Which hall at York do you suggest I begin my search for these?

I would start with orange hall and then the other dealer hall like the brown, purple. All the other halls also have some small dealers selling modern trains. The blue and silver halls are good for this. 

Yes, as above...Orange and brown hall next to it..that lady in there with the wall of

trains...I'd hit those first for new items like that...if you don't make it to the

open shows earlier.

I differ.  The orange hall is so large, I would start with the smaller halls.  There are some huge dealers in them that bring a ton of stuff.  Their booths are way larger than those in the orange hall, and they will "deal" and you can ask them if they have what you are looking for.  You can check their stocks quicker and then go to the orange.

.....

Dennis

Actually I would start ... by asking the same question on the York Forum.

I too would suggest that you start with the orange hall, followed by the brown hall, and then the purple hall. The purple hall has many dealers and there is usually a good selection there.

I'm sure that you'll enjoy your first visit and I just know that you will be "wide eyed" when you see all the choices tugging at your wallet!

Eric Hofberg

TCA, LCCA

1. First rule of York: don't make generalizations, for yourself, or others.

2. Second rule of York: lower expectations of finding what you intend to be looking for, or expectations of an inventory/pricing pattern that will be favorable to you as buyer.

3. Third rule of York: don't get specific with a wish list here on this, or any other public forum. All you will be doing is raising the asking price against yourself to list & the bargaining rigidity of the seller.

4 (violating the first rule of York): No, the Orange Hall would probably be my last stop, unless I was looking for (any) unannounced fast manufacturer blowouts through the usual Orange Hall liquidators.

5. There is still plenty of time before the meet. Why not get up to speed by reviewing the achieve of threads on this forum, particularly those of newer member/shoppers of prior meets

(Otherwise Dennis has the right idea above, albeit for reasons that would be different than mine).

If it's something I really want, I call the major dealers and ask them to bring it if the price is right. For example, Side Track Hobbies of southern Maryland usually only brings MTH Tinplate to York........but they have a huge MTH inventory. If they have what I want and the price is right, I ask them to bring it.

Peter

What I would do is go to the Eastern Div TCA website and look at the Hall Charts for MTH dealers and where they are located. There are some in the Orange hall but also many in the Brown and Purple halls.  You should recognize some names. Some dealers specialize in both Lionel and MTH but a few of the big names have mostly Lionel.

Given these cars were made a few years ago you may find them at any place at the meet including member halls. I personally would start at the smaller halls before heading to the Orange Hall.

Pete

Thanks for the suggestions received so far and those yet to come. As suggested by Between A&B I will now attempt to move this post to the York meet forum.

It makes no difference where you start looking. Its old enough that you're not likely to find it at one of the big blow out houses (Ro, Trainworld, etc...), and hard enough to find that it wont be plentiful, so you're going to have to stumble upon it, and that can happen anywhere.

The orange hall really takes more than one pass to see everything thats really in there. If you're looking for deals, start there, if not, then pick another hall and just blow through it. In the member halls, there's not that many tables with purple boxes, so its pretty easy to fly through them, and just check every table that has MTH boxes, and move along.

you should try Nassau Hobby, Just Trains or Trainworld. Hey you never You might also try giving mth a call

Since the Strasburg woodsided cars came out 3 or 4 years ago, they could be in just about any of the halls, if anyone has any.  More likely at member's tables who are selling from their personal collections in the White, Red, Blue or Silver Halls.. And it may be possible a small dealer in the dealer (Orange, Purple or Brown) Halls may have them stuck under or on their table.

Kind of a tweener item as far as availability and time since it's release to the market.  But I guarantee you there will be plenty of goodies to grab your attention!!

I would think add-on cars would be in very high demand at York. You may have to look on eBay after the meet.

I'd agree.  It could also be harder to find these at York due to regional preferences (less people in CA looking for NYC and Pennsy, less people in NYC or PA looking for UP or Santa Fe - obviously not universally true, but you get the idea).

Good luck in any event wih the search!

-Dave

Ken.  E-Mail sent.

First stop Iwould make for MTH cars--passenger or freight severeal catalogs ago would be RPO Trains (Booth 13) on Orange Hall Chart.  See the chart on the ED Website.

Orange Brown and Purple are the best bets, BUT you never know what can appear on a member table in the other halls

ORANGE.