I don’t miss them at all. Radio Shack in Canada became a joke in their last few years. They had next to nothing useful on their shelves from a modelling perspective. Once I discovered Digi-Key I never went back to RS.
Unfortunately Digi-Key has gotten quite expensive in the last two or three years so I don’t shop there anymore either.
Dave
Hi,
I miss the “old style” Radio Shack and its predecessor Allied Radio. Back in the early '60s, I was a builder of Knight Kits, and they were a great education.
When I say “old style”, I mean when you could go in one and find all the electrical parts and supplies a hobbyist could want. But then in the early 2000s, they turned into cell phone and toy stores - forcing me (as an example) to go shopping on the Net or at the big box stores.
Sadly, if they maintained the old style format, they would likely have gone out of business anyway. The demand for such stuff, and the folks that “build their own” has diminished greatly… Ha, if there ain’t an “app” for it, forgetaboutit!
I miss them even though the one in town was mostly phones.
Unfortunately, as the small stores can’t compete on the big ticket items they go out of business. And the local Walmart/Target/Lowes/etc just doesn’t carry most of the small stuff that I need.
Paul
If you’re ever in the Twin Cities, stop by Ax-Man Surplus, located on University Avenue in Saint Paul. They have a huge selection of used electronics: resistors, capacitors, inductors, switches of all types, transistors, vacuum tubes, power supplies, motors, etc.
https://www.ax-man.com/collections/electrical-components
They also have an iron lung, oscilloscopes, and other stuff that is worth a look. It is a unique place.
Have you tried googling radio shack and searching for local stores? I searched for locations in the 5301 zip code and a number of locations appear. These are not “radio shack” stores per se, but are “authorized” RS dealers. I think that some of them are independent stores. What they actually carry is another matter, but it doesn’t cost much for a call to ask if the have what you need.,
You might want to try American Science & Surplus on Milwaukee’s south side. You never know what you’ll find there – which is both a plus and a minus. And what they do have might or might not have instructions. What they always have is the most interesting array of customers. The sorts of folks Homeland Security would be interested in chatting with.
As regards Radio Shack – agree with those above that the RS of old was an entirely different experience. And it had competitors.
Dave Nelson
I vote for Radio Shack was still reasonably good (NY tri-state) till the mid/late 1990s, as the cell phone (and later smart-phone) “boom” had not yet fully taken hold. They did do electronics in that era, and several Radio Shacks at the time had those big mesh satellite dishes by the entrance. Also the bookshelf speakers (Realistic IIRC) were surprizing good and reasonably priced - I still have a set in stored in the attic.
Way back in my memory, as a young kid I recall going to Lafayette Electronics with my Dad in the 1970s - the “flagship” Syosset store - which seemed pretty huge (of course, I was smaller back then so everything seemed huge). I remember it being well organized and stocked (unlike the remnant stores of the Canal Street “Radio-Row” by the 1980s - mostly 3rd rate consumer electronics junk by then), but it apparently was closed in 1981, according to the wiki article: Lafayette Radio Electronics. Heh, from that article: “Lafayette-Circuit City fell due to competition from other New York area electronic retailers such as Newmark and Lewis, Trader Horn, The Wiz, Crazy Eddie, and PC Richard”. Except for PC Richards the other stores listed closed completely or became small niche web-tailers…
I recall a year or so ago some clickbait article where they took a Radio Shack advertising circular from 1990 or so, went thru the individual items on sale (clock, calculator, phone (wireless, but not celluar), digital thermometer, radio and so on) and showed how all those functions could be done on a smart phone. Oh well, I guess.
Available profit is insufficient to fund a brick and mortar electronics store.
I now use
That’s exactly the problem. It’s one thing when you are a consumer products manufacturer and you buy a milion resistors on spools at a time. But when Joe Maker walks in and wants two 1K resistors - the time it takes the counter person to ring up the order isn’t even covered by the profit margin on those resistors. Let alone the rent, electricity, etc. Radio Shack was already marking those resistors up to a ridiculously high profit if expressed in percentage, but 500% markup on a 1 cent resistor means selling it for 6 cents. Wow 500% - yeah, but it’s 5 cents of profit, that’s all. Unless they sell a million resistors, there’s just no money in it.
–Randy
I was in R.S. about once a week. Started teaching my 2 1/2 YO grandson switches and lights on 12v. by letting him (Help). He is now almost 5. can wire all the simple controls on his train set. Yes, By-all-means I need a source for these things.
I can’t say I really miss Radio Shack. I remember going into my local store once in the early '90s looking for male RCA plugs. The workers had zero idea what I needed. In the late '90s while in college I had an opportunity to work at a Radio Shack (totally different location). I sat through their employee orientation and came to realize why Radio Shack was starting to struggle, and why they couldn’t hold onto people. The entire training was about hard selling customers, how to talk them into the extras they didn’t really need, and just how low your base pay rate was (all commission jobs). They actually said there was very little need to know about the actual products you were selling as the typical customer didn’t know either. I attended their new employee orientation, but I never worked a day for them (or shopped there again for that matter).
That started in the 80’s, when they gave us quotas on how many of their credit cards to get applications form (didn;t really matter if they were approved or not). hey wanted us to get everyone who came in for their free battery of the month to fill out a credit card application!
Corporate lost all direction. Manager of my store, second one I worked at (changed after the summer when I went back to college, to work at a closer store) had all of the various stereo equipment and speakers wired up so we could demo anything, any combination of components, to a customer. His boss, the district manager, one day told him to rip it all out, the ONLY system that should be hooked up and funtion was whatever they were featuring in the current sales flyer. Nothign else. Come inventory time, we had two huge boxes of all the RCA cables, coax cables, switchboxes, and amps in the back - my boss sai he wasn;t counting any of that stuff and if I wanted it, I was welcome to it. I supplied family and friends with TV and stereo hookups for YEARS and never emptied the boxes.
I joke that the last person who worked for Radio Shack that actually knew anything quit when I quit, but it’s not far from the truth.
–Randy
The OP never seems to join in on the discussions he starts. Just like the signal thread.
Oh well.
Mike.
Often par for the course around here!
Just there on Sunday. It can be frustrating trying to find exacly what one needs, though.
They have several stores in the area: https://www.ax-man.com/pages/contact-us
Only saw one small reference to this source. Granted it is mail order but I use to get pretty good service from them when I lived up north
Thank you everyone for all your input. I saw a reference to a signal thread I started as well and how I was not continuing in on the conversations. Truth is, I have been taking in the massive amounts of information and trying to figure out how to apply it to my layout. So I am going to tie my 2 threads together for a minute.
Who out there has had any good experience with wiring trackside signals for operation?
Now I know where to place my signals and what i want them to indicate. I know that i want some to display occupancy for my sidings and others for the main, and others to indicate the throw direction of my switches. I see multiple options out there for programming relays that respond to IR sensors, magnetic reed switches, block detection and photo cells… but many are pretty costly.
In hindsight, I should have planned this before laying my track, but what’s done is done. So I ask of you…
Any advice for finding these small electrical relays and the best way to wire them? I look forward to learning even more… this project can get a little intimidating and overwhelming at times… thanks again!
We have an Ax Man Surplus in St Louis Park. I love that place, they have different things coming in all the time as they cycle. Now I have a surplus of gadgets. Gears and threaded rods for a future turntable, you name it. I buy stuff that I know I’m going to need down the road, I have a box of stuff. Good stuff.
I do miss Radio Shack. My brother and I used to go there when we model railroaded together growing up. My brother was a little smarter than me back then, probably still is[:|] We made a pulse power transformer for our layout, well he did most of the work but he showed me how to make the PC board and he connected the capacitors and resistors. He was always a better solderer than I was.
The Radio Shack on Miracle Mile in St Louis Park had this radio Veteran guy th
There are so many options for automating signals, I won’t know where to start, as I’m not an electronics geek, so my signals are powered through a seperate power pack, and the color of the lights I change manually as I need them, with rotary switches.
I think you should go back to your signal thread and continue this, as you’ll get more responses, or even start a new thread in Electrical and DCC on powering signals. This kind of gets lost in here with the RS thread.
Mike.
Radio Shack was a joke. I really don’t miss them at all. Harbor Freight is far superior. They not only offer superior products, but many coupons. I love that they allow me to use two coupons.