We All Love Model Trains- Support Your Local Hobby Store

I made my last visit to Bruce's Trains, my local hobby store once known as the Whistle Stop, shortly before heading to Roanoke in 2011.  I walked the aisles and looked at the new double-stack well cars and the tri-level auto racks for sale.  I said to myself, "Wow, if the kid I was could see all of the model trains they make today."  To me, this was perhaps the finest store on earth.
The kid in me wanted to return to Bruce's trains when I came back to Sacramento from Roanoke.  Fall was in the air, and I said to myself, "Wow, this reminds me of the days when I would get the Athearn blue boxes so many years ago."
To my sadness, Bruce's Trains was gone.  Such is the story with many of our local hobby stores.
Local hobby stores are more than places that sell model trains.  I made many friends as I first learned about trains at the Whistle Stop.
Athearn made Southern Pacific SD40T-2's with a snoot nose and the Rio Grande version with a standard nose.  It was not until a kit-basher came into the Whistle Stop and showed all of us that he had detailed a Rio Grande Standard nose version with the Southern Pacific light package that I began to see the essences of detail each railroad had.
The Whistle Stop gave me a chance to learn about railroads I had never seen.  I would walk up and down the aisles of Athearn blue boxes and MDC freight cars, looking for cars I had seen go by on Southern Pacific.  Ever so often, however, I would open a box, such as an old Seaboard Air Line box car and it would intrigue me enough that I would add it to my collection.
Lee, who worked at the front counter, would often ask me, "So how are your model projects coming?  Are you still working on Union Pacific and Southern Pacific?  Have you ever thought about Western Pacific?"
All I knew about Western Pacific was a few stray GP40-2s that I had seen roaming the now Union Pacific system.  My mind could not stretch back far enough to model Western Pacific in its entirety.  Mentors such as Lee at the Whistle Stop, however, first sparked my interest in railroads that were fading away or were before my time.
I am very grateful that as a kid I had a local hobby shop to go to.  Local hobby shops are a place for us all to learn about trains and for us to compare our model railroad projects.  I feel we should all work to support our local hobby store.