Did you get the feeling from the crowd, that the hobby might be recuperating from the decline it’s been going through?
How many Sq. Ft. is the Youngs building ?
I did see several younger (20 and up year olds) people buying so I think that’s a hopeful sign for the hobby.
I know they don’t teach industrial arts in school and I think that has hurt many hobby’s. That is where I got my love of wood working, turned my first floor lamp in high school, it sits in my living room now.
We had a great time at the show and are looking forward to next year.
That’s encouraging. The crowd seemed thin to me, but I spent a lot of time at the LSC table in the back. I was disappointed that I missed both of Nancy’s seminars. Saturday I forgot and Sunday there was no one around before and 15 minutes after the start time, so I left, I learned later everyone showed up just after that 
I enjoyed the show and I want to thank "Bob " and Stan and all the rest for a great show !
Here’s another video of Larry Mosier’s (sp?) Ore Train at NELSTS. This was taken to see how well cars track through the funky home-made diamond crossing. I was surprised that only a few cars bumped in the big gap!
Cross posted on Bill’s Diamond Crossing thread.
2 Likes
Thanks guys for all your pics and vids!
That’s AWESOME that attendance doubled over last year!! A big encouragement!
I was able to have a great time myself yesterday, visiting Bruce Chandler (probably my first “hero” in the hobby, with his wonderful build articles in GR, and living very near where we used to). What a great guy!!
Then I briefly visited Jim Kottencamp, who gave me a personal tour of his amazing layout… which Bruce has done a great photo essay on. Wow… He was hosting a steamup, and Jerry B. and others were running trains.
So even though we couldn’t be with y’all up north, a few of us LSC’ers had good fellowship down south.
Cliff
55,000sf so over double
1 Like
Not sure if you are joking or maybe things are different in Australia but model railroading has seen substantial growth since Covid.
great news
great show
thanks to all who made it happen.
Dan,
That’s very good news then.
Australia, being on the end of the supply chain literally closed its doors for two years to travel. People were stranded inside and outside the country. Even interstate commerce was severely affected. Borders between states in Australia were closed as well. Truckers had long waits at the border and often had to be checked in and out at various points along their routes. We still are having supply chain issues.
Since Covid we have seen a number of “train shops” go out of business or rebrand themselves as hobby shops, now selling cars, and airplanes etc. Another G Scale only supplier who is finding his sales of new items have dropped while sales of pre-loved items are selling blames shipping costs. It may be partly due to USPS dropping ground shipping. Many ocean going ships got taken to the scrapyard during covid and when they arrived here they had to go through big cleaning procedures. Shipping is improving post COVID but more often than not the shipping from overseas still costs more than the price of the purchased item.
we’ve got the same problem.
but it can’t be only the transportcosts.
there must be a good part of politics/tarifs included.
if i buy something of 50$ worth from the states or canada, i must calculate an additional 75$ for “transport”.
from england the same item would cost about 50 to 60$ postage.
from netherlands or germany about 50$, from swizerland or austria about 60$.
but from india or china for the same thing or something similar in worth and bulk - i only pay between 20 and 30$ for transport.
so the longer the distance, the cheaper the transport.
we live in a crazy time.
That was happening here in the states for years prior to covid.
The shops that specialize in G scale are flourishing (RLD, Onlytrains, Star Hobby, Upland Trains, Reindeer Pass, Charles Ro, Trainz.com etc.) and there are a handful of new home-based businesses like Melovetrains that purchase large collections for resale. In a recent interview Chris Dixon (owner of melovetrains) reported that when he picks up a large collection half of it will be sold by the time he gets home.
Garden RR Club membership is up.
Attendance at G scale shows is up and new ones have been added.
I belong to a number of G scale FB groups the largest being “G Scale Trains” which went from 6000 members pre-covid to 14,000 now. Other G scale FB groups have had similar growth.
The fact that prices have gone up is an indication of increased interest. If the hobby was on the decline then the prices would be down not up. I see some folks on FB complain that prices are too high and they can no longer afford to be in this hobby. That just means that individual’s interest has declined. There are still plenty of people buying.
It’s true there are few new models available, but personally I think that’s a good thing as it forces creativity. 
Larry was able to pickup the brass caboose at the white elephant tables had 2 both sold in min. of being put down.
Funny thing about that. Larry had shown me a picture of the PRR caboose the day before asking about the possibility of printing one as he wanted to get an F7 ABBA set but wouldn’t do it unless he had the caboose. When I saw it at the white elephant table I literally ran to get him. He was thrilled! I’m sure we will see the new power and caboose bracketing the ore train at the Jan show!
That is an excellent point Dan. I used to wish we had the selection in G-scale available from the HO Walthers catalogue.
There’s a satisfaction to building something from the ground up even if it takes me 10 times longer to get a unique result I’m happy with.
It also keeps me off the street.