There is a healthy and thriving Maine Trains in Chelmsford, MA. It’s not the same shop or owner as the former Maine Trains in Maine. They co-existed for a number of years.
Maine Trains in Chelmsford is a small but well-stocked brick-and-mortar shop, with some Internet presence. Gerry does mostly HO, with some N-gauge. He makes a point of stocking New England roads like the B&M and Maine Central. I’ve seen custom-painted GP9s for the St. Lawrence and Atlantic, since you’re up that way.
I’ve been to the shop in Intervale. It was several years ago. I think the shop was full MSRP on everything. The model train museum is worth seeing once - it’s mostly layouts that have been acquired or donated. Most have running trains, but they just run in loops at the push of a button. Check their hours and make sure the museum is open when you plan your trip.
Yes, Im familiar with the “Maine Trains” you spoke of. They have a website I have visited and it’s a “dot com” web address. However, there is also a Maine Trains website with a “dot net” address & think it is the same guy that operated here in Maine. I think he has moved to Mass & is currently operating out of a storage facility & taking orders online. At least that’s the impression I get from what it says on the webpage. He seems to have a huge stock.
Someone either is or was making a resin kit of a 41-46 Chevy Schoolbus. I’m sure I saw one on Ebay just a few weeks ago & was thinking that it would be good for my early/mid 50’s layout time theme.
Freight Station in Leweston closed some time ago, they still do local shows
The Bath shop closed sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. Typical problem, he wanted to retire, but could not find a buyer…
I know Andover, one of my nieces and her husband live up that way. Site of one of the earliest satelite communication ground stations back in the early 60s.
It`s nice to see some interest in the AVR I always thought it was an interesting road.My primary interest is NH and B&M in the late 1950s to 1960s. I bought 3 Bachmann units many years ago to someday try modeling it ,If I could find time and a little more space it would be fun. Got a few shots in wintertime in the early 1970s chased them 2 engines and 8 or 10 cars out to the interchange at Cairibou? Maybe it was Washburn.
There was a small article with photos ,I think in MR in the 1960s kind of a railroad you can model article . That is how I became aware of the AVR. I have had the Robertson book for years.
Seeing as how this thread is wavering between Maine-style model railroading, and the OP about hard-to-find model structure types, I’ll go contrarian and answer the OP:
Those of us that grew up in the transition era well remember the mid-size Grocery Stores that dotted the landscape of every town in America.
One word: Plasticville
Why does every manufacturer insist upon putting out a kit of “the little red one-room schoolhouse”? I
This one is a Plasticville Fail.
I can find virtually no kits of the typical mid-size town Hospital, yet most towns had one. In fact, except for a couple European versions, I can find no HO kits of any Hospitals.
That was it! Freight Station! I couldn’t think of the name for some reason, but kept thinking it was railroad related.
My oldest friend lives in Boothbay & he has always been a railroading nut too. He used to frequent the Bath Hobby Shop. We were talking about it recently & he said the guy eventually did find a buyer, a young guy with visions for the most well stocked HS on the planet. After buying the business he went totally hog-wild ordering stock & literally stocked himself out of business. Incurred so much debt, that he couldn’t pay, that he was forced to liquidate the business. At least, that’s what my buddy Earl told me.
I’m not a Plasticville fan by any stretch of the imagination. Their stuff is okay for kids toys, but not really for me. I’m more interested in serious attention to authentic detail & realism. A structure with “Plasticville School, Plasticville Store, Plasticville Airport” etc, plastered all over it isn’t my cup of tea. No offense, but my modeling tastes went way beyond that stage over half a century ago.
The Aroostook River Valley was once a beehive or railroad activity, mainly centered around Potatoe & Lumber cargos. You had the BAR’s lines running through the county, The AVR’s little 36 mile line and The CP had a spur line out of Canada that crossed the border into Fort Fairfield & went on to connect with the BAR lines in Caribou and Presque Isle. VERY active railroading area right up into the 1960’s.
What spelled out their doom was in 1969-1970, when they finally extended Interstate I-95 north from Bangor up the 118 miles through the middle of nowhere to Houlton. It really killed the BAR’s business. The AVR hung on until 1996, but could last no longer. The highway & trucking companies got all the cargo. Prior to that there were only 3 or 4 two-lane roads connecting Aroostook County with the rest of humanity and they were all notoriously bad roads to boot. The “Hainesville Woods” road was particularly brutal. It was ALWAYS in terrible condition, over 100 miles of nothing but forest, no houses, gas stations, towns, restaurants…no nothing! Just you and the Moose that you frequently had to dodge. As a kid back in the 50’s, I remember my dad cursing every mile of it whenever he had to drive it.
One comment on structures, in particular, the Red Owl grocery store currently on the market (Walthers?): I grew up in the Twin Cities, where Red Owl had their corporate offices and most of their stores I was in as a kid were substantially larger than the “in the middle of a city block” one which that kit represents. At the very least, grocery stores would more likely be located on a corner of a block, as a major anchor tenant of a strip mall (often with a Snyder-Rexall or Walgreens drug store at the other end), or as a stand alone structure with far more parking than this kit implies. Strip mall development was well-established by the late 1940s, as more consumers had cars. Positioning two “needful” businesses at opposing ends worked well for specialty stores in between, where foot traffic would tend to draw in otherwise uninterested shoppers- shoe stores, women’s clothing, etc. Even small neighborhood grocers needed sufficient parking to maximize business. Plasticville may represent a midcentury (20th) modern semi art deco approach, but with sufficient customizing (un- plasticvilling the structure) is a better example of what a small grocery would be like. Meat markets, often antecedents to grocery stores, may be more comfortably located mid- block, as the Red Owl kit suggests. By the 1950s, commercial structures were using significant amounts of aluminum window framing, even where older structures were “modernized”, but anodized colored metal frames and doors appeared a bit later, in the early 1960s. Glass was seen as a modern material, and from a marketing perspective, enabled businesses to communicate better with street traffic and pedestrian traffic. Grocery stores inverted this concept by hiding the store interior with sales signage, advertising their current specials and sales, but still leaving enough interior visibility to attract the shoppers eye. Cedarwoodron
I have one of these earmarked to become a bar in a trendier neighborhood (current day). I have an second one that’s going to be sacrificed to become the first floor of a taller building, if I ever get around to it.
I agree. I’ve looked at the Walthers Red Owl Grocery kit and while it is a neat looking building, it does not quite fit the mold of the average town grocery of the 40’s/50’s. They were, as you say, either free standing buildings or located on an end of some of the early strip malls. There were six such groceries in the Aroostook River Valley “triangle” in northern Maine, two in each of the three large towns. Fort Fairfield had a free standing, brick First National down at the eastern end of the main street, and a free standing, concrete block IGA on the on the hill on the south edge of town on Rt. 1A. Caribou had an A&P on the northern end of Sweeden St, the downtown district. It was free standing, red brick & had an arched/curved roof, much like an airplane hanger. (In fact, I’ve been thinking of using an airplane hanger kit to “kitbash” the building on my layout). The other was a free standing Shop & Save at the opposite end of the main drag. Presque Isle had a First National, downtown and attached to the same large building that housed the Sears Roebuck & Co. store. The other was at the opposite end of town. It was an IGA and was one end of a strip mall. The other key store at the other end was a large S.S.Kresge’s store. All 6 of these stores had their own parking areas, just as you described.
None of these were anywhere near the size of the sprawling Supermarkets we have now, but were all far bigger than the Walther’s Red Owl Kit depicts. Most of them would probably compare in square footage to the size of the average Walgreens or Rite Aid stores that we have today.
Model Power has some structures that provide a kitbashing basis for some the structures you seek. You have to be able to look beyond the thick windows and cheesy molded in colors to see the potential, and don’t go by the name on the box – take the Art Curren approach that a plastic kit is a bunch of parts and suggestions and that once you have a critical mass of kits then is the time to start Xeroxing the sides and ends and play around with some ideas for bashing them together.
A small school house might well be called a church or village hall on the box. For exampl, the Model Power town hall
is not a one room school but could be a small two or four room school such as one sees out in the country, or perhaps village hall on one side, school on the other.
I have to model a trackside liquor store on my layout – it had two large windows (with inside paper signs covering them up advertising deals) and a covered “drive through” pick up area at the far end. It will do no good to type “liquor store” in the Walthers search engine but there are some stores and even “factories” that have the right heft and bulk.
The old fashioned brick hospital is not something I have thought about kitbashing myself but the Walthers YMCA and the Heljan synagogue both resemble some old hospitals I have seen. In my old home town the “hospital” was just a large and very substantial brick house, perhaps a rooming house, and after it ceased to be a hospital that is exactly what it became.
You didn’t mention it, but the style of structure for car dealers – lots of large windows, probably framed in aluminum, with a back area, is also what tire dealers tended to look like. In addition to cars being a common thread, tire dealers and car dealers both seemed to be the last bastion of the aluminum Christmas tree, with rotating color wheel.
Most of what I see on the HO Scale market nowadays are little industries that are too cute! Factories shouldn’t look cute! Industries on my layout are modeled after interesting architecture from the prototype, not something that I made up. So in turn each industry has a different look to it. For my shelf layout, I would like to see more low relief track side industries that can handle several rail cars one time.
Yes, the market for large industries can’t be very big. Most of us just don’t have the physical space. So, the manufacturers stick to what sells - small structures that can find a home in any layout. They also concentrate, logically, on trackside buildings. Hospitals ang groceries typically wouldn’t be rail-served, so their appeal to most of us is reduced.
I would agree that most train layouts, due to space limitations, are far more accomodating to small, trackside industry & structures and the kit manufacturers predominately stick to those types of buildings, as they are the biggest sellers & have the broadest appeal. And yes, most things like groceries and hospitals are not rail-served…TODAY!
However, if you’re doing a transition era layout of the 40’s/50’s time frame, you have to completely re-think that. A far bigger percentage of businesses of all types WERE either directly or indirectly rail served back then. There was no interstate highway system then, providing high speed, limited access, direct routes across country. A much smaller percentage of goods were shipped cross country by truck. It took days & days of comparatively slow travel to go cross country by truck. There was no jet air service, either passenger or cargo either. And flying was something mainly confined to the wealthy. Air travel & air shipment, proportionately, was far more costly than it is today.
During that era, the quickest way to get your goods to where they were going was still by rail. Most things like groceries & other consumer goods WERE still shipped by rail, especially perishables. As a result, most business were served, directly or indirectly, by rail then. It was the building of the interstate highway system in the late 50’s thru early 70’s, along with the advent of jet air service in the 60’s that was responsible for the demise of so many railroads.
So, my own humble opinion is that if you are doing a transition era layout, those ARE things you must keep in mind in planning your structures and trackside industries.
There are a lot of great kits out there. I think that Fine Scale Miniatures is the best. I agree that one can not find a kit for every structure that one can imagine, but scratch building will help. It is not as hard as it seems but then again I love doing it.[2c]
With a very few rare (and HUGE) exceptions, hospitals were not directly rail-served (except for giant complexes that received coal for boilers) – that’s true for the '40s, '50s, or any time, I think.
And I can’t remember seeing a single instance of an individual grocery store with direct rail service anywhere at any time.
Perishable foods were typically shipped by rail to large cold storage warehouses or produce terminals in the 1940s and '50s, and then trucked to individual stores or distribution warehouses.