Well I remember going to several with my father as a young child, and when I was even younger, my uncle owned one.
But as far as me buying trains, at age 12 I was hanging out at the Depot Hobby Shop in Severna Park Maryland starting around 1969.
By late in 1970 or early 1971 I was working there.
When that shop moved to Harpers Ferry, WV in 1973, I went with them for the whole summer to setup the new store and help build a diarama of John Brown’s raid.
When I came home there was a new hobby shop up the road a bit, Glen Burnie Hobby World. I walked in and asked for job - worked there until 1979, managed the train department almost from the start. The former owner is still one of my dearest friends.
During most of this I was a member of the Severna Park Model Railroad Club.
And my father has been a somewhat serious Christmas time modeler in my early childhood.
So I grew up with model trains and in the model train business.
And I got to know all the Baltimore area shop owners of that time, including Ted Klein (now known as ModelTrainStuff), and met lots of people in the industry - it was great childhood…
My first hobby shop was Riley’s, on King St. East, in Hamilton, Ontario. That was likely in 1956, but my father had been going there for some time, as he had been involved with model airplanes from when he was a child.
Here’s a couple photos of his hobby interests…
He was also interested in cars, too, and built this model of a 1950 Studebaker, shown below at the Studebaker Plant in Hamilton…
It was a pedal-powered car, with four-wheel independent suspension. The wooden body (painted in a rich maroon colour) had a framework somewhat similar to those frames for the model airplanes. The front and rear bumpers and headlight and tail-light bezels were made from aluminum, as was the grill and the frame for the windshield.
I was a little edgy, as that real Studebaker was still moving when the photographer was taking the photo.
First hobby shop for me was the old Eric Fuchs in downtown Boston Washington street. In those days we lived in an outer suburb (Framingham) so we did not get into downtown Boston all that often. But when we did we usually managed to talk parents into stopping at Eric Fuchs. They alway had some trains running in the store window and lots of stuff to look at inside the store.
I grew up in Phoenixville, PA where we had “Bills Hobby and Peanut Shop”. He had trains and a peanut roaster. My dad first took me, then I’d walk downtown and get buildings (and peanuts).
Trost Hobbies in Chicago on 63rd street somewhere between Western and Kenzie Avenues.
I later ended up caddying for one of the most miserable ladies I ever met. Betty Trost who owned the store in the 70’s. Lots of other great train stores in Chicago but that’s the first one and probably at age 8 in 1960.
When I got my driver’s license in 1968, I think I hit every train store in the Chicago and Joilet areas that were in the back of Model Railroader
I have told this story before, if not for Hawkins rail service, there might not be a Stratton And Gillette today.
When I switched to HO in the early 1990s, I could not find any undecorated Athearn train cars. For some reason, no one had any.
I believe it was 1993, and we were visiting family in Indiana, when I went into the downtown location of Hawkins Rail Services. He had an entire shelf of nothing but Athearn undecorated freight car kits! I bought dozens that day.
When we came back to Florida I placed my first order for HO scale SGRR decals from Rail Graphics. I was set, and the SGRR lived on into HO scale.
I visited Hawkins several time after he moved to the new location. My company was headquartered in Columbus, Indiana, so I used to fly out of Indianapolis quite a bit. If I could schedule my return flight for Saturday, I could stop at Hawkins in the morning.
Jack treated me like a regular, even though I lived 1,000 miles away.
First one I remember was a shop in downtown San Mateo calif. called Nothing But Trains. I was into N scale then and around 12 to 14 having started off life first with Lionel which didn’t last long as a young kid, next moved into N scale because of an Aroura Postage Stamp set bought at Sears. The N stuff never ran well once I built the layout as I did this stuff mainly on my own. Got a bumper pool table and train set went in boxes. Next got into trains around 1980 as I had just got married and retired mostly and got bored and we stoped into MB klien’s on a walk in downtown Baltimore as I had moved to Baltimore for college and stayed. Was amazed at how far N scale had come and wife encouraged me to get a hobby besides video games. First kid came and we moved back to California never having done much with N in Baltimore as I got busy and took advantage of side jobs to keep from feeling the pinch from a new way of life. Back in California I moved on to HO and got cheated by Cheap Charlies, a mail order firm with an order of track code 83 (he went to jail on mail fraud). A place by the name Talbot’s Toyland desided to get out of Shinohara code 70 track so I bought most of what they had and started planning. Next the original shop in San Mateo desided to close and bought all their brass detail parts in a batch as they were selling them one by one even though the store was closing. There were other train shops that came and went and now they have mostly all closed, train shows too have gone away and I live in an area with over 12 million people.
I know you knew. That was for everyone else. The “L” is just a separator anyway. Keeps the pronounceable part of the word apart from the letters that no one can pronounce.
Clear Lake Models in Clear Lake City Texas ( suburb of Houston). I bought my first Athearn car there a 50 ft Santa FE Super Shock control box car. I still have it.
It’s interesting how many people grew up on Long Island. In the early 70’s and I used to bicycle from East Meadow to Willis Hobbies in Mineola. I also did a bicycle ride to Trainland in Lynbrook as well.
Then as a teen I worked at Larry’s Hobbies after school and also worked at Polk’s Hobby, both in East Meadow. I did do a couple of Saturdays at the Polk’s store in NYC on Fifth Ave. That was a treat working at that store!
There were many other train stores back in the day on LI, most are now gone.
The Train Shoppe on the corner of 9th Eeast and 5th South in Salt Lake City. As a toddler, the store stocked not just model trains but toy trains as well and had a large selection of the ERTL die-cast figures for Thomas & Friends. They moved from that location when I was a young adult to a new one in South Salt Lake, and started to gain fame for their backshop being full of train themed arcade games and rides.
But as the rides and birthday party rooms in the backroom grew, it seemed the actual model stock in the front room shrunk. I began to move away from the shop of my early years of the hobby and make the longer drive to TrainLife/ExactRail in Provo instead. Eventually news came out that the Train Shoppe location in South Salt Lake was not properly compliant with fire code, and they moved to a new location in Gardner Village in Midvale. I have only been once since the move to the new location, and I certainly wish them well… but several store locations now seperated from that first one I went to its not quite the same anymore.
My first hobby shop was Franklin Hobbies in Levittown NY on Long Island. Long gone. Then it was Lee’s Hobby Shop in East Meadow. Also long gone. When I started driving it was Trainland and Willis Hobbies. Still around.
It is really interesting that there have been two mentions of Hawkins Rail Services in Lafayette, IN. I did some mail order with Hawkins as a younger man, and then when my son went to Purdue; I would spend most football Saturday mornings at Hawkins. As Kevin had experienced, Jack also treated me like a regular. We would sit and talk trains and Purdue football. I was fortunate that the Saturday that my son’s last weekend in West Lafayette was Jack’s last day. It was amazing how hard his family worked to organize the store and it was too bad that none of them wanted to continue to operate it.
I think Jack and Sheldon share the same philosophy about inventory, LOL.
Hawkins had just about every product offered for the serious model railroader IN STOCK. He did the mail order thing very early, and so he probably just grabbed the order off of his inventory shelves…no warehouse for him.
IIRC, he was known for not discounting anything, so I could always find NOS products on the shelves unsold for years. I think the last time I visited was in 2012/13 and I think he still had 3 Life Like P2K Undeco
[#offtopic] Yeah, but unpronounceable only because it’s Dutch (“schuyl-” is now “schuil-”), meaning “hidden”; “kil” is channel or stream). It’s the “sch” that’s the bugbear. My wife’s Dutch and emigrated at six from her home town of Schevenigen, a costal suburb of The Hague. I always had a flair for pronunciation, probably from hearing my mom speak French (she wasn’t, but taught it). My parents-in-law, though they’d lived here since the mid-fifties, still had their heavy Dutch accents. I’ll always remember Pop trying to get me to say “Scheveningen” properly. The “ch” is very gutteral. If you don’t almost hork up something in the process, you’ve missed it altogether. I’d say it exactly as he would - and he’d shake his head, and proceed to say it (to my ears) exactly as I had. [:S] It became kind of a family joke.
Unless you are referring to the expressway, which is spelled “Surekill” and pronounced that way as well.
Bill’s Hobby and Peanut Shop was on Church Street, just before Bridge. I am not sure how long the shop was there, but it was a nice, small shop with a decent supply of trains and building kits.
My next shop was Allied Hobbies in King of Prussia. I purchased my first “real” transformer there, an MRC unit. It did not work. I took it back, he tested it and handed me another, a higher level unit without additional charge. I purchased a few more things from that store.
