Here are two hobby stores that some forum members may recognize:
In the early '60’s, building my first layout, my first hobby store was Todd’s Train Store at 69th Street in downtown Philly, PA. This was “back-in-the-day” when an Atlas Remote Control Snap Switch cost $2.50! I remember that there was a glass case of brass locomotives mounted on the wall near the front door, and I was curious about the Shay - whether it had cylinders on both sides or not. I was disappointed to learn it was a one-sided arrangement!
A few years later our family moved to Dallas, TX, where my favorite store was Bobbye Hall’s Hobby House on Bryan Street. It was some years later that I learned that Bobbye Hall was truly an iconic figure in the Hobby.
I have been fortunate to travel in my professional career, so I never really had a “local” hobby shop, nor can I truly remember the first one when I was a kid, there were several as we moved around a lot. I try to support small shops where ever I go, and have bought things in about 15 + states (and in multiple cities in those states), all across Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico, a few Caribbean Islands and S America. I just picked up some cool scratch building supplies in Plymouth, England in October, and plan on hitting at least one shop when in Japan in April.
When I first got back into the hobby in ernest about 15 years ago, I used to go to Depot Trains in Cleveland, but the owner passed and the shop changed. I miss having a local shop to “hang out” in, and ordering online doesn’t have the same sense of gratification as poking around a shop and discovering something new (or old).
The title of this topic really caught my eye, and took me back almost 50 years. I knew Jay “Harold” Madsen, the founder and proprietor of Kar-Line and of the small hobby shop which he ran in the basement of his home on Perry St. in East Aurora, New York. It was in church the weekend before Thanksgiving in the early 1960s that my Dad introduced me to Harold’s wife – Bernice – with whom my Dad had been talking about my infatuation with trains. She enthusiastically described how her husband had recently founded a line of HO train cars. I was incredulous that anybody would just happen to be producing HO train cars in the village of East Aurora, but when we visited his train shop for the first time the next weekend it became more clear what he was doing: taking Athearn and MDC undecorated boxcar shells and turning proverbial “Sow’s Ears” into “Silk Purses,” with decals, his glossy “Miracle Coat” finish, Central Valley trucks (later, his “Neverlube”
trucks), and Kadee couplers. Even the packaging was impressive – glossy black boxes (I believe he later experimented with some different packagings).
Harold explained that he did most or all of the painting, and that he, his wife, and some friends did the decaling. Through the 60s and 70s, during good weather a school buddy and I would bike – and later drive – down to Harold’s store from the neighboring town of Elma. Especially on we
Doughless
My first real hobby shop came years later after I graduated college and moved to Indiana. Hawkins Rail Services in LaFayette, IN about 1987, downtown location.
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.
-Kevin
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 hi
You know I was trying to remember which one was my first hobby shop. There were three that I vaguely remember going into when I was about 10 or 11 but which one came first I am not sure. There was one in Crossroads mall in Oklahoma city called Hobbyworld and I remember looking at some engines in a case. Then I also remember going into Cambell’s Hobby house also in OKC when they were closing. Probably preceeding this was a place called Aqua Mart in Stillwater OK they were a pet store and hobby shop. They didn’t carry many trains mainly plastic models but I did get some RR magazines there.
Later Hobby Lobby opened in town (store 5!) and they carried a fair amount of trains then. Roughly the equivalent of one of their current aisles. Wound up working for them in high school and college and running the hobby dept. I would go into Woodwards and Whistle Stop in OKC. Today only whistle stop is around and I’m on the other side of the country.
As a youngster living in Leeds (U.K.) my local model shop was ‘King Charles Street Model Shop’ in King Charles Street. (Original or what?) A great place for anything regarding model railways.
In those days there was only O and OO gauge models. N gauge and others did not exist. Models of locomotives came in one livery; not the half dozen or so like these days. If you wanted a different livery out came the paints and brushes.
The street, King Charles Street, was named many years before King Charles 3 was born. The model shop has long gone. The street is still there.
My other first hobby shop was G&G models on Times Blvd in Rice Villiage( Houston) . That was a shop run by Gus and George ( hence G&G). I bought lots of things from them all the way thru college( since I had to drive in for school anyway) G&G is still in business but they have moved locations it appears , I think the family still runs it from what I read on the interwebs, They claim to be the oldest hobby shop in Texas.
I visited Hawkins a couple of time way back in the early 90’s when I was a poor grad student at Indiana University and a group of us would drive up there. He had one of the better inventories of stuff that was usually sold out elsewhere, but the prices were at or near MSRP.
One of the main reasons so many hobby shops are gone was pointed out discussing Hawkins; the owners age out and the shops are single owner, so they close. Commerce has changed so much of model trains are sold online now.
I realize this forum is full of old nostalgic men (mostly) so topics like hobby shops are full of nostaglia. I am not sure I remember my first hobby shop visit. It might have been when I was 4 years old and my dad was in there planning my Christmas train set which was a Lionel O27 in 1963.
Much later when I lived in Davis CA as a Junior High teen there was a hobby shop in the Alpha Beta strip mall I purchased some Athearn SP Daylight passenger cars. Since then I’ve visited quite a few over the years, especially when I was traveling for work and making a point of visiting several shops after work when in other cities or state. In those days my former wife would not let me spend much money on trains and hobby shops tended to charge at or near MSRP so I simply couldn’t afford much anyway, a freight car or two was all I would bring back assuming they had something I needed, which more often than not they didn’t.
Being constrained financially, I learned to look for discounts, which usua
And they will all “close” the instant we each age out. [;)] But that’s a hundred other threads that have gone before. Hopefully, with all our stuff, most of us also collect perspective.
Trost was located at 3111 W. 63rd St, (south side of the street) between Troy and Albany, just east of Kedzie. Right on the other side of the street was Hoffkins (sp) bakery. I lived in an apartment on Albany and was not allowed by my wife to go into either place unchaperoned. [;)]
I spent much time in Trost as a kid. Biking from 68th and Hamlin to 63rd and over. I loved the HO brass engines in the glass counter as you walked in on your left. Lionel in the back corner straight in was my hang out. They were good folks till Betty took over. Every Christmas for years I added on to my Santa Fe Super Chief passenger train. Found HO senior year in college, 1973-74.
My first shop was Engine House Hobbies in Gaithersburg, MD. It is located along the former right-of-way of the B&O Brunswick Line. It was where my parents took me and where they bought me my birthday and Christmas presents of various engines, rolling stock, track, structures, etc besides Toys R’ Us and KB Toys back when they were around selling toy trains in house. If it wasn’t for my parents and that first store I would not be here over 30 years later. When I got older I too used my own money to give them my business.
Now the owner is retiring and closing the store down May 1st. He is now the last dedicated train store in the area now that the other store, Potomac Trading, lost its owner last year and liquidated everything this past month. The only place left will be Hobby Works but they are a general hobby merchandise store. Their model train selection is pitiful and they only sell current production stuff sold close to MSRP (I would know I used to work for them in my college days for extra spending cash) and it isn’t even the high-end but the entry-level generic items ala regular Bachmann and Walthers Trainline. They don’t even do repairs or any custom work as far as I can tell but if they do it is for everything else but trains.
The store was called Troxel Bros. Models, on 202 S. Western Avenue in Los Angeles.
Over 40 years ago when my dad and I built my first permanent layout (a 4x8’ in HO scale), we would go there and buy supplies. To this day, the smell of fresh cork roadbed and lichen would send me back. The store had a lot of Athearn blue boxes, and it was run by this older gentleman who ran the store by himself and would play classical music on the radio in the background.
During Jr. High school, I would ride the bus or my bike there to get some Athearn blue boxes, back when a boxcar was only $4 or $5. The store moved around the corner around that time, to 4319 W. 2nd Street.
The store closed down for good in the early 2000s decade when the owner retired. I always thought the owner was one of the Troxel brothers but it turns out his name was Ed Kielty, and some time ago, he bought the store from the brothers, who founded the original store in the 1940s and apparently were big players in the model railroad scene in Los Angeles (they built an O scale layout that was on display at the California Museum of Science and Industry that was one of the famous public layouts in the area at the time.
I was in HO scale at the time but I looked at N scale with a curious eye. The smallness of it capitvated me for some reason but N scale in the '80s and early '90s looked too toylike for my tastes. Flash forward to today, where I’m all about N scale. I guess looking at the N scale display at the store was me glancing into the future.
The original storefront on Western Avenue was demolished to build a new elementary school. The second locaton on 2nd street is a holistic health supply store.
The first hobby shop I remember going to was when I was in about 4th grade. I had a Lionel 0-27 trainset with a steam engine. I wanted a modern diesel locomotive for my birthday. My mother took me to a hobby shop in Portland that had trains and planes.
When I looked through the shelves with the Lionel stuff I could only find one diesel and it was from a railroad I never heard of so I was kind of disappointed. Then my mom pops up with a guy who worked there and they had a pair of Santa Fe locomotives in the warbonnet livery. I was so happy. They were exactly what I wanted. Aparently they had been part of a train set but the person who bought the set didn’t want the locos.
So I got two brand new locos that I loved even though they weren’t in boxes. I didn’t care. I was happy! That’s the kind of thing that can only happen at a local hobby shop but never at a regular department store.
My first hobby shop was the late, lamented Highway Hobby in Ramsey NJ, although at the time I wasn’t into trains, I was into model airplane building, specifically First World War aircraft. Highway Hobby had everything though. Trains, planes, automobiles, ships, tanks, you name it. As soon as I was old enough to drive I was up there once a week.
Highway Hobby closed in the early 2000s, the owner wanted to retire and his kids didn’t want to take over the business. C’est la vie.
Brasseur electric trains in old-town part Saginaw, Michigan back in the 80’s. Still open and thankfully avoided two major fires that wiped out a whole city block. Also went to Riders hobby in Flint with my dad as a kid. Recently went back there visiting Michigan and the store was modern, nicely updated with a great selection.