Hobby Shops in Tough Times

[nachoman]

If one you stopped by was "An affair with trains" on bethany home, I hear they are moving up near deer valley airport. The new owner does not like the neighborhood they are in (can't blame him).

That shop used to be half the size, but had twice the inventory it now has. Then I moved away for a few years, and was kinda out of the hobby. When I went back to the store after about 5 years, I was surprised at how little inventory they had despite the larger building. Then I visited a few other train-only stores, both in Phoenix and elsewhere, and noticed the same thing. The reality is, they don't do much walk-in business anymore, and they have adapted by doing internet sales. And the types of items that used to make shops look "stocked" aren't that popular anymore, such as detail parts and athearn blue box kits. People are more prototype-specific with rolling stock, and due to the variety available now and limited run nature, it is unwise for them to keep much stock. People don't want an athearn gp-40 anymore to paint and detail - they will wait until the atlas RTR comes out with the specific paint and details already added. And since atlas may come out with 50 versions of the GP-40, it doesn't seem likely the shop will stock all 50, and prefer people to special-order.

I still like to have a local shop for paint, couplers, tools, and scenery materials. Since I model mostly narrow gauge now, I head over to Coronado Scale Models which is about halfway between my house and work. That is almost an exclusively narrow gauge store, and there is nowhere else in the city that carries most of that stuff. For narrow gauge stuff, they have a better inventory than I have ever seen, including online - but that does not mean the store has a lot of stuff. For scenery, paint, and general items, I have to go elsewhere.