On the way to NMRA BR. This year in Aberdeen, Scotland. I'm excited because I've never been to Aberdeen and I'm going to try out the new sleeper service.
First, I have to get there! Journey from home to Chicago O hare was uneventful. Security was much faster than usual, which was a pleasant surprise! Norwegian doesn't have their own lounge, but I thought I would see whether or not I could get into the swissair lounge that serves Norwegian. After our tremendous experience with Virgin’s lounge, I was prepared to spend money for access but it turned out I didn't need it. Unfortunately, I am glad I didn't spend money. It was nothing short of terrible after experiencing virgin's lounge. One poor person struggling to keep up cleaning after everyone and restocking all the food. Fruit and vegetables were totally wiped out. Pretzels, chips, and cookies not much better. Didn't even know there were meatballs until i saw them on my way out to the main concourse due to the noise level.
I'll comment on premium economy on Norwegian and my rail trip as well as the convention and Aberdeen in future musings.
With the help of Carl Nordberg and his wife, we have unpacked almost all the buildings. I have made a page for them in the “shop” but they are only available through the store due to their fragile…and in some cases large…nature. The first pictures going up today are just a fast overview. I will be following up with better pictures as I sort my way through reorganizing the store to accomodate them. Interestingly, we found several instances of stand alone buildings that turned out to actually be a part of an even larger building. This resulted in several truly MASSIVE buildings for N Scale!
UP George Bush and Spirit Locomotives with DCC have arrived! Broadway Passenger Cars have arrived! JTC Containers have arrived. UP George Bush and Spirit with sound should be at Kato awaiting shipment to me!! Atlas Snowplows have arrived. Crazy week for receiving!!! I need to spend another day on the website double checking that I have everything listed! Supposed to unpack a huge collection of built buildings tomorrow. Many of you have seen a few here or there, but I don’t think even I know the full extent of this collection! Due to their fragile nature, many of these buildings will stay in the store. Stop by and check them out if you are ever passing by on I55. We are at milepost 41 in Illinois.
Broadway Limited P70 coaches are on the way!! The latest JTC containers are also on the way! I expect to have them Thursday or Friday. I have now had a chance to play with the Broadway Mikado and it is superb! Great runner and awesome sound.
We are also ramping up the amount of DCC equipped inventory as well as ordering passenger car sets from Kato in both lighted and non lighted versions.
Neaneacar is my Ebay account name and I have been active listing some older locomotives and other items there, so please check that out also.
Finally, I would like to welcome Dylan to the team. A bit late as he started late last year!! However, with Norman going to college and my crazy travel show, he has had to step up and handle the store on his own much of the time. He is learning….baptism by fire!
Just announced is the long awaited NW2/SW7 by Broadway. Complete with sound and DCC, this is truly a wonderful little engine. Ken Silvestri has been showing off the metal body at train shows for over a year. The details and paint are excellent. The addition of the metal body helps to add some needed pulling strength to this model. Preorders are being taken now. Delivery in November of this year. Please EMAIL preorder requests as the website isn’t set up to handle reservations.
What a summer! I’ve almost forgotten what home looks like. Two National Shows, a super quick trip to England, a Memorial for my Father-in-Law, a whirlwind trip through New England including a stop to visit Russ Kaufman at the N Scale Architect World Headquarters, a visit to the West Coast including a stop at the Queen Mary, and back to the Midwest to drop Norman off at college. The shows were all very successful and fun. Once again we handed out ice cream at the NSE-this time in Chicago. Looking forward to Nashville-also in range of the ice cream truck!!
As always, the best part of all the traveling was to meet new people and get them excited about N Scale and to catch up with old friends!
Product has started flooding in with Mikados from Broadway, a rerun of the Spirit and George Bush engines from Kato, sound equipped locomotives from Kato, more covered hoppers from Scale Trains in N and more covered hoppers and box cars in HO, Pennsylvania P70 Passenger Cars in N, and much more.
We have been very busy behind the scenes and have made signifigant progress so that we can work to please you, the customer, better. probably the biggest part of that is the website has entered it’s second version and actually has content now! we will of course continue to add more content and hope to update here more frequently so you can stay up on what is happening. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming! The Broadway T1’s we mentioned in our last post have been out for a while and are available from us, and Scale Trains have just announced their new Dash 9 in N-scale which is available with dcc and sound.
We will also be at a lot of train shows in the next few months as we will actually be splitting up into a west coast, and an east coast/central roadshow which will allow us to hit a lot more areas we normally couldn’t go to. Exiting train show season we will be boosting the stores inventory and you can expect a lot more items on the website as they come back from the road and can be filtered in!
Anyway, thats all for now and we hope to see many of you in the coming months at the shows!
What’s new? The beginnings of the website for one! Turbo Trains w/DCC and sound are in stock. T-1 Steam locomotives from Broadway Limited are inbound as we speak and should be here by Thanksgiving. The store is undergoing a major renovation with space for a layout, a significantly improved space for N scale, a play table, and more space for HO. Better ergonomics, and possibly a major increase in the number of plastic models that we carry.
First Additions is still growing, although much more slowly. A modern farm tractor with front end shovel and a combine harvester are both being considered. A larger forklift and a backhoe are also being considered.
I am still trying to figure out the jpegs on the website, so I apologize for the size variations!
