The Original Whistle Stop Moves

In May, the Original Whistle Stop moved from the storefront at 2490 E. Colorado Blvd in Pasadena to a much smaller office front at 23 N. Altadena Drive. The old store was 3300 square feet; the new one is 800 square feet. There's a history section on the store's web site, but it's sketchy in places, and it's centered mostly on the store's current owner, Fred Hill, who has an ego. The headline on the site says of the move,

After 75 years of continuing service to the model railroad community, and 42 years at this location, retail businesses across the country are now sadly being forced to “redesign” how they do business.

I think this misstates the actual circumstance: Fred is 83 yeaes old, and he has no successor to run the business. My guess is that he's just selling out remaining inventory at the new location. This reminds me to some extent of Fred's last business move, the 2007 acquisition of former competitor Allied Models in Culver City. As a then-customer of both Allied and The Whistle Stop, I heard a certain amount of inside gossip over what was really going on.

What I heard was that Allen Drucker, then-owner of Allied, had invested quite a bit to construct an all-new building in Culver City for the store in 1992. Allied had previously been on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles; the problem with that location was that a big new West Side Mall was under construction, which would quickly make nearby parking impossible, forcing Drucker to move. The new building amounted to a huge expansion of the business, which had previously been in a conventional storefront.

On one hand, staff at Allied apparently began to hear Drucker's complaints about the level of business at the new location, as well as his remarks that if he simply rented the building out to another store, he could make as much in rent as he was taking in from running Allied. By the late 1990s, key Allied staff had left, recognizing there wasn't much future there, and by 2007, the axe fell, and the store was up for sale.

When I was up at The Whistle Stop one day, I asked Fred's partner, Brian Brooks, "So, are you guys gonna buy Allied?" meaning it as a joke. I was surprised to hear him take the question seriously, although he didn't sound optimistic. He said it was nearly impossible to get straight information from Drucker on how much the store actually made, and he certainly didn't seem completely on board with the idea, whatever Fred Hill may have thought.

It's hard to tell what Fred had in mind for the new Allied. The one thing I kept hearing at The Whistle Stop was that he didn't want to spend any time at the Allied operation. But Nick Barone, the former manager of Allied under Drucker, had been brought into the partnership that bought the store with Fred and Brian, so that shouldn't have been a problem.

In any case, the deal went through, although it included the Allied operation, now owned by The Whistle Stop, moving out of its new building and into a nearby storefront, which was owned by Drucker as well. Drucker rented the former Allied building to Samy's Camera. Whether for reasons related to tbe Allied purchase or not, Brian Brooks left both tbe Whistle Stop and Allied partnerships in 2011.

It's hard to imagine what Fred may have had in mind, but it very much appeared that the actual purpose of the new Allied store was simply to sell off the old Allied inventory at full retail prices. I visited the new store occasionally after the sale, but it seemed as though everyone was going through the motions, and there was little or no new stock.

If this was the case, it took eight years to sell everything off, and in July, 2015, the store declared itself insolvent and closed. A commenter on a forum observed,

In recent visits to Allied, the shelves were bare. I haven't seen any new stock in the store in quite a while. They still had the toys and model planes carried over from the old store. I was told they had a lot of NWSL and brass parts in the back room by one of the employees, but they never had the time to look for what I needed. They just started bringing out brass parts a short while ago.

I have to wonder if the lease was up and Drucker raised the rent. I was told, again by a employee, that they got a low rent for the store when the sale was made. Also, I have to wonder if there's a tax break for all involved somewhere down the road.

Only a few weeks after the shop closed, the vacant storefront burned in a mysterious fire. However, the remaining inventory was in the hands of the insolvency agents. Was buying Allied a good business move on Fred's part? It's hard to say. If his sole motive was to sell off the Allied inventory at full retail, it took a long time and a lot of unnecessary expense in paying store staff; he probably would have done better to sell it to a closeout specialist in the first place, rather than to wait eight years. If his motive was to rebuild Allied's business, it was a bust.

The Whistle Stop had been the subject of much hype over the years; as the history section of its web site puts it, "There was a lot going on in the model railroad industry during those years. Whistle Stop was right at ground zero."

But I gradually became disillusioned. Although The Whistle Stop only occasionally ran discount specials, as a longtime customer who wanted to be loyal in the face of on-line discounts, I took advantage of the ability to order items on special in tbe Waltners catalog through The Whistle Stop and pick them up the following week -- except that often, they just wouldn't come in. I eventually discovered that Walthers wouldn't ship orders for The Whistle Stop if the store was behind on its credit, and my orders were part of that freeze.

I wrote a letter to Walthers asking why they weren't shipping to one of the most reputable and best-known hobby shops in the country, and Walthers replied that they don't comment on the credit status of their customers, which of course was a comment on the credit status of The Whistle Stop.

My own view is that The Whistle Stop under Fred Hill has always been the creature of hype. Although it claims to have been at the forefront of the hobby, its specialty has always been brass, which over the years has varied widely in quality and now, if it's produced at all, has become wildly expensive. Converting vintage items to DCC, sound, and LED lighting is a major project. But The Whistle Stop never carried DCC, while other major train stores embraced it.

I would say that in making the move, Fred has effectively acknowledged the store is at the end of its life, although I think its real decline came around the time Fred bought Allied. Certainly this move reminds me of the Allied fiasco. Other high-end train stores in the area survive, The Train Shack in Burbank, Railmaster Hobbies in Bellflower, and Arnie's Trains in Westminster.