Recently I made a trip out to southeastern Michigan to drop my daughter off at college. With some free time on my hands I decided to explore a couple of O Gauge haunts in the Detroit metro area. First stop was P&D Hobby Shop in the Detroit northern suburb of Fraser. The place was big, very much geared for the true model train devotee. Lots of parts, decals, supplies, etc. A great selection of Atlas products, plus Weaver, including the biggest retail display of Atlas intermodal containers I'd ever seen. The other main impression I had was if you were really into 2-rail, again, a great number of Atlas freight cars with what I assumed were 2-rail scale couplers. If you were a parent with a young child and were looking to perhaps explore the hobby and show your child trains...P&D might not be the best place to start. But it's a big store with lots of Atlas as well as other manufacturers. And it had a lot of supporting materials -- paints, solvents, decals, etc. -- for the serious hobbyist (It's one of the few places -- maybe the only one -- I can recall seeing a Dremel tool on the wall display behind the register.) I ended up with a few Detroit/DT&I themed freight cars and an Atlas container before departing for my next stop.
The second place I visited, oddly enough, was just a couple of miles up the same road, and it was called Wild Bill's Trains.
This place was much more visually stimulating in that it had a display area, plus lots of shelves with many O gauge buildings, houses, retail shops etc. At quick glance, most looked to be MTH products. In fact, most of the trains were MTH and Lionel products. Unlike P&D, Wild Bill was pretty light on Atlas stuff. But it was fun to poke around and I did enjoy taking in the colorful O gauge train layout (which unfortunately was not running at the time...it was the middle of a weekday). I bought a Canadian Pacific Rail King car from Wild Bill who, despite the moniker, seemed to be a nice, pleasant fellow to chat with! I think this would be more the type of place I would take a little kid to give him or her a taste of model trains, basically because of the display.
Finally, I headed north and west to check out the house we used to live in located in the beautiful suburb of Birmingham. I hadn't seen the place since we moved 25 years ago, so I was curious to revisit the neighborhood, plus I still had an afternoon to kill. I drove north about 10 minutes and made the turn onto 16 Mile Road to head west, when almost immediately I rolled up to a RR crossing. The lights were flashing as traffic began to slow. I didn't think much of it at first, when suddenly I realized "hey, I'm not in NJ anymore!" Sure enough, I was greeted with the sudden appearance of three Canadian National Geeps heading south towards the city. I scrambled for my iPhone, hoping to capture this on film, as I had never seen Canadian National power in person before! I have to say, it was a little bit of a thrill! By the time I grabbed my phone, flipped it onto camera mode and then slid the selector line over to "video", the powered units had drifted out of view. What made it even trickier was the fact that I hadn't pulled up to a complete stop when the train started crossing...as you can tell from the beginning of the video. It took a couple of seconds for me to reach the stopped traffic in front of me, so I had to be careful to actually drive first, and then get my video shoot underway second!!! (Kids, don't try this at home!) But even though I missed the engines, the rest of the freight consist was kind of interesting...more Canadian Nationals than I typically see anywhere around here.
So all in all, a fun excursion. 
- Mike
