What's happening down at Caboose Hobbies?

[Robert McFarland]

The title says it all.

[Mike Trent]

Word I got today is that they are going to become an online-only store, as the building owner wants to sell the building. Look for word of a "Transition Sale" soon.

[Robert McFarland]

That sucks

[Mike Trent]

Here's a little more. Bear in mind none of this is coming straight from anybody at Caboose.

The building has already been sold, and the owner intends to tear it down and build a new structure. Caboose doesn't really want to move all their inventory so there will be a pretty big sale. Their business has been very much impacted by competition from internet sites, and also from ebay.

Time marches on. I've been doing a lot of my business online with them as long as I've lived in Alabama.

For those of us who have been long time customers, this is the end of an era. Erick Nelson and I (at about 15 years old) used to occasionally ride the Billings Mail Train from Boulder on Saturdays to Union Station, walk up to 610 15th St and hang out at the old location, where Glen Brazelton always took good care of us. Then we'd head over to the Bus Depot and ride back home to Boulder. Cool stuff from a long bygone era.  

[jim pallow]

   I worked for Glen and Bert at 610 15th and Glen and Dwayne at 500 S. Broadway.  What a piece of news.  Time travels on. JP

[usairman737]

For those not in the Denver area, this is expected for the past 3 - 4 years.  The old gates Rubber facility south of Caboose Hobbies on Broadway has been demolished, replaced by up-scale housing.  There is a lite-rail station within walking distance.  Real estate forces (lack of places to live) place Denver metro near the top of the most expensive places to live in the USA (close to Boulder, CO, at the top of the list).

We had a presentation by the Caboose Hobbies owner a few years ago where he outlined his plans to move into a warehouse location out of the metro area.  Internet sales with minimal overhead was the only way to stay in the business.  If you're going to mostly take reservations and ship RTR stuff when it arrives, why not do it over the internet?

Gerry

[Keith Hayes]

Well, this is a troubling development, though I must confess that my Spidey sense has been tingling for some time. The S scale offerings have been a bare minimum for many years, and the brass inventory (mostly consignment items) was considerably reduced a couple years ago. My Dad bought his first brass locomotive at 610 15th Street, as did I: I guess that little shop was a right of passage for more than a few of us.

As Caboose is my local hobby shop, when I look around, I have only myself to blame. While I do model in a less popular scale, I have found reason to spend a reasonable portion of my hobby dollars at Caboose each of the last few years. My personal hobby evolution has transitioned from acquiring kits (structures and rolling stock) to the need for common items--brass wire, decoders and scenery materials. I still try to stop in once a month, and gander at what is on the shelves, glance at the magazines and say hello to the staff I have come to know.

And yet...as Caboose has downsized, I also contributed to the problem. If I wanted a locomotive model, I got it direct from PBL or an online site; need a part? Grandt Line. Stripwood and detail parts: I buy them direct. This is great as more than once a manufacturer has tucked in an extra goodie for me, but those were dollars that I did not spend at my local hobby shop, either. As I dwell on the closing, I can probably get what I need either at another general-interest hobby shop, or continue to expand my direct dealings with more manufacturers. What will be lost is the ability to see/ touch/ feel before I buy, and to get sound advice from folks I trust.

Farewell, Nations Largest Train Store.

[Jim Courtney]

Yes, this is a nationwide problem, retail hobby shops slowly going out of business.

Our best train store in the Puget Sound area is Steve Depolo's Inside Gateway.  Steve's stated business plan is to be the last hobby shop in the Seattle area to go out of business.

[usairman737]

Is this a case of which comes first, the chicken or the egg?  Did those bare shelves in our S scale cause us to look elsewhere?  In my case, it's an hour's drive down and an hour back, gas money easily spent on postage from somebody who does have it in stock.  Books I used to find at Caboose I now order from Amazon.  S-scale stripwood hasn't been stocked in years, so of course we went elsewhere.

As to "modelling advice", most of the sales staff look like they are just killing time, waiting to take their employee discount and go home to work on their own railroad.  Not the way it used to be, even five years ago.

Gerry  

[ComoDepot]

When I was last in their in March? it was pretty clear they were running down their stock so not surprised.

[South Park]

  When the trains quit running to Gunnison, the shops and town of Como quickly
lost their reason to exist.  We all know the drill.

[Jim Courtney]

Well, it seems official.

Got an email today from Caboose Hobbies--they will formally go out of business on September 25, 2016.