Local Hobby Shop burns down

[LIRR]

http://www.13wham.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/oldest-building-east-rochester-burns-12317.shtml

[peteski]

Sad news! Did they carry N scale (or just larger scales)?

[mcjaco]

Local hobby shop in Antioch, IL burned down a few years back.  They rebuilt, and came back stocking more N scale.  Surely a sign of the apocalypse.

[bman]

Sad news indeed.  Hope the owner is able to come back better than ever.

[robert3985]

That is sad news.  It's not the LHS's stock of merchandise that gets me, it's all the collectibles that were in there as well as the historical aspect of the station which will never be replaced...even if covered properly by insurance.

Interestingly, in UP's history, when the railroad needed new structures, oftimes the old ones would mysteriously burn down such as the Ogden Union Station, which got rebuilt into what is presently standing there, and the wooden coaling facility at Echo, which mysteriously burned down just in time for a new Fairbanks & Morse concrete tower to be built for the Big Boys to use.

I'm sure this isn't anything like that, and my sympathies go out to the city, as well as to the owner of the LHS and his customers.

[LIRR]

I've been going there for 18 years. The shop had character.....like an old small town hardware store vis-a-vis a Home Depot. The building was adjacent to the double track CSX main line. There was a picture window on the back wall for watching a train go by.  He carried quite a bit of N, as hobby shops go. He also had a lot of O gauge items that simply can't be replaced.

[rschaffter]

That's a shame.  The shop I often went to over in West Boylston, Mass, Henry's,  burned 7 or 8 years ago, and the owner took the opportunity to retire...

[C855B]

... Interestingly, in UP's history, when the railroad needed new structures, oftimes the old ones would mysteriously burn down such as the Ogden Union Station, which got rebuilt into what is presently standing there, and the wooden coaling facility at Echo, which mysteriously burned down just in time for a new Fairbanks & Morse concrete tower to be built for the Big Boys to use. ...

SP had the same system in the '60s and '70s. Once a closed station received any sort of "attention" for preservation, restoration or community re-use, it would inexplicably catch fire. Being very old, dried-out wood like that hobby shop, the structures would be fully involved by the time the FD rolled onto the scene.

[JMaurer1]

Speaking of the SP, something similar happened to the old brick roundhouse in Santa Clara. People started to work towards trying to save it and it suddenly fell down...darn earthquakes

[Memster1]

According to all the news stories, the owner is not planning on rebuilding.  This is a real loss, as his in-store stock was quite large, and if he did not have it, he would order it and the items would be there in a week or less.  He had fair pricing and years of experience. 

[OldEastRR]

Maybe he'll start an on-line store. With insurance money he could make a real nice start-up.