Hobby Shops in Tough Times

[Sumpter250]

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).

It's been a while since I was last in Phoenix (Chandler). An Affair With Trains is a shop I've been to, and found Clinchfield rolling stock, that I couldn't find in shops near home. I'll have to look for the new location, next time I get out that way.

I came back to edit this after reading the thread on "Georges trains moving".

As a kid, on the south shore of Long Island, in the fifties, hobby shops were usually a section of some other business. Taggert Auto parts, in Amityville, N.Y. was the closest to my home, and I could cycle over, and check out "the stuff".
There was a small trains hobby shop in the marina in Sag Harbor,N.Y. that I could ride the bicycle to when we were at the summer cottage on Noyac Bay, and the "hobby shop" in Lindenhurst,N.Y., was a paint store. Then.....there was Polks, in Manhattan, when I was old enough, I road the "flatwheel express", (LIRR, MP-54's), into Penn Station, and walked to Polks, now THAT was a hobby shop!
There were very few "ready to run" items, including locos, which were in kit form!
Brass was probably the most RTR of all the products. The "NMRA horn/hook" coupler, which had a long life as the "standard", hadn't yet been released, so you never knew what you'd get, and sprung trucks were the order of the day....UN-assembled, I learned very quickly to run a length of thread through the spring, to keep it from flying into "irretrievable locations"
Today's RTR everything, is a far cry from the hobby I started in.....There's something to be said for having to paint and letter each piece of rolling stock...they always had the "road" I was looking for, in the right paint scheme for the era, thanks to Floquil paint, and Champ decals. The Ambroid "one of 5000" kits were among my favorites, and scratchbuilding to MR's construction articles, was right up there.
I still get more pleasure out of building something, than buying. It's neat to have things on my layout, that no one else has.