On the negative, my local Hobby Lobby has totally eliminated HO scale vehicles in favor of the larger kid type vehicles. They never had a great selection but I would occasionally pick up a vehicle with a 40% off coupon.
On the positive side they have now started to carry more scenery materials such as tuft grasses, flowers, crops, more and varied types of ground covers, etc. They also are stocking some HO and N scale track & accsesories but nothing I would use. Is this a nationwide change or just my local store?
Its nationwide…I usually just buy glue,paint thinner,artist paints,turpiniod and scenery material.I also notice they have a wider figure selection then my LHS.
Can’t really say as far as Hobby Lobby and the Kansas City area. They used to carry some railroady stuff, but seemed to quit and I haven’t been back to one for a few years now. We are blessed with a couple of good train shops so it really doesn’t matter. And what I can’t buy locally I can get via the “net” in short order. I don’t like it, as I always appreciated going to a store, but that is the way life is now.
It seems about a year ago the local Hobby Lobby in Rochester, MN cut back on their trains. Most of the Woodland Scenics stuff is the smaller trees for war gamer dioramas. They still have a few cars/engines(locked up in a case) and a few train sets.
Over the past 10-15 years I cleaned them out on Woodland Scenics when they had their after Christmas train sale at 50% off.
Oddly enough, while they’ve ditched much model RR-specific stuff, they’re actually expanded the stock of Woodland Scenics recently. So they seem to be carrying stuff that crosses over into diorama building, although a lot of it isn’t scale-specific.
Was at the local Hobby Lobby to pick up some WS green clumps tonight. Noticed they are also carrying JTT Architectural Model Parts items: lots of scenery stuff and a limited stock of sheet goods. IIRC, JTT is associated with Bachmann? Anyway, picked up some JTT plastic brick sheet.
Hobby Lobby has the same problems that Michael’s had a few years ago. They carry junk. Ton’s of decor stuff. It’s no longer Hobby Lobby, it’s stuff that if you did buy it, it would be a garage sale goodbye next year. They have gotten very expensive on what they do carry due to the 40% coupon. With the fear of using the coupon now a lot of things are flat over priced. I’m sorry but Eagle and Bear statues and funky wall hanging art have nothing to do with hobbies. I no longer have any reason to go into one for anything at all. Complete waste of time and I did shop there a lot.
Well, some folks don’t have much to choose from. Despite being in Horizon’s home community, there’s a paucity of hobby shops and those that do exist have very limited model RR offerings…
The closest decent train shop is about an hour away, the next group of shops is in various directions 2 hours away and then there’s Chicago.
So sometimes the only place in town that has something I need is HL. They’re not my main vendor – obviously, given the limited selection of useful items – but they do carry other stuff, like a limited supply of scratchbuilding materials, paint, and tools.
This is sort of a glass half full thread, anyway. What wuz ya expectin? Hobby shop utopia? [:o)]
I have given up on local hobby stores and do all my shopiing online, at Walther’s or a hobby shop about 36 miles away. Let me xpplain why.
The local hobby shop is decent sized but about 18 miles away. He is open most days from noon on. Opening on the door is posted with noon. You call them and it’s noon. So what happens? He may open at 12:30, 1PMm 1:15 PM or any other time than noon. One customer complained that he is never there at the noted opening time lately. So he yells at the customer and says it is fishing season and he should know the guy goes fishing during fishing season.
Also, he refuses to support Walther’s sale prices.
He forgets special orders and when questioned he says I should have reminded him. Happened 3 times.
He used to give our club a 10% discount. Then it quickly dropped to 5%. Now he says he is going to drop it. Why we ask? Because it is too succesful and he is losing money because of all the increased sales at 5% off. Most astute small business people would see increased sales at a small discount a really wonderful thing! Needless to say, I no longer shop there and am quite happy with online or Walther’s for just about everything.
Ken
I usually do, but do I really want to mailorder an item or two and pay the shipping, too? Sometimes you just kind of want something that happens to be common enough to be in stock. It makes no sense to pay more than list price once the shipping is figured in for an item or two.
Ummm, I have heard of that internet thing…how do you get there?[D)]
I do not want to make excuses for shop owners who are lazy or incompetent. I have ceased going to one local shop because, one too many times, I was told “yeah, we can get that”…
But I also have (luckily) a really excellent local shop. If I didn’t, I expect I’d do the internet thing and just suck it up on the waiting period. I’ve got so many projects anyway, that I can easily put one down for awhile and go to another.
Also, I know I can get it cheaper online or elsewhere. Those “excess profits” pay the rent. And since I DO want a local shop, I pay 'em.
It is a shame that Hobby Lobby scaled back on trains, it gave me something to look at when the wife wanted to go to the store. I have not set foot in the place in months! The sales were great, I would say that 80% of my Woodland Scenics figures came from there.
Very fortunate though that I have a great LHS just down the street.
Oh please let us not turn this into another rant about the LHS. We have had so many of those and we need to move on. Most of us have had both good and bad experiences with them and it seems to go with the territory.
As far as Hobby Lobby is concerned, the one in Flint stopped carrying model train atuff well over a year ago and, compared to Michael’s - which is right next door -they are ‘the high priced spread.’
Our local hobby lobby in both Colorado and Kansas have virtually eliminated all model train stuff. They closed out the Lionel last fall, the HO and N selections are down to trainsets. The only thing I still see that is usefull are Woodland Scenics figures and scenery materials.
Of course all of us just buying stuff from them occasionally and using the 40% off coupons is probably why they stopped carrying the stuff in the first place. I have no one to blame but myself.
I was in the local Hobby Lobby this morning - in The Woodlands (just north of Houston off I-45). What you said is correct here too - lots of scenery stuff and tools and paints, but the Ho people/vehicles/structures are gone.
Yeah, I don’t want to open up the LHS can o’ worms, either…[{(-_-)}]
On the other hand, what happens when there is no LHS? What about all those kids whose parents will never take them to a LHS, but who might be in HL every other week? Frankly, it’s a good thing when there is even a minimum amount of model RR stuff where folks can come across it who might not know that they just might be a model railroader?
HL is just the successor to all those dept stores, pharmacists, and hardware store owners that used to stock model RR stuff. If you can remember the early 70s, it was just starting to fade hard then. K-mart – of all places – used to be one of my favorite stores to visit when I visited one of my grandmas, as it had a fairly large model RR section and not just at Xmas, either. That was in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the competition was the model RR dept at the local sporting goods store. I’m sure K-mart is gone and pretty sure the sporting goods place is, too, although I did my best to support them with my limited funds of being barely a teenager.
These sort of places were and are no substitute for a real LHS. I spend most of my money in various LHSs, even when I do mail order. Nothing against the big outfits we know online and in MR, I use them once in awhile. But if I see something train-related in an unusual place, well, I consider it just supporting the cause to let them know that there is interest by dropping a few $$. HL has been up and down as far as me finding something there. I don’t expect much from them other than them having some basic supplies in stock when I need them – and that 40% coupon, of course[Y]
HL and stores like it have nothing to do with the fortunes of the LHS. Mostly they serv