York Oct 2017

[Carey Williams]

Hello all

2017 October York is now in the history books .....lots of trains and lots of people . Beautiful weather ( much too nice to be inside ....) tables filled with lots of "vintage" Williams , MTH , etc .... not my idea of vintage ... for the real "vintage" O scale ....few and far between ...York of course is all about Tinplate ....many cases when a tinplate dealer gets an odd O scale piece the price is incredibility high ( for O scale ) but in line with tinplate type trains ....dedicated O scale meets seem to be the most fertile ground to find reasonably priced O scale . Overall I'd say prices were gravity bound and not a huge amount of stuff moving .... I collect a wide variety of trains ...so among each field the rare and exotic always moves quickly ..the mundane and common not so much .

Volume -wise vintage O scale had a minuscule presence...even down from April ......but a few new treasures were added .

Tom Bedell's big brass brick ...began production in 1936 ..when listed in the 1951 Walther's catalog claims of some 600 of these were faithfully serving their owners happily pulling anything and everything you could couple to it .... this one is only a single motor ...note prototypical toggle switch on the roof and exposed light bulbs . Supporting a flashy paint scheme from a club layout in the Maryland area that disbanded some 30 years ago when the seller I bought it from bought it.

Hand lettered pieces always are of interest ... Jim did an excellent article in O scale trains about the lure of hand lettered cars ... the final touches to the car kit could be elevated it to a masterpiece ....or to be lost in a freight yard depending on the talents of the individual hands lettering the model ......decals were the great leveler of the end product .... ( assuming you could slide them on straight and not backwards) .

So laying on the table were 3 matching hoppers all hand lettered .... sides are sheet metal , center body wood ....any identification as to maker ? ... they are wide ... a weight was added for a little ballast in the bottom of the hopper .

So only 5 1/2 months till April York ....

Cheers Carey

IMG_6330.JPG (1.96 MiB) Viewed 1265 times

IMG_6329.JPG (2.08 MiB) Viewed 1265 times

IMG_6331.JPG (2.07 MiB) Viewed 1265 times

IMG_6332.JPG (1.78 MiB) Viewed 1265 times

[E7]

Haven't been to York in several years. I let my TCA membership lapse somewhere along the way not too long after they changed the start to Thursday. Used to go over there looking for 2 rail stuff, and it seemed like the 2 rail dealers which were a minority, were getting even more so that. Also used to go with a friend who ended up bailing out of O scale, and it was always a bit more fun with someone else there to talk about the stuff you saw. Maybe do York again someday, maybe not.