Best Hobby Shops on the Web

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I have dealt with Wholesale Trains a lot, and have always been pleased with their selection of products, their prices, and their prompt service.
 


They are very helpful people there. I have purchased from them online and also had one of my MTH loco's repaired thru them.

They're website could be a little more functional, but the are helpful, friendly, and have good prices.

Jeesh, what do you do? Drive around the U.S to hobby shops! LOL!
Here is another LHS, he specializes in N scale but he is very experienced. (Itleast it seems like it) He doesnt do online sales, but here is his website:
http://www.esthershobby.com/
 
Jeesh, what do you do? Drive around the U.S to hobby shops! LOL!
Here is another LHS, he specializes in N scale but he is very experienced. (Itleast it seems like it) He doesnt do online sales, but here is his website:
http://www.esthershobby.com/

Ha ha, lol, no Ive just gotten pretty active in the hobby in the last few years. While I mainly shop online, I also very fortunate to have a job that allows me to drop into alot of the hobby shops while Im in some towns and cities.
 
For O gauge, I usually do not go any farther than
http://www.charlesro.com/

Awesome prices, OK site layout.


Still hunting down a good HO site.

They're my LHS! They DO have HO, but don't advertise it on their site. Charles Ro is the retail store of the G gauge manufacturer USA Trains so they get manufacturer discounts from Walthers and passes the discount on to the customer. They have a very large selection of HO scale, a decent selection of N scale, and they claim to be the largest train store in America because they carry everything in stock on the Lionel catalog.
 
Anybody ever order from Nhshobbies.com? Great prices on track and free shipping on orders over $99...

Anybody have any experience with them?
 


Litchfield Station.... I can't reccommend them anymore. First, they started charging $4 for shipping, yet it says free shipping over $75 all over their site. I understand that they want to make changes, but if they can't manage a website, then they need to hire someone to do so if they're to be an internet business. There's also an announcement saying that they will start charging $4 for shipping starting Dec 18th, but they were charging it before then as I was charged when I placed my order on the 14th. It's not the shipping charge that I'm unhappy about (it's reasonable), it's the lack of clear concise information on their website.

Second, they sold me a used speaker as new. The speaker had a puddle of solder bridging both pads, and they put two globs of epoxy over the pads to make it appear to be 2 separate blobs of solder. The two blobs of solder are cold joints so there's no way that it came like that from the factory.

Litchfield Station has really gone downhill since Bruce Petrarca sold it.
 
Litchfield Station.... I can't reccommend them anymore. First, they started charging $4 for shipping, yet it says free shipping over $75 all over their site. I understand that they want to make changes, but if they can't manage a website, then they need to hire someone to do so if they're to be an internet business. There's also an announcement saying that they will start charging $4 for shipping starting Dec 18th, but they were charging it before then as I was charged when I placed my order on the 14th. It's not the shipping charge that I'm unhappy about (it's reasonable), it's the lack of clear concise information on their website.

Second, they sold me a used speaker as new. The speaker had a puddle of solder bridging both pads, and they put two globs of epoxy over the pads to make it appear to be 2 separate blobs of solder. The two blobs of solder are cold joints so there's no way that it came like that from the factory.

Litchfield Station has really gone downhill since Bruce Petrarca sold it.

Did they let you return it then?
 
Not worth the money or effort. I scraped off the epoxy, then used a desoldering braid to soak up all of the solder and it was fine.
 
Ok, more issues.

1. Litchfield Station. A page or two back, I mentioned how they sent me a used speaker when I ordered a new one, and how disorganized their website is.

Today, I received an email from an email address from "q.com". The email did NOT state the name of the place it was advertising, but it did have a phone number. The email was advertising a preorder deal on Bowser C630M locomotives. I looked up the phone number and saw that it belonged to Litchfield Station.

Litchfield station is using my email address to market things to me that I did NOT sign up for.

To make matters worse, he copied and pasted his ENTIRE EMAIL LIST to the TO: field so now EVERYONE on their email list has my email address.

2. Model Railcraft Supply Depot. I ordered 4 SD70M-2s from Model RailCraft Supply Depot. The owner first gave me the excuse that the SD70M-2s arrived damaged and that he was not going to send out rough stuff (he gave someone else a different excuse). When I called him, he finally cancelled my order and told me that he dug out some misplaced preorders that need to be filled first, and that he's not confident that he'll be able to get them after he's filled those orders. The other person that I have been talking with agrees that the guy is unreliable.

As soon as I got off the phone with him, I ordered the engines through MB Klein. I bought the last NS 2684 with sound.
 
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Oddly enough, I can't support all the folks talking about MBKlein. I walked into thier store once, and the "help" was so ignorant and crude that I never returned. At the time It was a place I had to pass to get to work! So much for convenience!!
With the exception of TTX, all my buying is at my LHS. The even beat MB Kleins advertised specials any day of the week, are close by, and always friendly.:D
 




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