@CSXJOE posted:I asked why he didn't carry trains and his answer was the amount of inventory would be staggering to satisfy all aspects of the hobby.
That is one of the core problems, often overlooked, I think. Model RR'ing is such an old, deep and established hobby, even now, with so many branches, including the dead-end ones, that a typical establishment, even before the Internet was around, had trouble offering everything for everybody. I have seldom been a buyer at a train shop (admittedly I have never had access to many) because what I wanted was not in stock.
It's a complex field of interest, hard to serve by small physical establishments, especially at a profit. It probably always was.
