John, why would he? There aint no money in large scale. After all, I cant think of anyone who is in large scale. (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-undecided.gif)
You got my curiosity going Maynard. So I spent ten minutes on the most accurate of marketplaces, ebay, since the true measure of interest in something is in how many buyers and sellers there are, and I easily found the following:
HO…325,000 items
O…140,000
N…120,000
G and #1…25,000
Z…10,000
Yikes.
I didn’t work out the arithmetic, but I imagine anybody with the wherewithal to open a store probably knows percentages.
Those are big numbers. I wonder what dollar value they represent?
That might change the difference between the different scales.
Tom
Tom, it could. But from what I have seen, the difference in price between HO and large scale isn’t as large as some people think it is. I wanted a set of passenger cars in HO, a particular kind of passenger car. I ended up spending $50 per car. And some of the new BLI steam locomotives, in HO, can cost around $500, give or take.
Ridiculously crowded for the grand opening, which was good to see. The line to check out went around all 4 walls, with a 2-hour wait. (I had to get to work, so I didn’t buy anything. Not enough time to wait in line.) The free pizza was great–not your average Domino’s, but a mom-and-pop wood-fired pizza food truck that had some pretty exotic flavors. (Tilford’s Wood-fired Pizza) Staff also wandered around with bottled water, etc. for the customers.
(Pete Hendel photo, from facebook)
This was the back wall of the store. These folks had a good hour and a half yet to wait to cash out. The back wall is mostly HO parts on the sliding racks. Glue and building supplies are on the left. I’m hoping that selection expands, though with all the people there, I may have missed some items as well. The east wall of the store is all scenery materials, which isn’t much of an interest to us outdoor modelers, but they’ve got the widest selection of foliage, ballast, etc. I’ve seen, which will be great for my On30 stuff.
Not a whole lot of large scale yet. One small-ish aisle with a smattering of LGB, figures, odds and ends, and a handful of detail parts. Hopefully this will expand as time goes on. I couldn’t get a sense of how the prices were, since most of the stuff on the shelves had yet to actually be priced! Everything’s in the system and will ring up when scanned, but they’re a long way from having all the prices out on the racks yet.
One bit of good news for large scale, Soundtraxx expects to have their 4-amp version of the Tsunami2 out on the market in two months or so. They’re submitting it for FCC approval this week, and once that is confirmed, they say it will be 6 - 8 weeks until it’s on the store shelves.
Later,
K
Damn it! I didn’t know the pizza was free…me and my kids would have eaten everything in the truck.
Great crowds and all items were stocked to the max, including a fully-stocked wall of magazines yipee!, no shortcuts, as I suspected. I thought it was kind of funny too that almost none of the items were priced on the shelves yet…but that didn’t seem to stop anyone from buying that’s for sure.
A big fat however, for me at least…G-scale? Read 'em and weep gentlemen. Two or three Kadee couplers on the back wall. One package of g-scale red roof tiles in the architectural features section. One half-aisle of LGB track and some oddly chosen LGB items, along with a half-dozen Christmas sets…a smattering indeed.
The layouts are gone except one small n-scale. No consignments, including g-scale locomotives and rolling stock, on display.
All in all, a great opening and showing all the early signs of success…unless you are a g-scaler. Boo hiss.
Kevin Rubel was there but I didn’t talk to him because I knew I couldn’t resist complaining about g-scale. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to hear any downer notes on such a highly-successful opening.
Maybe they’ll get more G scale and consignment stuff as time goes on. I hope they get the G scale Grandt Line parts in again.
Since I’m not in Colorado, the main thing I want to know is if they have everything set up for online ordering?
So now that the guys that bought stuff without knowing the price ahead of time are through the line, how were the prices?
They did advertise new low prices, or something worded to that effect.
Greg
Maybe there was an App for the prices …
Well, 8 months later the new “Caboose” has a web site, but it’s had to figure things out. Half the stuff has no manufacturer name or part number.
I found something to “filter” by scale… no 1:29, and no 1:22 (LGB), and 1:20 has no locomotives, 1:24 seems only figures, 1:32 seems to have cars, trucks, etc.
I can’t find any trains.
Has anyone been there recently? I think the name “Caboose” is not a good name for the store.
Greg
As fate would have it, Greg, I was just there, passing through Denver on business. I write this review with the caveats that:
a.) I never went to the old place.
b.) I have no local hobby shops that carry trains of any scale.
c.) It has probably been 20+ years since I’ve been to a dedicated model railroad store.
All that being said, the staff admitted their large scale selection was limited (1/3 row). It was mostly LGB, and that mostly with a US focus. There were limited detail parts and accessories. I did not ask if their intention is to focus on smaller scales. There was a host of landscaping and hobbyist tools that I imagine would be useful across scales. The staff said there would be free shipping for orders over a set amount (I forget the amount) within the lower 48 (No help to me!).
The staff was very friendly and helpful, and they let me open about every box I pointed to, even after I said, “There is no way I could afford this!” I suppose that is, at a minimum, good salesmanship, but I also found the help genuine and, well, helpful. There was no pushing to buy out of budget or out of theme stuff.
Bottom line…Would I necessarily go to them as a mail order source? Probably not, absent significant savings in shipping or product price. If my travels took me back through Denver would I visit again based on the observed practices of their staff? Oh, yeah…and I would probably have them order and hold a suitcase worth of stuff for me for pick up during the trip.
Aloha,
Eric
In other words. the old Caboose Hobbies has died. I use to buy lots of stuff from them.
Thanks for the report.
John Bouck said:
In other words. the old Caboose Hobbies has died. I use to buy lots of stuff from them.
…
Yip, as far as large-scale items, it has indeed pretty much died…one short aisle filled with LGB American-themed items and that’s it. I can’t blame the guy; we are, us guys, (large-scale) at most four percent of the model train market. The guy’s not an idiot…he used to own his own successful real 1:1 short-line railroad and I’m sure he didn’t spend more than four percent of his resources there on any four percent of his market. Retail floor space at Caboose is about four percent of the store. Sucks for us though.
I don’t know how they’re doing financially. I haven’t been out there since the opening, but everything I’ve heard is that whole operation is first-class, no shortcuts, and the staff is friendly.
I would be curious to know what percentage of sales large-scale trains and accessories represented in the old Caboose Hobbies. I don’t think it’s likely I’ll run into the old owners to ask them; maybe Kevin might run across them in his travels.
It’s not a good omen that there’s no large scale in the “INVENTORY” section, and in the LS “scales” filter, nothing shows for rolling stock or locomotives.
For large scale, it’s not going to make it with web sales it seems.
Perhaps as a local hobby shop it’s going to be fine.
Greg
So far it looks like they’re not particularly interested in online sales. Their website is barely functional and apparently incomplete.
My primary interest in Caboose Hobbies was always as a source of materials for scratch building. Things like Grandt Line parts, etc.
Maybe the local market should show them there is a market by ordering your stuff through him.
A couple three decades ago, I got my local hobby shop to order an O ga. craftsman kit. They were HO and N and carried a full line of bass wood lumber at 3’ long. At first he told me I could save money going direct, I countered with safer through him and he relented.
In the next possible issue of Model Railroader his store was mentioned in a Western Scale Models ad! He comp’d me a lifetime 10% discount!(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-money-mouth.gif)
I was protecting my bass wood source.
There maybe hope after all. Even if it all mail order, and no I don’t mind the postage cost. I guess time will tell, however if more people order large scale materials through the Shop, they may expand what they carry either on the shelf or just on line.
Paul
Hmm… not trying to be a downer…
Several “locals” have checked in and been disappointed, and really, the few LS people who live in the area probably cannot support expansion with their purchases alone.
Running a business needs to have some risk, and you decide what kind of store you are, i.e. your business model.
The original Caboose Hobbies was interesting, was not a cut-rate web sales only store, but clearly had a low enough overhead to have enough stock and good enough prices to have good internet sales. They advertised and had built up a name and following. They had technical support people at the store.
The new Caboose is clearly not set up for good internet sales, 8 months after opening. The full list pricing in the store won’t make internet sales attractive.
I hope they find their “niche”.
Greg
It took 'em the better part of 6 months just to get prices on the inventory in the store. The web side of things will come along in due course. I think everything with respect to this re-launch is taking much longer than anyone had expected or hoped. Part of me is surprised they didn’t just maintain the old site with updated inventory, but I’d imagine they decided that was going to be more trouble than building a new interface from scratch.
With respect to the inventory in the store itself, it’s a great resource for the small scale modeler. The wall of scenery items is pretty cool, and having just gotten into On30 in the past year, I’ve taken advantage of it on a few occasions. As has been said earlier, the large scale selection is, well, “disappointing.” In reality, though, the large scale selection at the “old” Caboose was but a fraction of itself compared to when I first started going there in the 90s. In the last few years, they had some LGB, some Bachmann, and some Piko. Prices were okay-ish on some stuff, but their Bachmann loco prices were high. On one hand, I’d love to see more, but on the other, the large scale stuff they had at the old store didn’t do a whole lot of turning over, so I can’t say I blame 'em for not stocking it here. Good for visibility of the scale, but that’s about it. Their current prices on their LGB seem a bit steep, but prices on LGB have always struck me as steep. Can’t really say where the fall competitively with the other folks.
The biggest “missing” element–for me–is detail parts. This is true across all scales. They used to have walls and walls of detail parts for large scale, O, HO… They’ve got a fair amount of HO detail parts, a much smaller selection of O scale (naturally, as I’m getting into O scale and could use a wall of headlights, air pumps, and stacks to choose from) and a ridiculously minuscule amount of large scale parts. It’s probably a good thing I did my part to clear the old Caboose’s shelves of parts, but I guarantee you I’ll need something that I don’t have on my next project. (Class lamps?)
To me, it seems as if the new team took a look at what the high-volume items were at the old store and focused primarily on those. Makes sense, but it was the not-so-high volume stuff that gave Caboose its unique vibe. I stop in there once or twice a month or so for this or that, but I’ve walked out of there empty-handed more often than not. (Free popcorn notwithstanding.) In fairness, I haven’t been doing a whole lot of building to where I need materials (outside of my On30), so I haven’t had the projects requiring me to spend money.
The overall vibe in the store is very positive.
And they stock my book. 
Later,
K
Kevin Strong said:
…Free popcorn…And they stock my book.
I guess that Rubel guy really is one sharp character!