Saturday and Sunday the Biannual Tampa Train Show held at the Hillsbough County Fair grounds. This year they had some new venders, but mostly the same ones they have had over the last 4 years I have been attending. I missed last years show due to my wife being in and out of the Hospital during this time period. So I can only compare to my previous attendance.
This year if you were into G Scale there was a large presence of G Scale venders and offerings. Not a much in O scale, Hollash's Trains always dose well, since he is the only one that sells repair parts and the fact that his prices are reasonable compared to the other venders. Surprisingly there was less HO and N gauge offerings. The other increase in venders items was S Gauge and in custom built buildings. If you are into Tinplate there was a decent amount of offerings from the previous years especially pre war. There also was missing, some of the venders from the past plus the ones still who doing the train show circuit that sell in my opinion junk. No barn finds at this years show that I could see.
This years layouts were interesting with one actually for sale. I figured if I had to ask I knew I couldn't afford it. It was nice though and well built. The Kids ride was outside this year. In its place there was a club running a rather large G gauge layout. Overall I would say pervious shows were better. Nothing really pop out at me and said buy me. The only thing that did kind pop out at me was two G gauge CB&Q GP40 and SD40-2. They were real nice but currently not into G scale. Another vendor who has had the same engines for sale at least 3 years running was two GP30s one an MTH SAL PS2 and a Lionel SCL still in SAL livery. The issue here was he wanted what they would of cost new and the engines were used and He didn't seem to really want to come up with a reasonable price for both. So this year depending on what you were looking for It would of been a good show or a bad show. For myself it was slim pickens so I actually walked out with nothing in my hand.
