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Last weekend was the first time a name train show came to San Diego. The Great Train Show hasn't visited San Diego since 2017. The nearest named train show would be going to Costa Mesa, CA.

I felt the show was well attended. There was a lot of layouts on display, quite a few vendors and one manufacturer who came down to sell there product. Accucraft came down and sold some nice quality On30 and G scale freight cars. They displayed there new G Scale GP60s and GP60Ms.

I belong to a club that meets monthly to sell model trains and one of the members was selling at the show. Recently he acquired a Vision Line Big Boy from 2014, (4012) and had it set aside for another member. I told him that id the deal falls thru to check in with me. But shortly after, I decided to pass for now to focus on other things in my collection. Several months pass, the member changed his mind on buying the engine, so it was at the show on the table and I decided to bounce at it.

I paid 1100 for it, it was brand new never been out of the box until I test ran it last Saturday at a club layout. The retail in 2014 was around 2700 and now there selling the 2014 run on the 2nd hand market for 3000-4000.

I was gonna hold off and buy a 4019 from the 2023 run when the dealers started clearing old stock out, but found this and am happy with it.

I'm slowly going thru and upgrading my collection to be all scale with exceptions and despite being 10 years old, it's a nice running loco thus far.IMG_1109

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Sad that Lionel and other manufacturers also are cutting quality. If anything a 2023 model should have better sounds than the 2014 model with improvements in technology, but if they can't even keep the same quality on a speaker enclosure, what hope is there on length of boards and other parts lasting as long as previous ones? I only have space for a 4'x12' layout with FastTrack O-36 curves that I run conventional power on with 2 MTH Z-1000 Transformers, but I think I'll keep what I got. My top locomotive is a MTH 2-8-0 Proto 2 Locomotive with a BCR, the rest are all Lionel starter set locomotives, but they all run! I'm happy with what I got but Gunrunner John, I'm sure you'll be able to perform your magic to make that 2023 model sound like the 2014 model. Good luck!

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