Nothing beats visiting & patronizing a good train shop (Nicholas Smith)

Paul KallusOGR Forum Member

Today, I made my semi-annual visit to Nicholas Smith Toy Train shop. This is without a doubt one of the best train, model, and toy stores I've ever been too. While I have certainly made many on-line purchases from various stores over the last couple of decades, and although I appreciate a well-organized website, there's nothing on-line that comes close to the experience of perusing a well-stocked train, hobby, and toy store. I actually found some newer Lionel and AF accessory items that I had never seen before. I also bought some Superstreets items. It occurred to me as I was driving to the market after leaving the train shop that as our culture becomes more and more digitized and virtual, we may be losing something special. Just today, in the downstairs toy department I chatted with a woman doing her Christmas shopping, and upstairs two grandfathers were buying stuff to set up trains for Christmas for their grandchildren.

This shop is in Broomall, PA, and the original shop was at 11th and Arch in Philly and was one of the first Lionel train dealers way back in time. I noticed there's new people running both the upstairs and downstairs, though Chris is still the owner, and is in retirement. The new staff were very helpful to me, and they all seemed to be taking an interest in both the toys and trains, and one guy upstairs talked with delight about the steam engines at Strasburg. Good stuff all around.

12/2/229:19 PM

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Mallard4468OGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

It's great to hear positive news about NS. Despite many purchases from them at York and online, I've only been there once, about 5 years ago (wish it wasn't 700 miles away) and it was an amazing place. There was a recent thread regarding some negative experiences there due to dealing with the new folks. I hope that they've turned things around and will be viable for many years to come.

Unfortunately, the track record of great train stores doing well after the original owner is no longer actively involved isn't good - I remember Les Gordon's shop and Watt's Trains in central Indiana, along with Davis Electronics near Cincinnati. Davis, in particular, went downhill incredibly fast.

12/3/2210:40 AM

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CincytrainsOGR Forum Member

I was a big fan of Davis Trains, I was there at least once a week. As soon as Joe Davis died, his son could not wait to cash in. He sold that great collection of pre and postwar trains. Then dumped all the inventory and that was that!! Joe was great, you could tell his son just did not like the trains..

12/3/222:43 PM

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gunrunnerjohnOGR Forum Member SUPPORTING MEMBERDIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

@Mallard4468 posted:
Unfortunately, the track record of great train stores doing well after the original owner is no longer actively involved isn't good

Drop in at Henning's Trains, family owned for 80+ years and still going strong.

12/3/223:02 PM

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Paul KallusOGR Forum Member

The original Nicholas Smith passed away in 1973. There's a photo of the original Philly building in the current store ~ a neat structure it was.

The aspect that separates Nicholas Smith from every other train store I've ever visited is the floor to almost-ceiling shelves of every scale/gauge. I imagine this is what hardware/train stores were like in the 1920s/30s. I think what I like best is finding stuff that is a bit older and sought after without sought-after prices, if you know what I mean.

12/3/223:29 PM

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Paul KallusOGR Forum Member

After my semi-annual dentist checkup last week, I stopped in at Nicholas Smith and one of the first things I noticed was the Schmidt's beer reefers on display. I had not known these were even made, and it was pleasant surprise. This was special for me as my best friend's dad, who was a truck driver for Tastykake, used to take me along with my friend, Brian to the Phillies games in the 1970s. Schmidt's was the beer sold at Veterans Stadium and they had a big lighted sign over center or right field as I recall. The Schmidt's brewery was located in north Philly and was built in the 1860s and went out of business in the 1990s. If you search online you can find pictures of the brewery - a neat looking factory that would be awesome to model, though beyond my skills. Anyway, I had to purchase both road #s...they're not the most colorful or fancy beer reefers but they were a must have due to memories. BTW, they're made by MTH, Premier items.