Just thought I would ask everyone, “What is your favorite train store, and what makes it your favorite? Just a bit curious what your trains store does to keep you coming back?”
I use the term “train store” because my favorite train store is not in a hobby shop. It is a nursery. As far as train supplies go, they carry “G” scale only, they have 24 foot of shelving for trains and buildings, 6 foot of shelving/pegs for tracks and people. What do they do to keep me coming back? Pricing for trains, track, and buildings pretty well matches or slightly beats prices found on the Internet. People; I’m sure you know how hard it is to find a package of people that is not broken, well, here they take 20% off if the package has one broken piece, 50% if there are two breaks. Hey! Half price, a bit of glue, a touch of paint and nobody will ever know. They have a tremendous selection of live trees (both 1:24 and 1:1), bountiful supplies of ground covers. Just a quick guess, but there is about 150 foot of aisle space of garden train size ground cover, and about 50 foot of 1:24~1:12 trees. Of course they have loads of the full size stuff like the scarce tomato plants the wife sent me there to get for the garden. OK, so I spent $6 on the vegetable garden and $180 on the garden railroad, it all went out to the “garden”.
http://photobucket.com/Andersons_Trains
One other thing. They have a tremendous layout outdoors. At any given time there probably are more engines and cars sitting on the “ready” track of the yard on the layout than there is for sale inside the store. For those of you who remember (about a year, year and half ago?) there was a “Be On The Look Out” for stolen trains and bridging from Walter Anderson’s Nursery. The plywood and 2x4 temporary bridging have all been replaced from the gaps left when the thieves jumped the fence. The new bridging looks as if it were designed in place while the layout was built. The layout looks as good as ever,