Model Railroading > Allied story in LA Times

Interesting story on the front page of the LA Times business section on the closing (and soon reopening) of Allied Trains. Mr. Druker weighs in on the "is this hobby dying" debate. He feels it is. Certainly from a retail store outlook, he may have a point. the key will be to convert the kids who love Thomas to kids who make models.

Re: "Is this hobby dying...."

I've been around for awhile and have heard the same question for the last 10 - 15 years. In the meantime we've had even more releases and better models in addition to wide acceptance ( and expectations) of affordable DCC and sound. Must still be some profit left in this business.

Well the hobby is certainly changing, the distribution channels are among the biggest changes.
I do believe the Internet has contributed greatly to this, but overall I have to believe the general interest is still there.

While I was around and remember the end of steam and this is what initially brought me into the hobby, I believe there is as much excitement and enthusiasm for modern equipment ...double stack and shooter piggyback as with bygone steam.
Thomas yes, but the variables, colors and designs of today's motive power and the track side drama
of anticipation, distant thunder and passing of a modern double stack train still makes for great excitement and anticipation of the next one. I take my 4 year old grandson who's never seen a prototype close up and invariably he is completely fascinated and full of questions. After returning home he wants to know when we'll go again. He's not necessarily clamoring for his Lionel set yet, however this has become one of his interests and I'm sure it will carry on . Certainly Grandpa will do this again with him.

My point is that we need to emphasize the here and now, the trains and equipment we see track side along with the drama of a nearly 2 mile long double stack train with modern power. Nostalgia is OK, but the real show and the future of railroading is what is out there now.

At one time travel meant train, just as that is not the case anymore we can confine our nostalgia
to the linear forests of old telegraph poles and bygone ghosts of the power and spectacle of steam that we thought then would never end, but end it did and the real action is in the ES-44's and the recent EMD SD-70M AC's, along with now elderly SD-40's living out their last turn of the wheels.

Finally, as much as I like my local hobby store and the folks who run it, in the past few years I have bought most of my major purchases (Modern Overland Diesels) from resellers on EBay....strictly economic reasons. New is new, and a 30 -40% saving on a $900.00 suggested retail purchase can't be ignored. I still go to the hobby store, but limit purchases to cars, consignment items, and building materials. I wish it wasn't so, but full retail vs. 30-40% off just isn't a choice.

Just my opinion,

Regards,

Auburnrail

For those that don't get the paper:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-station9may09,1,363372.story

Auburnrail Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Re: "Is this hobby dying...."
>
> I've been around for awhile and have heard the
> same question for the last 10 - 15 years.

Ah but what about when the baby boomers are gone? If I understand correctly the babyboomers are spending most of the money right now because they have a $$$ advantage over the younger modelers and the manufacturers/[publsihers are making mostly what they want.

Did they or will they have a close-out sale?????????????

Too bad they're leaving!

I remember when they were on Pico Blvd. before 1989.

The hobby was dying for Mr. Drucker. He was bitter, he was anti computer and did not see any value in the Internet and overcharged for products. The fact that Frank Sinatra wasn't coming in anymore didn't help either.... :)

Bruce

"The hobby was dying for Mr. Drucker....."

Absolutely agree. Going to his store was a "Let's see what's out there" experience but not a "I'll buy it." This was both due to the attitude of the sales staff and also the pricing.

Still sorry to see it go, but there have been enough comments on the T/O board about the attitude of the folks there. In the meantime Brian and Fred at the Whistle Stop in Pasadena have always maintained a "happy to see you" attitude and their business is surviving and doing OK.

Regards,

Auburnrail

rms492 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did they or will they have a close-out
> sale?????????????
>
> Too bad they're leaving!
>
> I remember when they were on Pico Blvd. before
> 1989.


They had a big sale in March.

The hobby business didn't die for Drucker, he killed it off. His employee's attitude mirrored his attitude toward customer's. The average model railroader who came into his store to buy one car, detail parts, or just an engine was treated like a nobody, even though these people are the bread and butter of the hobby. But when a high roller came into Allied, Drucker couldn't come down the stairs fast enough to push the sale clerk away take over. This happened when Frank Sinatra visited the store. To Mr. Sinatra's credit he told Drucker he wanted to helped by the first clerk. Prices were raised on hot selling items and at Christmas time. Allied was the local hobby shop on the west side, but to most modelers, going there was like going to your dentist for a root canal. When the store was for sale, it was a great business opportunity. Now that's it's been sold, the hobby is dying. Every interview, Mr Drucker tells a different story. The new owners will turn Allied into a reputable train store, not a toy store, and yes the prices well be retail, but I'll get what I need and the staff well be friendly and happy I came, even if I buy just a jar of paint. Allied is dead, long live Allied.

I was at Allied a few years back. A very pretty, very well dressed young lady came in with a box full of trains. Looked like mostly Lionel. She wanted to get them fixed for her son. The repair guy behind the counter went through the box and told her well it would be too costly to repair these. Parts are hard to find and if you did find the parts, they would cost more than the trains were worth. He took some old engine from the box and put it behind the counter. She didn't seem too pleased and was packing things back up. She asked where was the old engine and his reply was, oh, I have it back here I'd like to keep it and see if I can get it running, I like tinkering with old things.

I don't know if the lady got the engine back, I hope she did. I wanted to offer to her to fix the trains for free, but I was on vacation and didn't live in the area. I hope she got all of her trains back and found a repair station that wanted to fix the trains.

For those who wish to read the article....


For owner, end of the line
With fans aging and the model train hobby losing steam, Allen Drucker is selling his shop.
By Roger Vincent, Times Staff Writer
May 9, 2007



This week, one of the nation's largest model train stores is closing its longtime home in Culver City: a half-block-long replica of Los Angeles' Union Station. And fading along with it, says owner Allen Drucker, is the model train industry.

"It's just a dying hobby," said Drucker, 58. "We probably have another good 15 years."

Drucker will hang up his cap after 32 years of running a miniature railroad hub. "I always told myself I didn't want to be the old man running the train store," he said.

New owners will move the business to a smaller Art Deco-style building Drucker owns across the street. He'll rent the Union Station look-alike to Samy's Camera.

With real estate values rising and competition from the Internet barking at his heels, he decided it was time to sell his business — a favorite stop for West L.A. boys and girls and train buffs for generations. Among them were celebrities including Frank Sinatra, who had a building shaped like a train station at his Rancho Mirage estate.

"He had a huge Lionel layout and all along the walls were shelves full of trains," said Drucker, who visited Sinatra's home several times. "He had a real Santa Fe caboose too, as his workout room."

Sinatra's collection was acquired by Canadian business mogul Jim Pattison, along with Sinatra's desert home. The crooner was one of several celebrity train collectors who shopped at Allied. Among Drucker's other customers, he said, are music artists Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen and actor Donald Sutherland.

One of his longtime customers is former broadcaster and talk-show host Tom Snyder, who has loved trains all his life and has an elaborate setup at his Marin County home with Lionel trains from the 1920s and before.

"There's magic to it," Snyder said of the layout that passes through walls in his house. "It's kept me going for a long time and now it's a source of joy for my grandchildren."

Model railroading dates to the early 20th century, when Lionel introduced its first electric-powered train. The business enjoyed a golden age during the 1920s, when heavy metal locomotives and cars were the most prized possessions of many boys.

After U.S. model train production stopped for World War II, the industry boomed again in the 1950s, when trains were the No. 1 toy for boys and were as pervasive in the culture as video games are today.

Video games are among the many competitors for children's time and interest today, so the industry's fan base is fading. Model Railroader magazine's circulation has dropped to 162,000 from 272,000 in 1993, a spokeswoman said. Average railroaders, however, spend an estimated $1,555 a year on their hobby, almost twice as much as they did in the early 1990s.

Train buffs have always held ornate Union Station in downtown Los Angeles in high regard, dubbing it "the last of the nation's great railway stations" after it was completed in 1939.

Drucker's mini-Union Station on Sepulveda Boulevard was completed in 1989.

"I attribute a tremendous amount of our success to that building," Drucker said. "It scaled down beautifully."

But a notable building wasn't enough.

"It has become increasingly more difficult to run a single store like mine in a major metropolitan area," Drucker said. Among his challenges have been paying electric bills of $3,000 a month to help keep all his display trains running and maintaining a staff big enough to look after the place.

Then there is the looky-loo hobbyist who, he said, comes in, checks out the latest model trains with powerful lights and digital sounds but buys almost nothing.

"He says, 'Wow, I would love that.' Then he walks out of here with a tube of glue and a magazine and buys it online from some guy working out of a barn in the middle of Kansas. Folks like that are the first ones to scream, 'I can't believe you're leaving.' "

But the real problem with the model train industry, Drucker said, is that its biggest fans are growing older. Many baby boomers still love electric trains, but they haven't been able to pass along much of their passion to the next generations.

Customer Randy Miller endures gentle mockery from his children. " 'He's 55 and still playing with trains,' my daughter says. 'I think he's losing it.' "

Miller drove his pickup down from Simi Valley to check out Allied's closing sale and walked out with $300 worth of Lionel boxcars in a big sack. He's restoring his late father's old train set and enjoying memories, recently using his skills as a machinist to restore a toy water tower his brother broke in the 1960s.

"My father never got over that," Miller said. "Now it's fixed."

One hobbyist who is trying to encourage another generation of enthusiasts is Steve Lind, a retired Marine pilot and commercial banker who says he owns thousands of miniature train cars and is grateful that his wife, Nancy, "puts up with all my toys."

He had his 4-year-old grandson, Ryan, in tow at Allied to look at some S-gauge rigs chugging effortlessly through a Lilliputian landscape.

"I'm getting him started on trains," said Lind, who grew up in Chicago watching the Burlington railroad. "He's going to inherit quite a few."

Drucker's love of trains also started early in his life. His father bought him an American Flyer set when he was 1 year old, which was set up around the family Christmas tree every year.

Drucker lost interest during his teen years but took up toy train collecting as a young adult and was hooked again. In 1975, when he was sick of his job at an electronics company, Drucker sold his house and car and bought Allied, a struggling West Los Angeles hobby shop founded soon after World War II.

Within a few years he had the business running strong again and kept expanding it. The 1980s were especially sweet.

"The whole nostalgia thing was in high gear and every yuppie on the Westside wanted a train around his Christmas tree," he recalled.

Business is still good, he said, but Drucker recently learned that rising real estate values put him in a position to make a living as a landlord instead of a business operator. Taking over Allied at the new location will be one of his employees, Nick Barone, and former competitors Fred Hill and Brian Brooks of the Original Whistle Stop in Pasadena.

Hill said that the old Allied would be shuttered Saturday after its close-out sale was complete, and that he hoped to reopen the new store by July. The owners will keep Drucker's emphasis on stocking toy trains, and the Original Whistle Stop will retain its focus on scale modeling, generally a more adult hobby in which participants often re-create specific railroads and locales in exacting detail.

"Allen's was the fun store and ours was the serious store," he said.

So although the fan base is aging, the hobby should always hold appeal for some grown-ups who want to escape the grinding uncertainties of life, said Brent Lambert of the National Model Railroad Assn.

"You can create your own little world you can get away to," he said, "where things are exactly the way you want them to be."

Oh no, not Sammy's Camera... the ones who run "bookend" ads on L.A. TV for months leading up to Christmas. "Bookend" meaning the show breaks, there's a Sammy's ad, then about four more commercials, and then the same Sammy's ad before the show returns. Inspires the "urge to kill" even faster than Chia Pet, The Clapper, and "I've fallen and I can't get up!"
It's got nothing to do with the new operator's trains store really, but I'll have to figure out a way to get in there without looking to the other side of the street...

I've been buying camera gear from Samy's for years and they have given me great, honest service - the exact opposite of what I got the one time I visited Allied (and never went back!)

I am not too impressed with the Original Whistle Stop in Pasadena either, they must also be infected with "I can't see you Invisible Man Syndrome". I was there earlier this year and never been their before, I was in there looking around for about 20 min and not one person there asked me if I needed help.

If they bring that same mentality to Allied, their days will be numbered also.

I'm sorry, but I'll keep on buying my goods from the guy with a barn in Kansas and the guy with a missle silo in South Dakota.

Now you know why all the LHS are turning into crumbled brick and pulverized mortar.

Allied was a (full Retail) store so I never bought anything there in the pass 5 years, Ebay is about 30% to 50% off for the exact item, For a Positive note, The Fully Stock Trains stores are fun to vistit, and will be missed!.

My 2 cents

I think AuburnRail must be me in disguise...

I too am dealing with a Grandson who's wowed by the passage of heavy tonnage and big horsepower. I have two Grandaughters who like trains, but they're only mildly impressed. I fear AR is right about the here and now. But is it good to write off history? I recognize today is tomorrow's history, but still; is it the right thing to do?

He's also right about the brick & mortar shops and pricing. I don't know how we deal with that one.

I do know that the "Instant Gratification" thing is insidious. There's something about a model you've BUILT....means more than a RTR car or loco. You don't KNOW that until you've DONE it. Will we kill the "Hobby" by killing the creativity? Most of the airplane guys I know still build their stuff. Can we learn from them?

Think about it....

Bill