Toys or Us has no model train section anymore

CNJ999 wrote:My entire area (southeastern NY) was a major player in the hobby from the time of its very inception until about 15 years ago. Thereafter, it dwindled visibly year to year right before my eyes, to the point that there today is not a single model train shop east of the Hudson River between the NYC line to just south of Albany to my knowledge! One or two remain just to the west of the river in this same geographic area, but are scores of miles from the real population centers.

Although I haven't lived in the area in many years, to the best of my knowledge, Valley Model Trains is still in business in Wappingers Falls. When I lived in mid-Hudson, they had a fantastic shop and were a great resource in general.

I'm now back in the Philly suburbs and we are blessed with great train shops in Lansdale (2 shops), Quakertown and Broomall, all well within less than an hour's drive.

glennk419 wrote:

CNJ999 wrote:My entire area (southeastern NY) was a major player in the hobby from the time of its very inception until about 15 years ago. Thereafter, it dwindled visibly year to year right before my eyes, to the point that there today is not a single model train shop east of the Hudson River between the NYC line to just south of Albany to my knowledge! One or two remain just to the west of the river in this same geographic area, but are scores of miles from the real population centers.

Although I haven't lived in the area in many years, to the best of my knowledge, Valley Model Trains is still in business in Wappingers Falls. When I lived in mid-Hudson, they had a fantastic shop and were a great resource in general.

I'm now back in the Philly suburbs and we are blessed with great train shops in Lansdale (2 shops), Quakertown and Broomall, all well within less than an hour's drive.

In fact, Valley Model Trains is today specifically a craftsman kit mail-order only outfit, the old walk-in trade brick and mortar store having closed up a number of years ago. I've known Pat going on 25 years now and I can tell you that I really miss the old store. Even more, I miss Hobbies for Men in Beacon, NY, once upon a time the largest mail-order train store (plus a really huge walk-in shop, too) in America!

CNJ999

Hobbies for Men.. bought my first large batch of KADEE MKD 5 and 10's from them, had to be about 1971. I remember asking my father to write a check for me to mail... and his laughing about the name of the company. Stuff arrived in seven days... no internet, no credit cards, no PayPal... they may have even used the post office rather than UPS.

What's going on at Hudson Shores in Blauvelt? I stopped by a few weeks ago, there was a bag of fresh bananas inside the door and no one around. Another Hudson Valley shop gone?

Rich

RichM wrote:Hobbies for Men.. bought my first large batch of KADEE MKD 5 and 10's from them, had to be about 1971. I remember asking my father to write a check for me to mail... and his laughing about the name of the company. Stuff arrived in seven days... no internet, no credit cards, no PayPal... they may have even used the post office rather than UPS.

What's going on at Hudson Shores in Blauvelt? I stopped by a few weeks ago, there was a bag of fresh bananas inside the door and no one around. Another Hudson Valley shop gone?

Rich

Forgot about Hobbies for Men, I think I made it to the retail store once before they closed up and probably still have a couple MR's around with their ad in it.

I used to order from a hobby shop in Arizona back in the late 90's that was also a drug store.

scharnhorst wrote:I used to order from a hobby shop in Arizona back in the late 90's that was also a drug store.

Would that be Longs? I think they may have had some locations in California as well.

RichM wrote:Hobbies for Men.. bought my first large batch of KADEE MKD 5 and 10's from them, had to be about 1971. I remember asking my father to write a check for me to mail... and his laughing about the name of the company. Stuff arrived in seven days... no internet, no credit cards, no PayPal... they may have even used the post office rather than UPS.

What's going on at Hudson Shores in Blauvelt? I stopped by a few weeks ago, there was a bag of fresh bananas inside the door and no one around. Another Hudson Valley shop gone?

Rich

Take a look at the content of their website. I personally I don't regard any of the comments therein as overly encouraging. I get more of an impression that they are trying to sound positive. By the way much of it is worded I get more of a gut feeling that they may be steadily losing ground like everyone else. Of course, I could be wrong about that. Blauvelt is a long way from where I live and I've not been to that shop in quite a while to offer any direct comparisons regarding the "then and now."

The ONLY shop between NYC and Albany in the entire Hudson Valley that I'm even the least bit confident about when it comes to their current health and potential longevity might be J&J Hobbies, way up in Kingston, at least an hour's drive, mostly at highway speeds, for me. A rather depressing prevailing situation for model railroaders in southeastern New York considering the hotbed of the hobby it once was.

CNJ999

We are comparing good hobby shops to chain outlets like Toys R Us?

-otto-

Otto Vondrak wrote:We are comparing good hobby shops to chain outlets like Toys R Us?

-otto-

At this point, I think we're talking about ANY place where we can actually touch the product berfore buying it.

Something that has increasingly become apparent to me over the course of the past decade or so is that, almost regardless of a region's population density, model railroad hobby shops tend to flourish in a few very specific regions (eastern MA, north-western NY, several spots in the upper mid western, together with a few others) while they have been dying off in droves virtually everywhere else. My entire area (southeastern NY) was a major player in the hobby from the time of its very inception until about 15 years ago. Thereafter, it dwindled visibly year to year right before my eyes, to the point that there today is not a single model train shop east of the Hudson River between the NYC line to just south of Albany to my knowledge! One or two remain just to the west of the river in this same geographic area, but are scores of miles from the real population centers. Take a look sometime at the distribution of shops listed in MR and after considering the size of many states relative to their number of shops (if any!) you'll appreciate this disheartening situation. Perhaps the most disturbing figure and worthy of citing in this discussion, is that in the early 1950's MR once listed ALL the hobby shops known to them to be carrying model trains. The single line register, in very small type, went on page after page. For just NYC proper it listed something like 130 shops!

CNJ999[/quote]

There is one in the White Plains Mall of Hamilton Ave in White Plains, along with a new one that opened in Ardsley. Both are doing fantastic business and have young guys who know what they're talking about working there. I'm 15, in high school, and own a collection of vintage and modern o gauge. Not only that, but I brag about it and my friends are amazed how I can just open one up and fix it, they can't do that with XBox! This hobby is not dying out, not by a long shot.
C.J.V.

I also forgot to add (and for some reason couldn't edit previous post (?)) that I build my own o gauge freight and passenger cars out of balsa wood and blueprints I got off the Internet. So far Ive built several passenger cars and at least 24 freight cars of various types.
C.J.V.

chrisnewhaven wrote:This hobby is not dying out, not by a long shot.

Ah, don't sweat it, I see this thread has a lot of CNJ999 posts. CNJ999, whom I believe posts on the Model Railroader forums under the alias CNJ831, likes to spread his version of Doom and Gloom there, and any attempt to convince him otherwise with facts and reality such as sales totals, show attemdance figures, publications, message board activity, anecdotes, etc, is usually met with various non sequitur. So we have learned there to simply route around the damage, and you should too.

CNJ831, I mean CNJ999, were you the one to come up with the theory that the reason so many new Model Railroad items had come onto market in the past few years (this was a few years ago during a localized boom in releases) was because the manufacturers knew the market was going to completely implode soon and they wanted to take the money and run? If so, then good one - that was Comedy Gold!

Now we have a conspiracy theory for model trains.

3rdrail wrote:Now we have a conspiracy theory for model trains.

Here come the men in overalls, they don't let Modelers remember...

Sir Ray wrote:

chrisnewhaven wrote:This hobby is not dying out, not by a long shot.

Ah, don't sweat it, I see this thread has a lot of CNJ999 posts. CNJ999, whom I believe posts on the Model Railroader forums under the alias CNJ831, likes to spread his version of Doom and Gloom there, and any attempt to convince him otherwise with facts and reality such as sales totals, show attemdance figures, publications, message board activity, anecdotes, etc, is usually met with various non sequitur. So we have learned there to simply route around the damage, and you should too.

The turn this thread has taken over night reminds me of the recently employed political approach that there can be no free and independent thinking, or differing opinions. You must either be total with us, or you are the enemy. If the situation cannot be portrayed as absolutely rosy and upbeat it simply must be disregarded, or not allowed.

Honestly, there can be no question whatever that our hobby is increasingly experiencing serious difficulties. However, my posts to this thread have simply illustrated the fact that in recent years model railroad hobby shops in my entire region, one which for decades was a center of HO model railroading in American, became a facet that was dwindling and has now finally died out. That increasingly a similar situation has come to exist throughout nearly all of the U.S. has been clearly voiced by many other posters here. How can this be taken as other than true and reflective of what is happening to the hobby? Model railroading simply cannot survive long-term through the Internet alone. Once any pursuit totally vanishes from the public eye, just how long can one really expect it to persist in any other form?

CNJ999