Went to this train show at the Orange County fairgrounds in Orange County CA on Sunday 2/16. There were two show buildings, one with vendors and one with train layouts. There were a few large vendor booths including: Kato, Bachmann, ScaleTrains, Lionel, Broadway Limited and Caboose Industries. Kato, Scaletrains and Bachmann had a lot of trains on display. Bachmann had a big multilevel Thomas layout. I spent some time talking to the Caboose Industries owner (Ground throws), he mentioned that the other booths did not want to display the ground throws as it was too easy to steal this $4 item! I had not realized how many different ground throw models there are. I did not find the N parts that I was looking for but picked up some estate sale styrene and some canopy glue. However the layouts were inspirational, the scenery on the O narrow gauge and HO tram layouts was as usual the best. There were several modular layouts and the Ntrak had some nice scenes. But, I was blown away by the scenery on the ZoCal Z-scale modular layout. I have added some photos but pictures are not my strong suit! - Tonkphilip
Thanks for the pictures! The Kato, Bachmann and Caboose booths look the same as the ones in the Amherst show in Massachusetts at the end of January. Thomas always gets the kids' interest!
MK, This was a WGH (Worlds Greatest Hobby) show, so perhaps they have the same vendors at each show? - Tonkphilip
This was actually run by Great Train Show and somehow they partnered with World's Greatest Hobby and market it under the WGH name to have elements of both (Vendors + Layouts = GTS; Manufacturers = WGH). I've been to the Costa Mesa show before (I believe the last time was 2020), it took place in the same hall and it looked like 70% of the same vendors in the same places, with the only difference being the Kato, Lionel, Bachmann, ScaleTrains, BLI and Caboose Industries booths at the front. Everyone gets different things out of a train show, but for me as an N scaler, shopping-wise the WGH/GTS in Costa Mesa was kind of a disappointment. I ended up not buying anything. I went to the World's Greatest Hobby show in Long Beach, CA back in 2010 and that was an amazing show. I went on Saturday the 15th. It wasn't a total waste as I got to see the Kato N scale Pacific Surfliner in person for the first time (I already ordered an 8-piece set which arrived on Monday, so I guess I already had my fill of purchasing for the week, lol). Also, I got to see Bachmann's tooling sample of their upcoming Siemens Venture passenger cars, which should be coming out in December:
Metro Red Line, You make an interesting comment on the N shopping at the Costa Mesa show. There was one very nice HO/N retailer from Chico but I only purchased styrene and glue. I went to Long Beach as well but for the National Train show in 2024, the shopping there was also very good. - Tonkphilip
Yeah I went to the Long Beach National Train Show last August as well. Funny thing was the entire space was only like 1/8 the size of the Costa Mesa show (it was supposed to take place at the Long Beach Convention Center across the street but was massively downsized) but there were a good 4-5 well-stocked hobby shops selling there. I just remembered that the last WGH show in Southern California was in Pomona (Fairplex) in February 2017. That was actually a good one too, I carpooled with an HO scaler friend of mine and we ran into some folks at that show that we knew. I had a good haul from that show as well!
