Expectation vs. practice would seem to be two different things. Granted I don't have a local hobby shop around me these days per se, but my experiences when living in NE Ohio about 20 years ago, where I was young guy first building my collection and often on the hunt for specific cars or items. I'm not sure if MTH had the dealer locator yet at that time, and internet searching was iffy at best to my recollection. The world has obviously changed alot, and the information is at our fingertips. The internet isn't the be all end all in finding what you are looking for though. Perhaps the model train community was tighter knit then or shop owners were more comfortable recommending their buddies shops. I don't know. I didn't have "expectations", but often just said what I was looking for and would occasionally follow up with any recommendations on who to check with. Some of my experiences:
* Walking into Dale Shafner's shop in Canton and asking about a relatively recent (at the time) MTH release which he didn't have, and him without prompting telling me to go Glen's Train shop in Akron. Glen's had it and I discovered another great train shop.
* I also recall being in Smithville Model Trains, and Lucky taking a call from another shop and doing a deal with that shop to get that shops customer the item they were looking for. Same thing with Trains N-Things in North Canton. I remember them making a couple calls on my behalf to try and find a car I was looking for. They couldn't locate one but received a piece of advice which they shared, and ended up leading me to Jim's in Homer City PA where I did find what I was looking for.
* More recently, a couple months ago a friend was telling me about his hunt for an item sold out with the manufacturer and he couldn't find a dealer who had it. He called a well known shop, who he's built a relationship with and they told him they didn't have it, and it would be fairly hard to find. My buddy continued to look, but out of the blue that same shop called him and said they located one and what it would cost. He had no expectation, but was of course thrilled to get the item and accepting of the light scolding to pre-order next time. 
In all those cases there was some level of relationship with the hobby shop, by customer and/or fellow shop owners. I think that makes a difference. If I were just some dude who walked in for the first time, I doubt any of those scenarios happen, but because they knew me and I spent time and money in their shops, they were willing to offer assistance and while I had no expectations, those experiences left an impression on me.
Just another perspective.
