Model Railroading > Southern CA Hobby shop visit

Wanted to get others feed back on southern CA hobby shops. We made a point to stop at a few on our recent south land trip. 
Photo one is Train Shack in Burbank. Good selection of HO scale and big selection of Tsunami sound, no Loksound though. Average paint selection
Photo two is Original W stop. Original had a good selection of Scalecoat paint. (Mark picked up two bottles of SP grey and he's a ATSF modeler) 
We also visited Annie's trains. Good selection of models and paint, no Scalecoat. Thinking my favorite was Smith Brothers for paint selection. No Scalecoat, but being a military model shop, it had a fantastic selection of paint, even English made Humbrol. Still would like to visit Burbank house of hobbies as I purchase Tamiya from them on EBay. Wondering if anybody has other places to visit or recommendations? 

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The capitol of Model railroading. Head on down to Simi and visit the Santa Susana Model Railroad. You can enjoy some Railfanning on the Coast Line  

Javier Cervantes
Castle Rock , CO

Was nice meeting you Dave.   Thanks for the plug and stopping by my shop.    We've recently joked, thinking to rename the store Smith Brothers' Paint Center.

It's ironic, as the night before I was looking at La Mesa run trains thinking how cool they were.   Then the next day you appeared in person to claim them as yours!    <g>

Jason Eminian
Smith Brothers Hobby Center
Northridge, CA.
 

Good to see a well stocked store with lots of customers!

Burbank's House of Hobbies is an interesting store that packs a lot into a small space.  Not much in the way of HO trains to speak of, but I do believe they have a lot of Tamiya and Testors paints as well as HO vehicles (lots of Iconic Replicas buses and Rapido).  I believe Burbank once had 7 different hobby shops in its heyday.  I worked (very part-time) at Autobooks/Aerobooks on the corner of Hollywood Way and Magnolia for a short stint around the year 2000.

Rich

Whistle Stop neon - Wow!
Thx for pix.

If you are in the neighborhood, stop by Railmaster Hobbies in Bellflower. Jeff almost always has a good stock of DCC decoders fro TSU and ESU. Burbank is great for Tamiya, Mr. Hobby (I prefer MR. H over Tamiya), Vallejo, MIG, and AK Interactive paints. I buy direct from their website, as I don't do FleaBay anymore.

I bought my first HO Tenshodo brass steam locomotive at a shop on Hollywood Way about 1961.  As I recall, it was about $75.  Those were the days.

To someone who was born & raised in L.A. and spent most of my life there, this map tells me that in the greater Westside of L.A. County, roughly from Palos Verdes in the south, Malibu to the north and Beverly Hills to the east, there is not one, decent hobby shop, let alone one that specializes in trains.  In that area, which includes Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood & Bel Air and the others I noted, there is probably more per capita wealth than most any other area in the country.  

Allied Model Trains THRIVED there for decades.  There is definitely an opportunity for some enterprising person to open a decent hobby store there--a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY!

 

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I cant imagine anyone dumb enough to even consider it these days. If you have the money to waste on over inflated real estate and enough stock to get started, the days of a warehouse full of stock are not like they once were. With a year to two years between announcement and deliveries of most things these days, it could take years to get a decent stock. Delivered trains make money, not promises and preorders. I give a lot of credit to shop owners knowing that take an order that they will not see a return in for a long time. And with the ages of some modeles, they might not even be alive when thus do come off the water.

TomG Wrote:
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> I cant imagine anyone dumb enough to even consider
> it these days. If you have the money to waste on
> over inflated real estate and enough stock to get
> started, the days of a warehouse full of stock are
> not like they once were. With a year to two years
> between announcement and deliveries of most things
> these days, it could take years to get a decent
> stock. Delivered trains make money, not promises
> and preorders. I give a lot of credit to shop
> owners knowing that take an order that they will
> not see a return in for a long time. And with the
> ages of some modeles, they might not even be alive
> when thus do come off the water.

Well sometimes, it's not all about the money.  There are certainly easier ways to make a living, but then there's doing something you LOVE!  For 32 of my years, I was fortunate to do what I loved and that was to run my store.  If I were 30 or 40 years younger, even with the way things are in the hobby today, I would not hesitate to open a hobby store in West L.A. County.