I thought it would be interesting to see how other areas of the country fared this season. The couple local places I was in over the last week have said things are OK, but not wonderful. They said they are not in the red by any means, and they are thankful for that. The area I am located in has been somewhat insulated from the bad economy in some ways.
One LHS owner told me that when the stock market really started falling, he got really busy. He surmised that a lot of people got tired of hearing the bad news on TV and turned back to doing things like model railroading instead of going out to eat, or going out to the bar.
IDK how mine did b/c I haven’t been over there yet, but they’re going to get about $50-$60 of my business when i can get over there, depends how much cash I have to use with my gift certificates. As a whole, i tihnk it makes out pretty well, b/c it has R/C airplane stuff, model kits of cars, and a whole mess of other stuff.
Well, I went over to Bruce’s today to do my annual post-Christmas raid [:P], and he had his full crew on, and there were quite a few customers–and they were buying, not exchanging–so I have a feeling he did pretty well. There was one father with his son and they were buying Lionel track like it was about to go out of style–I got a kick out of the little boy, he was jumping up and down and grinning, “More, More!” to his dad, which makes me think it’s probably his first train set that was under the tree this year. And Dad was also picking up some HO stuff, so I assume it was for his own model railroad. Kind of made me glow a lot.
And among other customers, there was a husband and wife there, while he was picking up some cars, she was over in the scenery section calling out that he had to come over and see THIS! (whatever ‘This’ was, LOL![:P]). Bruce and the crew seemed pretty happy about everything, we discussed my up-coming Sunset Z-6, and Bruce said he’d call the company to confirm the mid-January shipment right after New Years.
And behind the locomotive counter, several of the clerks were quite busy with people asking about new Atlas, Genesis and BLI releases. I even did a little gawking at a Proto 2000 Berkshire, until I remembered that A: I don’t need a Berkshire and B: Proto 2000 really sucks in pulling power for the price you have to pay for them.
For myself, I raided their new Roundhouse ART reefer selection (bought them out, by golly!) and picked up a nifty looking Atlas ATSF cement hopper, which caused a stir at the counter when Bruce pointed out that the ‘build’ date was 1957, several years later than the era I model (these guys really take care of me, LOL) but then assured me that I could back-date it to 1950 with either a decal or some heavy weathering. [;)]
All in all, it seemed pretty lively and positive over there.&n
I think the one LHS near me did good. She said it always picks up around this season. As far as the other ones, no idea. I haven’t been to them in awhile.
Call ahead first. They usually run the train sale the first week or two in Jan. Make sure you go to their web site and download their 40% off any one item coupon too. You can check their weekly specials here. http://www.hobbylobby.com/weekly/weekly.cfm