An Unexpected Find

Autumn scene, N scale, at the Rutland Train Show.

Sheila and I drove down to Rutland on Saturday to attend a very small train show. This show is an annual event hosted by the Rutland Railway Association and the Rutland Railroad Museum. We've been to this show in previous years so I was aware it was a small show, relatively speaking. Compared to the Amherst Railway Society's show in Springfield, MA every year, all shows are small but this show in Rutland is so small that it only requires about an hour of time.

The main reasons for attending the show in Rutland yesterday were, first, to get out of the house for a welcome change in scenery. My health has really limited my ability to get out of the house and socialize. I often go a few weeks looking at the same walls all day and all night so our primary reason for wandering down to Rutland for this show was to get out!

The next reason for heading to the show was simply because we enjoy model railroading and enjoy viewing this complicated hobby as an art form. Each modeler's work is different.

One last reason to head down to Rutland was to get a nice view of the autumn foliage. Some areas, particularly at higher altitudes, had some spectacular color. Other areas were still a bit bland. It was a really nice drive though and I shot a lot of photos through the passenger window while Sheila drove. I'll add some of those foliage photos to another blog entry sometime soon.

The funny thing about attending this show was that this particular time we attended the show with no money in our pockets because I didn't expect to find anything on my wish list at this relatively small show. When we head down to the sprawling Amherst Railway Society's show every year in January, I always have a few hundred dollars in cash on me in the hope I will find a few good buys among the hundreds of vendors. Rutland's show is so small that I really didn't anticipate finding anything worth buying. 

My new G scale train set on our fireplace mantle including a 4-6-0 steam locomotive,
tender, gondola, and caboose measuring five feet long!  By comparison...
the yellow switcher diesel (to the right) is an O scale locomotive (Lionel size)...

We had walked through about half of the show when I spotted a big G scale train set sitting on a vendor's table. I had my eye on this set for the past couple of years but, until now, I just could not justify the cost. I only wanted this set to use as a display on a shelf. The trains in this set have a lot of potential for adding fine detail parts because the model is so large. Plus, my eyesight and steadiness of my hands is not even close to what it used to be nor should be so this larger scale really excited me. I decided to walk through the rest of the show before coming back to decide on whether to buy this set or not. I didn't want to make an impulse purchase only to regret it later.

For those unfamiliar with the scales in model railroading, G scale is a very large scale. Everyone seems to be familiar with Lionel sized trains so I will use those common Lionel Christmas trains as a reference. Lionel trains are O scale with a 1:48 scale ratio. G scale is approximately twice the size of O scale. This is some really large stuff!

My new G scale locomotive...

Realistically speaking, we do not have the room for a G scale layout in our tiny home nor could I afford to do so. G scale model railroading is quite expensive. Well, O scale model railroading is quite expensive... G scale model railroading is exorbitantly expensive on my limited pension! Because of these valid reasons, my interest in this particular G scale train set was simply to use this set as a highly detailed shelf display. Of course, it would need to be a large shelf too!

So, I spot this train set sitting on a vendor's table... after a quick look, we continued to make our rounds around the show... I decided that I would take another look at the set before we left the show. By the time we finished walking around the show, I knew that if I didn't buy this set, I would regret it for the next few months. 

The price read, $50... $50? That must be for just the giant steam locomotive, right? Even so, that would be a great price! I look more closely at the price label and see that the price includes the locomotive, tender, a caboose, a gondola and a large (too large for our small home) yet minimum diameter circle of track. Only $50? I needed to look more closely...

I picked up this behemoth and the vendor approached. He candidly and honestly explained that he wasn't sure whether it worked or not. He felt it ran on a battery but as I was handling this monster of a locomotive I was thinking, "it is too heavy to be a battery operated set". Sure enough, there was a compartment in the tender for a 9 volt battery but I was pretty sure that was only to power the sound on this two and a half foot long locomotive and tender. I continued my limited visual inspection as we talked...

One of the operating layouts at the Rutland Show....

I could see electrical contacts on the driver wheels so I had a good feeling that this was indeed the set I have had my eye on for a couple of years. I could identify it as a Bachmann set which is the manufacturer of the set which interested me so that was good too. 

The vendor said he wasn't sure whether or not this thing ran at all but I didn't really need this set to run anyway since I don't have the room for that but it would be nice if I could occasionally set up some track outdoors to run this thing. The grandchildren would certainly like that! 

Of course, at the time, I wasn't thinking about the fact that if this set did run, even if I got an exceptionally good deal on this train set I would want/need more of this very expensive track so I could occasionally run the train. This track averages about $8 per small piece. Just the smallest possible circle of track requires 12 pieces of track... that alone is about $100! At this rate, track gets very expensive very quickly!

The vendor was really motivated to get rid of this set and offered a price of $40 for everything if I would just take it all! I quickly handed him the lone $10 bill in my wallet so he would hold it for me while I went to retrieve more cash. We quickly found an ATM and happily purchased this G scale train set.

So... the one time I didn't plan on buying anything at a train show... I stumble upon a very unexpected but awesome find!

One of the operating layouts at the Rutland Show...

EDIT:  I subsequently found out that what I thought was a G scale train set was actually an Fn3 train set!  F scale is the next larger scale beyond G scale.  This is a narrow gauge train so the rails are closer together than normal so this Fn3 train runs on G scale track.  This is the same reason why my O scale narrow gauge trains run on HO scale track.  Anyway, this was a great find!