Model Railroading > Memories: Crain's Trains and Hobbies - La Puente, CA

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/15 18:00 by atsffan.

I grew up in Valinda (near La Puente) before moving away in 1976 at age 11. I recall visiting Crain's Trains & Hobbies a few times and spending my allowance on a few Kalmbach 'How to' modeling books there. The store seemed really big to my 10 year old eyes.

The West Covina club started in it's namesake city (my dad was a member for a little while), then moved to San Dimas (near Roadie's and the ATSF depot), then ultimately relocated to Pomona (where it has moved to another building due to the downtown gentrification there).

Rich

For any who visited Crain's Trains & Hobbies or who were involved in the club located there thoughout the years, and ever wondered how Bill Crain is doing I can say that as of the last time I saw him (last August) he was doing just fine and enjoying retirement working on his "N-scale" layout. I was a regular at his shop from 1963 when I first discovered it until his last week in business. Was sorry to see him close up shop. I met a lot fans/modelers through the years at his store.

KC - a "Cajon Valley" operator for many years

That was an interesting store.Stuff everywhere and only he could find most of it.It was a time when going to a hobby store was a great time,not just that store but any store.Now there are not very many left.Speaking of Rodie's Rich, my wife and I were in there when the earthquake hit earlier this week.It shook REAL GOOD as you can imagine. It held up well.

GRNDMND Wrote:
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> For any who visited Crain's Trains & Hobbies or
> who were involved in the club located there
> thoughout the years, and ever wondered how Bill
> Crain is doing I can say that as of the last time
> I saw him (last August) he was doing just fine and
> enjoying retirement working on his "N-scale"
> layout. I was a regular at his shop from 1963 when
> I first discovered it until his last week in
> business. Was sorry to see him close up shop. I
> met a lot fans/modelers through the years at his
> store.
>
> KC - a "Cajon Valley" operator for many years

I missed this thread as I was on vacation last week, but trainjunkie sent me an E-mail about it, knowing I used to hang out there. There was quite a group of us that used to hang out there, not only on Friday night's, but just about every day during the summer. I met GRNDMND there in the late 60's. I'm glad to hear Bill's doing good. I probably met atsffan there over the years as I belonged to the "Cajon Valley" club for many years and for several years worked there during the Christmas season, back when kids still bought model railroad sets. Although Crain's was mostly trains, he also had a goodly collection of model airplanes and model cars. Bill was also involved with "Perfect Scale Models" which imported several brass engines, including an ALCo C-415 and GE U-25b.
I'm with Kevin, I was sorry to see him close the shop, but times had changed and kids were more into video games among other things at the time of his closure. Crain's Trains was also THE place to find out what was going on in both the model and real railroading worlds.
Crain's was always our main destination while riding our bikes there in the late 60's, but we always went the "long way" and rode by the SP City of Industry Yard to see what was going on.
Thanks for bringing back a lot of good memories, atsffan. Here's a shot from one of those bike rides down to Crain's that I took with my trusty (not) Kodak X-15 instamatic.-BMT

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UPNW2-1083 Wrote:
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Here's a shot from one of those bike
> rides down to Crain's that I took with my trusty
> (not) Kodak X-15 instamatic.-BMT

The old Instamatic did a great job of capturing the smog back then. I don't get down that way much anymore, but on a subjective level I think the air quality in that area has actually improved over the last 40 years.

Cheers,
Jack

Oh it has! You CAN'T see what you are breathing in now :) !

KC - remembering that long line of C415's at COI