In this season of vacations, I had a question:
Has anyone taken a vacation to an area far away JUST to visit a train store or taken a trip with a route hitting several train stores and making a vacation out of it?
Baseball fanatics plan roadtrips to visit many ballparks, so I wondered if the same is true for our hobby.
Further, is there a published route on the east coast/midwest/west for train store junkies?
Just curious.
Have a good one,
Dan
Dan, I’ve never journeyed really far - vacation trip far - to just visit a train store - but I’ve managed to find train and toy-train-related activities practically everywhere I’ve ever journeyed from Hong Kong to Long Beach.
Probably the closest thing I’ve ever done to this is taking a day a few years ago to hit practically every train store carrying O gauge in the Chicago area. I managed to go to five.
CNW,
In Chicago, I only went to America’s Best (Itasca). Great store. I Bought the Copper Range set there.
I kind of do a scaled down version of what you do. With a very young family, It’s usually one train store wherever we travel as a family, whether play or business. As the little one gets bigger, I’ll try to ditch the Mrs & baby on do some pilgrimmages on my own. But for now, it’s all about hitting the stray store when in a place for another reason.
That’s my deal. I’ll be hitting Caboose Hobbies in Denver in August when we fly in there for a convention at Steamboat Springs.
Dan,
Good question, I’ve wondered the same thing.
I try to see at least 1 train store for each city I travel to, typically 6-8 per year. Like Doug, I did as many as I could squeeze into an extra day in the greater Chicago area last year (6 stores). Put a lot of miles on the rental car, but it was fun. Somehow I managed to persuade my wife to ride along and navigate.
In the U.S., the best (most selection) stores I’ve found seem to be in the east and midwest. In Texas the pickings are much slimmer, my theory is because of the lack of basements here and in the west, which are needed for the larger format of O gauge.
Does anybody know if in fact our hobby is larger in relative terms in the East and Midwest of the U.S.?
Bob
Houston TX
I typically do as Doug says, just see what is in the area that you are going to for other business. I have a retailer that I get treated fairly, so most of my purchases are done that way, but I do like to visit some mostly for the layouts and see if they have any boxes of old items laying around. I try to go to the Lionel web site to check for “authorized dealers” as they require a working layout.
Dennis
I’m going to Hampton Beach NH just because of the train store there and Treasured Toys in nearby Salem NH. The wife thinks I’m great for taking her to such a fun beach![:D][:D][:D] Little does she know [:)] Denny
When I’m on a business trip, I use CTT to check to see if there is a train store nearby. Normally, but not always, the better O Gauge train stores advertise in CTT so I’m usually not too disappointed when I visit the store.
This last week when I was in Williamsburg, VA is visited the store listed in CTT. It was a very good store.
The only gripe I have with many of the train stores, is that they sell to the unemployed, meaning that they close at 5:00pm. So I always try to call ahead, check their website or yellow pages ad for their hours of operation.
I’m trying to finagle a trip to San Diego for a convention in July. Hope to visit with dougdagrump at the o gauge layout if I get there. Trying to convince the Mrs. that this would be our “famliy” vacation. The Boy is not yet convinced he wants to go.
Mitch[swg]
Bob, I understand just from anecdotal postings and info such as found on the TCA website that it is much, much, much larger in the northeast than anywhere else.
Treasured Toys in Salem, NH is my favorite train store around here! I live one town over from their store. The Hortons are very nice people who really know how to make a customer feel good about buying from them. I buy all my trains there, except for post war and Williams products. But if they sold that merchandise, I’d buy it there! They do sell over the web if anyone is interested.
There are train stores all over this area. I counted over 30 with a 25 mile radius of my house once, and have since found more.
Hampton Beach is a great place to spend the day. We take the kids there all the time. If you see a guy wearing a red Washington Nationals hat, it’s probably me.
Jim
Hi Jim, where are the other shops around there? I like the post war stuff mostly but whatever catches my eye might wind up comming home! Denny
I have made several trips to Atlanta, which is about three hours away from my home in Troy, AL, just to go to the hobby shops. There are none around here, so other than the internet, I have no other options. I just make a day of it. If I go out of town for other reasons, I will usually look up the local hobby shops and make plans to spend a couple of hours train shopping.[:D]
Modeler’s Junction in Methuen, MA. Charles Ro in Malden, MA. NorthEast Trains in Peabody, MA. Mountain Trains in Manchester, NH. There’s a store in Dracut, MA that had a lot of postwar stuff the last time I was there - Railyard Hobbies. Maine Trains in Chelmsford, MA. Bill’s Hobby Barn in Salem, NH. . . .
Below is a link to a hobby store locator. There are many more there.
http://find.mapmuse.com/re1/interest.php?brandID=MTRAIN&authCod=oran
Jim