My Bet Is That Modeltrainstuff.com Is Heading The Way Of Caboose Hobbies

For a while in the early 2000s, I was a regular online customer of Caboose Hobbies in Denver. Memories are probably short, but for a time, it was one of the major online dealers, on a par with Trainworld and MB Klein/Modeltrainstuff now. But even before Caboose Hobbies lost its building and closed in 2016, it had been going downhill.

I quit dealing with them following a succession of screwups -- they'd habitually send only part of my order, claiming the other items weren't in stock. Then a day or so later, they'd discover they had the items after all and send them in a separate shipment, charging me the extra postage for a shipment that should have gone all in one box.

Each time it happened, I'd call, they'd say they were sorry and credit my card for the extra postage -- but it kept happening, and I got tired of calling. Finally they charged my card for someone else's $700 order, which was a big surprise when I got that month's statment. They said they were sorry and credited my card, but I realized I couldn't deal with them any longer. This was nine years before they lost their building and closed, but I suspect there was a lot more wrong behind the scenes at that point.

The new store apparently never took off.

I quit dealing with Caboose Hobbies about 2007, especially when I noticed that MB Klein was shifting its focus to on line discount. I noticed that Ted Klein, who'd run the business since the 1950s, passed away less than a year ago. Since then, it's had serious problems with longer and longer shipment delays. As of this past week, an order I placed on February 6 had gone unfilled by Thursday, Febrary 11, and the shipping status on their site said they were shipping only orders placed up to February 3 or so.

It looked like it would take them a week or more to fill my order. The problem is that, as their shipping delays grew, I was placing more orders with Trainworld, which has continued to ship pretty consistently the next day since last summer, when the first COVID lockdowns were lifted.

I opened a support request with Klein pointing out that they were taking longer and longer to fill orders, when Trainworld consistently ships the next day. Klein took two days to answer, and when they did, they said they tell customers it takes 5 o 7 days to ship on the site, it's because of COVID or maybe the holidays, and I should be patient, they're trying.

I told them Trainworld ships next day.

Hobby stores come and hobby stores go. I get the sense that when Ted Klein passed away, his store began circling the drain. For now, it's mostly Trainworld for me, and what I can't get there, I can probably get on eBay.