Train Shops in San Antonio, Tx

A train store?  With in-stock inventory!?  Deep in The Land of No Basements?!?    I live in Texas.  Not holding my breath, but following...

There are no train stores in the Alamo City, just a couple of hobby shops with limited O gauge stock:  HobbyTown franchise in the Vineyard Shopping Center and Dibble's on Donaldson Avenue. 

Thanks for the reply - darn

Yep, you're in the O scale wasteland known as Texas. Everything I have, I already owned before I ever got to see it.

@Ted S posted:

A train store?  With in-stock inventory!?  Deep in The Land of No Basements?!?    I live in Texas.  Not holding my breath, but following...

Yup. Lack of basements here make it hard to have an O gauge layout of any significant size, or permanence. Large engines and cars are a no-go. Given that O gauge trains can take up a lot of space, this may likely affect sales of O gauge trains in this state.

There used to be more dealers in Texas, but on top of the space issue, online shopping and other factors have greatly reduced brick and mortar shops, just like everywhere else.

One unfortunate result is that, as Ted has mentioned, there are very few places left, let alone any with any significant in-stock inventory. So purchases online have to be done sight-unseen, as Randy alluded to, which is not a good thing, given that actual production items can be significantly different from catalog pictures. Looking at actual photos posted by forum members or some out-of-state dealers has become an essential tool.

In south Texas, we call train shopping , ebay.