St. Louis RPM

[Roger Holmes]

Any RW members going to the St. Louis RPM in Collinsville, IL this Friday and Saturday?  I plan to be there Saturday late morning to mid-afternoon.

[C855B]

Hi, Roger! RPM is Robyn's favorite train show (by far!), so we will be there with bells on, just don't know which day. I'm wanting to catch Brian Banna's clinic, but as of this evening they hadn't told him when his day/time slot was. If we're there on Saturday we'll keep our eyes peeled for you.

Too bad the Modutrak guys aren't this year's featured layout, it brings a bunch of TRW friends down from Chicago. I guess we have to cut the HO'ers some slack every once in a while.

For any lurkers, here's the link to the RPM info page: http://icg.home.mindspring.com/rpm/stlrpm.htm

[mcjaco]

Hi, Roger! RPM is Robyn's favorite train show (by far!), so we will be there with bells on, just don't know which day. I'm wanting to catch Brian Banna's clinic, but as of this evening they hadn't told him when his day/time slot was. If we're there on Saturday we'll keep our eyes peeled for you.

Too bad the Modutrak guys aren't this year's featured layout, it brings a bunch of TRW friends down from Chicago. I guess we have to cut the HO'ers some slack every once in a while.

For any lurkers, here's the link to the RPM info page: http://icg.home.mindspring.com/rpm/stlrpm.htm

Skibbe will be down there, you can bug him.  Naturally it's the one weekend where we get asked to be in two different shows...

[Roger Holmes]

Had a great time today and enjoyed seeing Mike C855B and Robyn again.  The RPM meet is quite HO-centric but great modeling is great modeling in any scale.  A fair number of N sale diesels which were superbly done. Most of the dealers were exclusively HO but there was a smattering of N scale freight cars. I didn't see Skibbe.

Had a very pleasant visit with our Canadian friends from Rapido.  Didn't see the Turbos but there was a modern diesel on their table.  I spent most of my time drooling over the bus models and got an inkling that if enough of us show interest they might appear in N scale.

I attended this show after cancelling plans to go to the National Show in Kansas City (I've been to 3 Nationals and the one in Indy was a disappointment.) So, with all the money we saved by not going to KC I decided a treat was in order and bought the Iowa Scaled Engineering throttle directly from their booth.  I can't try it out without a Digitrax LNWI which I just ordered and should be here Thursday.  Looking forward to running with it.  The unit I ran at their booth was a blast.

[C855B]

Likewise, Roger! Congrats on the throttle.

Roger, Robyn and I had a great chat with our Rapido friend. He was displaying, among their other great stuff, pre-production models of the Dash 8-C40M:





I have a few other pictures from the outing that I have not yet had the chance to review. Bought the two PanPastels weathering kits (rust and schmutz grime), so I'm looking forward to giving 'em a go. Or, rather, having Robyn try them out.

Chatted with the Central Valley guy (Jeff Parker) for a few minutes after spotting the CVT curvable tie sampler pack on his table, handing him the few bucks for it. "First one I've sold in two years," he said. "The internet killed me on it!" Apparently reaction on another forum was so strong and so... well, hateful, it sucked all the life out of sales, and he couldn't help but take it personally. I apologized to him for not trying it out sooner since I like the concept but had already made a wholesale buy of flex for the layout "when I could get it!" after all the supply chain difficulties. He asked for feedback once I had a chance to try it. "Will do, Jeff."