2015-2016 NYS Train Show Schedule

It would be hard to do all three, it's about 90 minutes from Binghamton to Fulton and close to two hours from there to Batavia.

From what I hear, Fulton will just be a local guy, Norwood, and perhaps one or two other dealers, plus the Oswego Valley layouts. Don't get me wrong, if it's close, go, just don't expect as many dealers as the other shows.

I was at the Fulton show with the Funtrak layout. Three ho vendors and 5 or so with Lionel which is more than in the past. A steady stream of people all day. If you're on the fence about coming it might be worth the trip.

Binghamton was down from previous years and the crowd died off earlier. Not sure why unless it was due to Allentown also being that weekend.

Batavia my sales were actually up a little over last year, but with the nicer weather it too slowed down earlier than usual.

Was a little surprised the new, fresh out of the container piece I had didn't sell. No one else had any.



This weekend is Hamburg, weather forecast shows decent so far. Not sure what to expect after last year.


I can confirm there will be a Lockport show in 2016, April 23-24. They expect to have more dealers, from what he said this year it conflicted with York or another large show that it won't for next year. Whether or not it will have more attendance, however, is the big question.

The only date I don't have for sure for 2016 yet is if they do the Amsterdam show again. I got a survey from them in the mail and they wanted to do it the same day as spring Batavia (April 10) but it wasn't set in stone.

brockwaythemusician wrote: Three ho vendors and 5 or so with Lionel which is more than in the past. .

The vendors were ho's, or they were selling ho's?

Mark your calendars, the "Rails Along the Mohawk" Amsterdam train show is officially set for April 10, 2016. Time will be 10-3 this year. Show flyers are being printed as I type this.

So they went on ahead and made it opposite Spring Batavia? Really?

I can't go. I paid for my Batavia table last week, as did every other vendor there. They are the one show where you renew your table for the next one, at the show itself (I wish Binghamton would also do that). If you're not at the show, you risk not getting in for the next one. And I sell twice as much at a bad Batavia as I did at the one Amsterdam show, so regardless of how much I enjoyed going, I have to go where I'll sell the most.

How many other vendors that affects, I don't know, but chances are I won't go back at all if they want to play games like this. That's why I never went back to the Robeson show in Binghamton, they kept scheduling it opposite other events with no regard whateosever for the vendors. And you'll notice that show no longer exists. I mean I get that it's screwed up because Easter is the 27th of March, when Batavia would have been, and they had to back off another week because of Greenberg coming back to Rochester, but come on. It doesn't matter that they don't compete for attendance - you're competing for dealers. And you're going to have to look at when both Greenberg and Batavia are every year versus Easter to schedule this show with no major conflict, at least within the state.


Too bad they can't delay it a week. That's all they have to do, and there's no real reason they can't at this early of a date. Or even move it up to the weekend before Easter, since it's a Sunday show it won't conflict with Binghamton's spring show. I doubt anything else is going on in that mall.


I'll talk to some of the other dealers this weekend at the WNYRHS show and see how many would go if it were a week later. I bet I can find at least a couple who aren't so far west of Syracuse they'd try it.

lvrr325

April 10 is the only weekend we could make it, as the River Front Center has a long standing event scheduled for the following weekend. I'm sorry it has a conflict with Batavia. Last year the date lucked out much better.

Buffalo was odd for me, terrible Saturday, then I sold more on Sunday and overall was up from the last fall show I have to compare to. I didn't catch what the final attendance was.

I have a batch of flyers for upcoming events but the most relevant upcoming show is another WNY event, in Buffalo at the Broadway Market The Holiday Train and Craft Show is Dec 19-20. Not far from Central Terminal, in a lovely section of town, I wish them luck but I'm taking that weekend off.

After the fact, but the Sayre Historical Society held a train show in the Lehigh Valley station in Sayre on November 28th. I would have gone down if I'd caught it sooner, but the advertising was all local. I haven't been down there in way too long.

Since Sayre is just over the state line, if they do it again next year I'll include it in the thread for the next season's shows.

I went to the show in Albany at the Polish Community Center a couple of weeks ago and it was very nice. However, the trend there (and some other shows I have been too) have a trend where the vendors/dealers start packing up an hour early. That sucks for the public. If vendors are going to be allowed to do this, then the venue shouldn't charge for admission during the last hour. I saw new people coming in while the dealers were quickly trying to put there stuff away. It wasn't like the show ran until 5 or 6 PM. If a show is listed as running until 3, then the vendors should be required to keep their stuff for sale until 3.

As an experienced vendor I can tell you exactly how a show goes.

People with money to burn (which there's not many of anymore) come around and buy stuff within the first hour.

Most people walk around the whole show then come back to buy stuff. I'm busiest the second hour to 90 minutes of the show. And then it dies off.

After that you sit there and try not to fall asleep to sell something here or there. Once you get to the last hour or so, with an hour or two (or three) drive home to contend with, you start packing so you're not there all night. Because you will sell nothing, or almost nothing, in the last couple hours of a show. The late people all tend to be looky-loos, folks who have no idea what they're looking at (or think it's still 1975) and if they do want to buy they think they should be able to get things for 10 cents on the dollar. I always get my loose stuff that takes the most handling back in it's tub early. The rest is all arranged for a speedy teardown without a ton of effort.

I notice at Hamburg they're not even charging people to get in at least the last half hour or so of the scheduled run time.

Now if people were lined up all day long to buy stuff, maybe it would be a different story, but even the guys who say they'll come back, don't come back.

Frankly this is why I wish some two-day shows were one-day shows. It would force all the people who will buy to come in one day, and save me $75 or more in expenses between a motel and meals. When a show is really marginal, that extra expense hurts. I'm already trying to get ahead in a market where my profit comes from about 10% of the list price on an item.


Great Train Extravaganza this weekend at the Egg Center in Albany. 10-4. Three trips up the ramps to the elevators and down means an early pack there too, although they won't put the ramps out until the show is actually over, so plan ahead. I hope the sales are more like in previous years than they were in 2014.

For what it's worth, the last hour at GTE I had one sale for a whopping $20 and the guy acted like he was doing me a favor offering me $5 less than something brand new in the box that I was already selling for $10 off the list price. He then opens his wallet and I can see he could have given me what I wanted. If it had been a better day I'd have said no.

Their attendance was down a little more, to just 2800. I could swear they pulled in 5,000+ people just four or five years ago. I know I had one year where it was busy all day, I never got a chance to look around, and the sales showed it. This year, the opposite. I did talk to some other vendors and they seemed happy, and lots of people carrying bags walking around. Sometimes there's just no rhyme or reason to it. I know i have some good pieces, some of them the only ones in the room, and priced reasonably.

Can't even blame the weather, either, for whatever reason it never warmed up to the predicted high and the patchy fog never quite went away.


This weekend will be the RIT Tiger Tracks show. Not sure what to expect there, hopefully like Batavia and Hamburg the attendance and sales are up a little. But there's been years there where it was pretty miserable, too. My last one for this year.

Even if sales are down in the last hour, it is unfair to the paying public (in my opinion) to pack up early when a show is advertised to run until a certain date.

Actually they stopped charging to get in before the show ended here too.

Fair works both ways, it's not fair to make me sit there for nothing for an hour while you look and don't buy anything, either. I'm there to try to make a little money, not for my health.

RIT saw just shy of 3500 in two days, and the sales were decent. As is typical of two day shows, Sunday was slower with fewer attending. I'm also notcing this year more of a balancing out of sales from one day to the next, it used to be Sunday would be good for maybe half of Saturday, but at least for me several events have been about even.

The only thing that confused me was ESU Loksound was supposed to be there, but in that spot was a DCC vendor with items from multiple manufacturers.

I picked up a few flyers for 2016 dates and will update them sometime in the next couple weeks.