All aboard! Allied Model Trains is leaving the station.
This week, one of the nation's largest model train stores is closing its longtime home in Culver City: a half-block-long replica of Los Angeles' Union Station. And fading along with it, says owner Allen Drucker, is the model train industry.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday May 25, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
Model Railroader magazine: A May 9 Business article on the Allied Model Trains store in Culver City reported the peak circulation of Model Railroader magazine as 272,000 in 1993. The correct figure is 224,000.
"It's just a dying hobby," said Drucker, 58. "We probably have another good 15 years."
Drucker will hang up his cap after 32 years of running a miniature railroad hub. "I always told myself I didn't want to be the old man running the train store," he said.
New owners will move the business to a smaller Art Deco-style building Drucker owns across the street. He'll rent the Union Station look-alike to Samy's Camera.
With real estate values rising and competition from the Internet barking at his heels, he decided it was time to sell his business -- a favorite stop for West L.A. boys and girls and train buffs for generations. Among them were celebrities including Frank Sinatra, who had a building shaped like a train station at his Rancho Mirage estate.
"He had a huge Lionel layout and all along the walls were shelves full of trains," said Drucker, who visited Sinatra's home several times. "He had a real Santa Fe caboose too, as his workout room."
Sinatra's collection was acquired by Canadian business mogul Jim Pattison, along with Sinatra's desert home. The crooner was one of several celebrity train collectors who shopped at Allied. Among Drucker's other customers, he said, are music artists Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen and actor Donald Sutherland.
One of his longtime customers is former broadcaster and talk-show host Tom Snyder, who has loved trains all his life and has an elaborate setup at his Marin County home with Lionel trains from the 1920s and before.
"There's magic to it," Snyder said of the layout that passes through walls in his house. "It's kept me going for a long time and now it's a source of joy for my grandchildren."
Model railroading dates to the early 20th century, when Lionel introduced its first electric-powered train. The business enjoyed a golden age during the 1920s, when heavy metal locomotives and cars were the most prized possessions of many boys.
After U.S. model train production stopped for World War II, the industry boomed again in the 1950s, when trains were the No. 1 toy for boys and were as pervasive in the culture as video games are today.
