Do Hobby Stores Carry New Lionel Cars/Engines?

I imagine some do.  I also image they limit their exposure to loss by ordering less (or none of) the more expensive items. 

Although there are no stores close to me, some of the dealers such as Trainworld and Mr Muffin seem to have new Lionel releases not spoken for and available.

A store that is more dedicated to O will have more stock...there are shops like this, but geographically speaking, there just aren't that many. My 'local' shop is the The Train Station in Mountain Lakes, NJ...it's wall to wall O, mostly Lionel, new and old. But these shops are rare..a more general purpose hobby shop is likely to be limited.

Thanks for the replies.  I went there not because I wanted to buy anything in particular, I just wanted to see what they had.  I was willing to spend up to $600 on a new product if it was something I liked.  I prefer buying from local merchants over an online store when I can.  From what I now understand, the fundamental problem may not be of his choosing.  Lionel and the store both missed out.

i guess i'm lucky. i live a half an hour from 4 o gauge stores. stockyard express. Ormandy's, Uncle Rays and Depot train and hobby. 3 have new and old stock.

The space in the store I went to had about 20% dedicated to Lionel, about the same to HO, and the rest was for various other hobbies.  He did have a back room of decent size that had a nice size working HO layout manned by several guys that didn't appear to want to be interrupted.

Since the "glory days" (1950s) when the hobby shop got a markup to retail that made a reasonable profit, all things have changed.  Mainly, the sheer number of railroad road names, and the variety of car and locomotive models wanted by the market.  As well, the market now wants about every diesel ever built in the prototype, and still wants all the old steam locomotives.  Then add the technology - a shop might have had conventional, which were then supplemented by TMCC, Legacy, then Lion Chief, LC Plus, LC Plus 2.0. 

The retail discounts have also been eroded to now about 20%.  A 20% markup is only 16.6% gross margin.  A business needs about a 33% margin.

So you have declining hobby shop profit, dramatically increased stocking/ inventory requirements,  and the 1955 popular market "pie" being split into smaller pieces.  What was largely Lionel and Marx in O, American Flyer in S, and a few others in HO, now has O Gauge, O SCALE, S, HO, PLUS N and even Z, all being made in several places around the World.

Add to all this a shrinking total interest in trains as a hobby. starting in the 1960s. You have a perfect storm for what has actually happened- declining margins all around.  And direct purchasing from huge distributors (who make a little more than the LHS), Built to Order to lessen the stocking problems, etc.  And, still nobody is making a lot of money.

I think all the above points are valid.  I've also gotten the impression that for some LHS, their O-scale stocking or lack thereof is a self fulfilling prophecy.  They have a bunch of late postwar and MPC era "stuff"/"junk", and then when it doesn't sell, they assume/believe that its an o-scale problem.

As a younger O-scale modeler (in my 20's) I have moved heavily from traditional equipment I had as a kid to scale equipment.  I get the impression that many young adult modelers are in a similar boat.  If I'm going to be in the hobby, then I want to be seriously in the hobby and actually do scale modeling, even if still 3rail.  I think there has been a shift towards model railroading like HO and N do, just in a larger, more impressive scale, rather than the "toy-train" mantra of many older O-gauge fans.

I think that leads to the stagnation of stock at LHS.  I have little to no interest in MPC equipment, yet at most LHS that I have been to recently, the bulk or entirety of their stock is MPC era or generally "traditional"/O-27 sized.

EDIT TO ADD: I think the shift to scale is especially prominent among younger O-scalers because the models we grew up drooling over in catalogs were the scale models Lionel and MTH were producing in the 2000s, rather than the traditional postwar sets of older members of the hobby.  My only nostalgia for postwar equipment is for the stuff handed down by my grandfather or purchased as a kid at trains shows with him.

@PSM posted:

I think all the above points are valid.  I've also gotten the impression that for some LHS, their O-scale stocking or lack thereof is a self fulfilling prophecy.  They have a bunch of late postwar and MPC era "stuff"/"junk", and then when it doesn't sell, they assume/believe that its an o-scale problem.

As a younger O-scale modeler (in my 20's) I have moved heavily from traditional equipment I had as a kid to scale equipment.  I get the impression that many young adult modelers are in a similar boat.  If I'm going to be in the hobby, then I want to be seriously in the hobby and actually do scale modeling, even if still 3rail.  I think there has been a shift towards model railroading like HO and N do, just in a larger, more impressive scale, rather than the "toy-train" mantra of many older O-gauge fans.

I think that leads to the stagnation of stock at LHS.  I have little to no interest in MPC equipment, yet at most LHS that I have been to recently, the bulk or entirety of their stock is MPC era or generally "traditional"/O-27 sized.

EDIT TO ADD: I think the shift to scale is especially prominent among younger O-scalers because the models we grew up drooling over in catalogs were the scale models Lionel and MTH were producing in the 2000s, rather than the traditional postwar sets of older members of the hobby.  My only nostalgia for postwar equipment is for the stuff handed down by my grandfather or purchased as a kid at trains shows with him.

While I like scale equipment, I can do a little of the mpc semi scale if the price is right. You are correct, most trains shows I go to have almost all mpc (I don’t have a local hobby shop, so can’t speak about them).

@texgeekboy posted:I was willing to spend up to $600 on a new product if it was something I liked.  I prefer buying from local merchants over an online store when I can. 

Most bigger online stores are someone else's local merchant.

Heck, Charles Ro started off as a barber shop selling a few trains on the side like a hardware store.

I base my purchases on which shops give me the best customer service. Unfortunately most of anything local is at least an hour drive and leave more to be desired.

I think @Mike Wyatt hit the nail on the head.  I heard similar thoughts from a knowledgeable person in an email on the subject.  Times are tough for the small independent business owner, not only in things like model railroading.  I just read an article where many restaurants are now tacking on surcharges for employee health costs, and charging for water.  Inflationary pressures need to be addressed by someone above my pay grade.

@texgeekboy posted:

I think @Mike Wyatt hit the nail on the head.  I heard similar thoughts from a knowledgeable person in an email on the subject.  Times are tough for the small independent business owner, not only in things like model railroading.  I just read an article where many restaurants are now tacking on surcharges for employee health costs, and charging for water.  Inflationary pressures need to be addressed by someone above my pay grade.

I agree.  A lot of what Mike said makes sense, but it doesn't make total sense.  The situation he describes is essentially unchanged for the last thirty years, basically since the internet went online for general use (including online sales).

His is a dire picture.

Knowing that then the O Gauge hobby world as we know it should have already ended long ago.  It's been thirty years.  Everyone should have migrated somewhere else, whether it was HO, N, G, or 1 Gauge, or other hobbies, and turned out the lights on Traditional 'O'.

Obviously that did not happen.

We need to be careful not to add or remove important observations when we non-marketing-experts do these analyses.  These observations are often critical to the conclusions we draw.

I'll give you some examples, by no means a complete list.  Feel free to disagree if you want to.

Specifically @texgeekboy I have two observations on what you've written:

1. Along the lines of being careful you used the word 'many' when speaking of restaurants.  I  think it's more like 'some'.  Big difference.
2. You mentioned inflation.  Us oldsters here remember inflation in the 1970's and how very bad it was. I was a teenager and could afford nothing because the cost of all O Gauge items went up significantly every single month for almost 10 years.   I had to give up on the hobby nearly completely, until I was married with kids and a well-paying post-college job, and most importantly until inflation had subsided, 15 years later.  But, still I came back and did not abandon it forever.  Other people will do the same.

Then for @Mike Wyatt:

1. You're missing the fact that the population in the U.S., and globally, has increased substantially since the glory days.  Yes there are more distractions, but there are also more people to compensate for the ones who've gone on to other hobbies.
2. You're also missing the ties-ins like Thomas, Polar Express, Harry Potter and real locomotives like UP 4014.  These did not exist in the glory days.  They are magic in driving people to our hobby.
3. Those who typically run R/C cars, planes, and boats (which all use internal batteries for power) do not model roads, waterways, towns, or shipping or air travel networks.  No waterfronts, no airports, no buildings, so no internal lighting or signs.  No signaling systems like traffic signals, or aircraft beacons, or lit runways.  No route guidance.  No turnouts (switches).   We model all these things and they all have to be wired.  Batteries will not work for them.  Putting batteries inside a locomotive doesn't help any of this and so is of very limited help to our hobby, unless you as a hobbyist simply "drive trains" and do none of these other things.
4. Don't ignore the influence that the Pandemic had in driving folks back to indoor, isolated hobbies.  It has been substantial.  It's easy to conclude that  people have gotten past this, now that it's waned, but many, many have been re-exposed, or exposed for the first time, to our hobby in the process.  They will be back.

Finally, the hobby stores are largely in disarray because they can't compete with internet sales without some new and clever tools and methods.   No one is helping them with these.  It's very, very easy presently for them to misread the market indicators that they need to master in order to succeed.  They just need a little help.

All is not lost.

Mike

Thanks.  Again my issue is hoping that hobby stores have some new stuff in the store to buy and not have to do everything online.  While I buy LED monitors online, I only buy big screen TVs in a store.  I want to see what I'm getting for $1000+.  Ditto for major appliances and automobiles (buying cars online is a bit bizarre IMHO).  As the price of Lionel engines is now in the 4 figures, I really would like to see one before I buy it.

Just to correct you Rick O, Charles Ro start out in the back room of his wife's beauty parlor in Everett, MA.