I worked as a salesman in the Lionel and LGB section of Allied Model Trains from late November 1990 to mid March 1995. It saddens me to see Allied close, because it was the most beautiful train store I’ve ever seen.
You can criticize its owner Allen Drucker all you want for refusing to sell toy trains for less than the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). Keep in mind that Allied was one of the largest toy trains stores in the world, and it was expensive to operate on that scale. We sold all scales and manufacturers. Customers came from everywhere, not only Southern California. Allied was only three miles from LAX, so many people dropped in on their way to or from the airport.
I began working at Allied on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1990. We began work at 9:30 a.m., cleaning glass counters and re-stocking merchandise. The door opened at 10 a.m. On my first day, I sold $1,100 of LGB trains to my first customer within the first 15 minutes. I don’t recall how many LGB Christmas train sets I sold that year (at $399 each), but I probably averaged six or seven a day until Christmas. Of course, I sold a lot of Lionel and other LGB merchandise, too.
Celebrity customers stopped by to see me all the time, but what I enjoyed most of all was waiting on ordinary people who, like myself, were fascinated by toy trains.
One of my favorite sales was to a woman in her 40s who had always wanted her own Lionel train. Her parents never bought her one when she was little because she was a girl. I sold her a vintage Lionel locomotive and a few cars from the late 1940s and early 1950s, including an operating milk car, enough track to go around her Christmas tree and even have a passing siding, and a vintage Lionel transformer. After her first visit, she stopped by several times that Christmas season wit
What a wonderful story. Not earth-shaking, but humble and honest. George, I get the impression that you really enjoyed your work while you were with Allied and I bet you were a better salesman for it. I’m sure your customers would attest to that if given the opportunity.
Admittedly, I do a lot of shopping online, but I think anyone who hasn’t experienced this kind of “personal, old-fashioned” service has truly missed out on something special. It helps to foster mutual respect among the participants, something that seems to slip away from time to time in this faceless, keyboard-driven world.
Thanks for your nice memories. It’s hard to hire dedicated people like you these days that’s for sure. Today people are more worries about if they will be paid overtime for 10 min over closing and/or paid accurately etc. down to the nearest 30 min.
I think all the technological advances are great but I think we will have less and less human interactions like the old days.
I used to work in a retail store back in the late 90’s as well and I really enjoyed talking to people as well and it’s hard to imagine within a short period of mere 10 years how much had changed.
Anyway, always sad to see a store close its doors but thanks for keep the memories alive.
Thank you George for letting us in on some good times at Allied. I have been there many times but being in HO, I always worked with Nick at the store. Most of us know a store has to charge list prices to keep the doors open and bills paid, especially in LA. I did not mind that and purchased a fair amount of new and used brass from Nick. There was always a deal on consignment brass and other items. I also noticed the so called large discount stores are now gone too that once graced the Moreno Valley area. It would seem that the Internet is doing them all in.
I can understand Allen’s reason for shutting down the store also since he can be a landlord without the hassle of the daily grind. We will all miss the store with the giant Daylight on it.
Thanks for the nice story. I was critical of Drucker’s comments in the LA Times article, but Allied was more about the fine people like you, Nick, Bob, Reg and others who made the place the great store it was through the years. I enjoyed taking my kids there when they were little, back in the Pico days. Even though my boys are now in college, they still will take a ride to the train store with me when they are home on breaks.
The shining light here is that Nick will reopen in July accross the street and the beat will go on. Thanks again for the story.
Klooka,
Allied isn’t closing, it was sold and is moving (according to reports).
Online, the complaint about Allied wasn’t about the prices, it was about the poor customer service. The Atlas Forum in particular had many complaints about how if one wasn’t a celebrity or a regular who spent big, the retail staff couldn’t be bothered.
Don’t mistake me, as I’ve been working retail for 18 years and I know how some customers can be, shall we say, “difficult”. But it appears that Allied had some lazy or bitter employees…
Allen Drucker’s smaller building is across the street from the one that resembles Union Station in downtown L.A. (pictured in the illustration below). It is this smaller store that will now be the home of WhistleStop Trains (or a scaled-down Allied Model Trains). The smaller store is a decent size for a typical hobby shop, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the main store.
Here is an illustration to show you what Allied Model Trains looked like:
This is the store that will now be home to a Samy’s Camera store.
The original post brought a smile to my face, as I remembered big trains around the tree at Christmas. I’m glad you were able to help one more family enjoy that childhood memory. Thanks.
thanks for the great story . i only visited Allied once (it’s a looooong comute from toronto!) and didn’t really notice what the prices were like . i guess i was comparing them to canadian retail prices , which at the time were 1.5 x US msrp . more important was that i’d never seen a mrr store that big and impressive before and i probably could have spent a day or two there but my wife and the friends we were visiting (he’s an rc plane guy , almost converted him that day though [:)] ) had other ideas about how to spend our time
Don’t listen to those grumps. I visit Allied Trains every time I go to L.A. About twelve trips to Allied and never had a bad experience. George was only too happy to discuss Lionel Trains with me and the staff up front was just a friendly.
By the way, the big LGB layout is still in the old building, now Samy’s Cameras. It was running when I was there last December.
Yeah I have to agree here, every time I visited Allied I had an awesome experience,whether I made a purchase or not, the staff was very friendly, and very helpful, in fact during one visit Gary Coleman, and Bob Mcneil (from ST Voyager) were both in the store…I didn’t notice any fawning over them…in fact I was surprised George remembered me from my last visit which was almost a year before, I was also surprised that Coleman was buying N scale as I always heard he was a Lionel buff No I can think of several Shops back home in NC and here in NY , that could learn a thing or two from the Allied gang.
I want to thank all of you for posting your memories of Allied Model Trains in Culver City, California. I hope others will keep doing so.
There is one thing I should point out. There were two of us named George working in the Lionel Trains/LGB section when I worked there (November 1990 to March 1995). The other George was George Spelmeier. He had worked there for years as a salesman and a repairman. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t fix. George Spelmeier always went fishing on his days off, Fridays and Sundays.
On the other hand, I couldn’t fix a thing. But I could wire a Lionel train layout using contactors or relays so you could have a great automatic train layout. I never did that for Allied customers, but I’ve always done that with my home layouts – Lionel, HO, or N. I always enjoyed taking time to build my layouts with nice scenery and structures, too.
George Spelmeier had a mustache; I didn’t. And, I was the thinner of the two. I think George Spelmeier still works at the new store across the street from the old one. Today, I would bet that I’m the heavier of the two! How does that happen? I’ll have to stop by to find out who is the heavier.
I could sell Lionel and LGB trains effortlessly. Selling came easy for me. I sold men’s clothing when I was in college at Silverwood’s in Santa Barbara and Baskin’s in downtown Chicago. I didn’t know squat about LGB when I started, but I soon learned. I also had to learn about Lionel’s new products and I had a lot to learn about prewar and postwar Lionel.
The customers made it fun to work at Allied, at least for me. Sure, there were plenty of celebrities, and I enjoyed meeting and selling to them. But there were far more regular folks like you and me. One of my first customers lived only a block away from Allied. It turned out he had grown up in my hometown, Berwyn, just west of Chicago.
I’ve never been to Allied Trains and know nothing about the “stuff” others mentioned. But I do know that you wrote some wonderful postings and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I’m from Chicago (Lane Tech - Feb 62), and can certainly relate to some of your musings!
There was a hobby shop across from Lane (B&E Hobbies) and I would drool over the Lionel and later on the HO stuff they had. How I envied the young guys that worked there!
Mobilman44 – You probably remember Stanton’s Hobby Shop on Milwaukee Avenue and Benty’s Hobby Shop on Belmont downstairs from the “L” station. Stanton’s was the larger of the two. Mr. Benty tried his best to survive over the years. Stanton’s was far more successful, a larger store with a great variety of merchandise.
I also used to go to Simonsen’s Hobby Shop on Lincoln Avenue south of Belmont. One time I was looking for a Lionel crane car. “I think I have one in the basement. I might need your help to get it down from the shelf,” Mr Simonsen said.
To my surprise, he had a large inventory of prewar and postwar Lionel trains in their original boxes. It took him a few minutes to find the crane car, but he did. “It’s up there,” he pointed. “Would you mind climbing the ladder to get it?” I didn’t mind at all.
Mr. Simonsen employed a former Chicago policeman as a repairman. I don’t know if they were related. In the late 1970s, a friend of mine gave me a three-rail American Flyer freight set from the late 1930’s she bought at a garage sale. The cars were in good condition, but the engine didn’t work. I took it to Simonsen’s. The repairman said he could fix it and asked me to come back in a week or so.
When I did, he asked, “How does it look?” He pointed to their three-loop, figure-eight display layout in the front window. I didn’t notice it when I walked by. The engine was pulling a few cars as it raced around the window display layout with no trouble at all.
“It looks great!” I said.
“It just needed some new brushes,” he said. “I cleaned the motor while I had it apart. Now, it runs like a raped rabbit!” I think he charged me only eight dollars to fix it.
I visited New York City on business quite often between 1976 and 1986, when I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. Every time I was in New York, I made time to visit Madison Hardwa
Ive seen many stores close over the years, one in particular Gilberts was a favorite. I think it is still open under a younger generation today.
If I had to work in a train shop, I would be so busy browsing the new arrivals off the UPS truck, nothing would get done. I would not be a very good worker. =)
You can criticize its owner Allen Drucker all you want for refusing to sell toy trains for less than the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). Keep in mind that Allied was one of the largest toy trains stores in the world, and it was expensive to operate on that scale. We sold all scales and manufacturers. Customers came from everywhere, not only Southern California. Allied was only three miles from LAX, so many people dropped in on their way to or from the airport.
I began working at Allied on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1990. We began work at 9:30 a.m., cleaning glass counters and re-stocking merchandise. The door opened at 10 a.m. On my first day, I sold $1,100 of LGB trains to my first customer within the first 15 minutes. I don’t recall how many LGB Christmas train sets I sold that year (at $399 each), but I probably averaged six or seven a day until Christmas. Of course, I sold a lot of Lionel and other LGB merchandise, too.
George
Most of us who shopped at Allied realized that list price is list price and a dealer has the right to charge that price. We might have shopped in a more selective mode since our money is for hobby items and we like to make it go as far as possible. They tried discounting a few HO plastic items for a short time with that slogan, “Don’t take that Long drive” or something like that. I don’t believe criticizing anyone for asking a fair price for a good product is fair and that is very short sighted for someone who is not in business to criticize others.
I purchased many brass pieces from Allen, Brian or Nick over the years and many other items that I wanted and would have preferred the great building to still be selling trains. Allen was fair but all business. I appreciated the store having a great supply of stock on hand and always picked up parts and whatever.&n
Thanks for sharing your memories, George. For us loners up in the north country, especially when we tend to stay home a lot and not get out to see folks, your stories are warming indeed.
I can feel you smiling when you type of your memories. Good for you. [:)]
selector-Crandell – Yes, I do smile as I write these memories. I was just thinking of others. I’ll return often now and post them.
I still have all of my toy trains, but they are carefully packed in boxes and stored on shelves in my hall and bedroom closets. I don’t have room for a layout in my one-bedroom apartment. Maybe someday I’ll move into a larger one.
However, now that I am 67 years old, it is time for me to think of selling them. I wouldn’t want to leave that task to my roommate when I die…
No I can think of several Shops back home in NC and here in NY , that could learn a thing or two from the Allied gang.