Lionelski posted:The MTH repair tent was just outside of the grandstands.
What were they thinking?? The long, long line of people waiting outside the tent with purple boxes of trains needing repair was NOT the kind of publicity, I'm sure, that MTH wanted.
I thought it was an awesome service offering at the time. For most, they would fix it during the meet and you went home with a fixed item. So no risk of shipping damage for 2 trips. I had them fix a faulty R21 redbird subway set that had a messed up odometer/chronometer correlation (showed about 6 hours (which was true), but around 29,500 miles (which is physically impossible in 6 hours)). It took some convincing for them to reset it (probably because of the sales hype of how the chronometer/odometer is supposed to be an accurate representation of use), but I ultimately left with an engine with this flaw fixed.
In later times it may have just become a drop off, so you still had the risk of shipping damage to get the item back to you.
Another memory: In the Yellow hall "booths" that many of the larger dealers were crammed into, it was a lot more packed. I recall in the Nicholas Smith booth(I'm pretty sure, but probably could have been others) , there was one guy who would stay standing up on the tables so he could get around and reach anything up higher on the display. Those booths were far inferior to what became available to dealers in terms of square footage when the Orange Hall opened. Those little booths were probably not larger than something like 15' x 15' (maybe 20' x 20', but that seems too generous), with a small table or 2 on each side of the entry in front. And a few of the dealers (Nicholas Smith, Grzyboski, C Ro as a few examples) might have had an extension of the booth by having a few tables just opposite their booth across the aisle. A far cry from the huge spaces each of these dealers occupy in the Orange Hall now.
-Dave
