recently released F7s w/PS3 but the box stated 'F3 w/PS2'. Seems they were in the 2010 catalog but I had not seen them before today. As I put the AA pair on my bench just now to test them out they appear to me to be F7's due to the silver screens down the length of the cab - I thought the F3 had different vents painted the body color? Can someone please enlighten me as I'm not very knowledgable in these fine details.
Many bells on our diesels have a 'dead' sound when activated sounding like a dull thud, but not these - the bell is very clear. Good horn and smoke too.
