1/87 vehicle club at Amherst Rail Show

[cfesmire]

As many of you know, the 1/87 Vehicle Club was displaying at the Amherst Railway Show in W. Springfield Mass. this last weekend. With over 40 tables filled with vehicle modelers in our scale there was much to see and we were seen by many. The rail crowd was intensely interested and a lot of information was given about HO scale vehicles availability and variety. Over $3000 prizes were given to railway groups displaying the most appropriate (to scale, in era and well modeled) on a layout. I apologize for the limited amount of photos here but as others that took photos post them, I will try to provide links.
s191.photobucket.com/albums/z79/chesterf/shows/springfield%2010/

Chester

[Sylvain]

Thanks for the pictures anyway, Chester! In the picture with a lot of models of cars from the 50's, the models are by Joe Fay, aren't they?

[cfesmire]

Yes Sylvain, Joe did the module for the show of a Howard Johnson's diner (very nicely done!)
By the way, I only briefly met Joe last year but had some more time to spend with him this year. He's a lot of fun to be with.

[Sylvain]

Feb 4, 2010 0:43:29 GMT 1 cfesmire said:

Yes Sylvain, Joe did the module for the show of a Howard Johnson's diner (very nicely done!)
By the way, I only briefly met Joe last year but had some more time to spend with him this year. He's a lot of fun to be with.

Thanks Chester! I was sure it was some of his models.

[Wayne87th]

I must say that this show was a huge step for the 1/87 vehicle model world in the model railroad world. I am currently writing an article for the April edition of Model Railroad News ito of the prize winners and some observations. I will share some of those with you. A number of us noticed that HO railroaders do NOT know that 1/87 and HO are the same thing. Even worse, they see 1/87 as being bigger than HO (especially noticable with construction and mining equipment). We have a lot of work to do here given the huge potential that this group holds re vehicle sales. The 1/87 Vehicle Club's goal is to take this competition to other major railroad shows over the upcoming years, giving us exposure, credibility and hopefully orders for the 1/87 manafacturers!
As usual the 1/87 vehicles on display were mindblowing. The level of modeling in our hobby has grown exponentially. In due time pics will appear on the Club's website and you can see what I am talking about. While there were so many people who made this event to be what it turned out to be, big kudos must be given to Bob Johnson from our side and John Sacerdote from the HO railroad side for making this happen.
Wayne

[cny187]

It was great to see you guys at the show. In the past it was hard for me to get the hotels where you meet on Saturday night, having a group from out of town and one or two vehicles to get around, getting me to those meets to the rest of the fellas was not on the top of the list! It was nice to meet all of you that I had not met in years before and seeing old friends

My observation over the years, being in a model railroad club, and being more interested the vehicles, that the guys in model rr clubs forget the time period that they are modeling in and have cars and trucks from all over the 20th century. Even in our club, CNYMOD, it is very difficult to get the guys to pay attention. We had one guy get some of those Athearn John Deere bulldozers, the smaller modern ones (too modern for me to remember which model) and having a RR generally set in the 40’s-50’s I told him the were to modern, his solution was to rip off the air cleaner from the back of the cab! Most of the time guys think “well its just a car or truck it will work” But then you get a parking lot filled with Jordan vehicles or the vintage Classic Metal Works, and one late 80’s Mercedes, which during the contest, you guys didn’t notice, placed in a tunnel. I did not notice it until Sunday while we were packing. And the fella was less than responsive when I mentioned the judges feed back with use of “N” scale for forced prospective. I loved one of the guys answer to weathering vehicles “just spray them with Dullcote”

Thanks for being part of the show, can’t wait for next years show…

Andy

[Wayne87th]

Andy, I think that you are beginning to see what we are shooting for. I think that model railroaders are becoming more aware of the overall view of their layout. It seems to come in stages. At first it was the scenery, then buildings and now it is vehicles.
Keep in mind that I am not a model railroader as I ask this question. Do clubs have a mission statement or common goal that they agree to for their layouts?
One thing we noticed that many layouts were good in parts when it came to 1/87 vehicles. Like some modules showed a guy who put a lot of time and energy into his vehicle and then the next section has a guy who didn't give a rat's butt about it. It would seem to me that before a club allowed someone to bring in their module that they would agree to working towards the common goal of that club with minimum standards being set for not only trains, but scenery, buildings, people, topography and vehicles.

Why I am so excited about what happened at Amherst is that we can raise the bar. Many comments have been made on this list that 1/87 vehicle manafacturers are not finding a market for vehicles that we want in the railroad community.

We can change that!!

This is not just a Springfield, MA thing. Even those without rr layouts need to be ambassadors (in a positive, patient and understanding way) for our hobby. We cannot underestimate the potential there is in us turning around the model rr crowd.

One more observation and then I will get off my soap box. I was excited to see many younger (read those below the boomer generation) rr enthusiasts and participants. I think they is the key. There is a group called the Teen Association of Model Railroaders. They wrote an article in the Feb 2010 issue of Model Railroad News. They are struggling. We need to get behind those guys. In fact I am going to shoot off an email to some folk right after I have quit preaching here to see what we can do.

Wayne

[hovehicle]

Wayne,

I know you guys made some progress with model railroaders regarding vehicles and how important they are to completing a scene. It's mind-boggling that some model railroaders think that 1/87 is bigger than HO scale. OK, I am opening a window and screaming outside. There, I feel better! This reminds me of the flak Masterpiece took when they released their HO step van. Many model railroaders thought it was too big; in reality, there are many different sizes of step vans. M. railroaders tend to think that one size fits all. No, it doesn't work that way in real life or in HO scale. The bottom line is we do have work ahead of us, no doubt about it.

Vito L.

[jackfitz1944]

I am a model railroader from the USA. I have collected many HO scale vehicles. When I got the HO sacle 1953 Ford (Mini Metal?) I thought it was undersize until I saw a real one, wow was it small. I usually take a set of calipers and measure the wheel base, height, width, etc. and compare the model to the prototype. I was surprised how much difference in the size of the cars in the era I was modleing (1930's to 1950's).

[ponyman]

The problem isn't just the model rr's the majority of the LHS and clubs don't think that cars and trucks are part of railroading. so they don't show a lot of interest in them. I remember going into Caboose Hobbies in Denver a few years back and looking for some of Athearns UPS pup trailers and containers and being informed by the staff there that trucks were not part of railroading and that they just didn't carry them that they saw no point in carrying shelf warmers. This of coares sent me into a Bill Ingvall moment of heres your sign. Being a truck driver I informed the staff that just how in the he double L did they think that some of the frieght got to and from the railyards. My point is that we have to do a lot more (and so do the manufacturers ) to get the LHS to carry and handle 1/87 vehicles of all styles. I am a dealer for some of the manufacturers now as a favor to some of the clubs that my son and I belong to and my fellow drivers at Atlas Van Lines that collect 1/87 vehicles mostly trucks.

The local LHS where I live is mostly RC but he dabbles in other things MRRing being one of them but he stocks very little so if you want something he has to order it. I like a lot of other consumers want to see the item before I put a preorder in. Unfortunatley I believe this is why it is perceived that there is very little interest in 1/87,HO scale vehicles because very few dealers will order them into stock and short of advertising them briefly in a couple magazines there is no effort by the manufacturers to boost there sales of said vehicles. I cant tell you the last time I saw a display or other form of sales tool from the manufacturers to get there product out there. Actually I guess it would have been when Ricko sold the 2 Charger set for $14 but even then Ricko didn't do any advertising to speek of for it. I would say that the manufacturers need to put little xtra $ into the budget and do some xtra advertising rather than think the distributor ot the LHS is going to do it.
There is only one magazine out thet I know of in the MRR hobby that even works at bringing the railroaders current info on 1/87 vehicles and that is Model Railroad News edited by the one and only Bill Cawthorn with his section at the grade crossing which I look forward to every month non of the other publications even work half assedly at keeping the hobbyist informed on new vehicles and this is very sad.

With my 2 cents said I will stop my rant or run on the topic and just hope that in the near future we can bring more awareness to the much ignored 1/87 vehicles.

[hovehicle]

Bryan,

Very well said and I really look forward to each issue of MRN also. One of the main problems that I see right now is the absolute explosion of new products in the US model railroading industry. How does this affect us, you (collectively)ask? It's simple, most model railroaders will buy that new freight car or diesel before they even give a second thought to a vehicle. And when they do think of buying a vehicle, they don't want to spend more than 10.00 in my opinion. That's why cheap diecast has a future in our hobby, or even Main Street Motors type of plastic vehicles.

Model railroaders are used to 2-3 new announcements a month whereas we are lucky to get 1-2 newly tooled HO vehicles a year from certain manufacturers. Another problem is that we had momentum, and totally lost it. Losing Fresh Cherries and Reel Rides probably means nothing to most collectors in Europe, but over here in the US it was a huge loss because it presented decent value for the minimum amount of dollars spent by the train community on vehicles. That's why I hope that RPS can re-think their business and come out with a lesser detailed line. You know what, they would sell because of the excellent reputation of RPS and we know the tooling would be top-notch.

Right now, all we can do for a start is to walk in a hobby shop that we know has a good selection of HO vehicles and buy a few to support the cause. You are correct Bryan, not many shops will carry open stock of HO vehicles. Not over here in the US! Hopefully, this trend will reverse itself and we'll get some momentum again.

Vito L.

[Wayne87th]

I think this is going to be a step by step thing. I think why I was so encouraged by the Amherst show is that there were just shy of 21,500 people that walked into that show. Add to that 3,200 vendors. That's almost 25,000 people. I doubt many LHS have as many as that in 5 years! We were able to reach a big group.

The $3,000 prize pool also helped the HO rr guys see that we are serious and helped boost our credibility. I can tell you that I am beginning to see an attitude change by the rr guys. The layout that won best of show placed 2nd in the vehicle contest. The layout that won the vehicle contest also placed in the best of show. That tells me that vehicles are beginning to play an important role in layouts.

Yes, some layouts were a joke when it came to vehicle use, but the majority were trying to get there. The NMRA society is fast losing its grip on this hobby and along with it the attitude that went along with many in that group. Many RR shops (in my experience) are run by NMRA types.

As the 1/87 Vehicle Club looks at taking this concept to the other bigger shows in the country over the next few years, I think we will make an impact, one model at a time..

On a lighter note ponyman - I am a contributing editor for MRN. Not beating my own drum, just a point of clarification.

Wayne

[ponyman]

Wayne I am so sorry I forgot to mention you as part of the magazine. I guess I was just typing to fast trying not to forget what I wanted to say. ;D You do a great job as well I just wish some of the other MRR magazines would spend some time in a few of there issues each year on vehicles also. I had reported before that Petersen Publishing was planning on producing a 1/87 vehicle magazine but I guess that was just lip service on their part since we haven't heard anymore from them since I talked to them at iHobby.

On the brighter side the guys out in California that are members of the 1-87 vehicle club are doing an outstanding job of making modelers aware of our scale also. I was at the Anahiem show in January and they had 3 or 4 tables set up showing of all different varieties of vehicles and I see that they were at the WGH show in Long Beach this weekend also with tables setup showing of some outstanding work. I thought I was going to be at the show also but instead I'm in Vegas waiting for a show to end here.So at least we have some exposure on both coasts now to work on the mid west Trainfest is a great show and my MRR club in Oklahoma hosts a train show in Enid every April and sets up at the Oklahoma City show in December so I am going to talk to them and see if they can set up a table or two at each show to show off some vehicles there. Since I'm always on the road doing shows or Hospitals for Atlas Van Lines I never seem to get home when these shows are happening or I would set the tables up myself.
We'll get there it just going to take more time after all we Americans are pretty darn stubborn when it comes to change you have to hit some of us with a Mack truck to get our attention. ;D