Thank all of you for the warm welcomes! Jamestown Trains has two locations, both outside of Washington, DC in Northern, VA. Our focus is on O Gauge with a wide selection from all ERAs. Our Chantilly, VA shop houses a 6 tech repair operation where we work on all makes, gauges, years, etc. We are the only Lionel Service Station left in Northern, VA, yet most of our Lionel/MTH/AF...etc. repairs come in via ship-in and ship-out from across the US and Globally.
We will be adding hundreds of trains a week to our website. We buy large estate collections, old/new stock inventory, have distributors for NEW Trains and we represent several local train shops' inventory on the site.
What is not expanded on our website is how Jamestown Trains started 6 years ago (note: The train store operation itself has been around decades and was originally who did all of our repairs before becoming officially part of Jamestown Trains). Jamestown Trains ran as a non-profit organization for our first 3 years. We were a spin-off of a program that had been around since the early 1990's that taught Military Vets business skills and worked to find them jobs. This program had challenges, while volunteering there I saw the opportunity to merge my life long love for Trains and Community Service work.
Jamestown Trains as a Community Service Org was run by me, but the credit for it's 3 years of success goes to those who volunteered their skills, time, knowledge, leveraged business connections and shared their goodwill to help our Nation's Veterans down on their luck.
For a Veteran to qualify for our program he/she had to have two or more children under 18, be unemployed and homeless or soon to be homeless (summary: in dire need). We housed the families in motels while the Vets got back on their feet. The program used Train Sales (we bought estate trains and 'out of business' train shop inventory) to teach customer service skills, phone skills, computer skills and business basics; We covered the cost of housing, food, medical, dental, clothing,school supplies...etc. for up to 60 days -- The goal was to get the Veteran standing on their own with pay from selling trains and then getting them hired into a long term entry level business job within 120 days of coming into the program.
Local job placement and recruiting firms also volunteered their time and services to locate appropriate jobs for almost all of the folks in our program. We had a very high success rate, but there was one major problem: Funding. Train sales ended up only covered around 30% of the cost of the program. Jamestown Trains had to make a transition to a for profit operation. However, we still employee Veterans and their spouses and work closely with volunteer operations. We now support one Veteran/family per yearly quarter in the fashion of the program that got us started. Doing something is better than nothing. Any purchase you make from us helps to support the community service programs we are part of.
I wish we could have maintained the non-profit program in full, but I simply could not afford to keep it going. After retiring from the technology sector, working with trains and helping people was simply the the BEST "job" in the World for me. If there is a conventional way a Train Selling/Service Company got it's start, I am sure we would not fit that profile.
Combining the decades of knowledge and experience of the original train store operation with technical/business knowledge provided us the opportunity to fill in gaps left as traditional train shops continue to disappear. Note: We support local train shops by bringing their products to the global market (online) without the high fees eBay charges. This hobby needs local train shops and the last thing I want is to have anything to do with the demise of any local shop. These shops are part of America.
While I can't claim Jamestown Trains is drastically different than other online train selling companies, we do have several offerings and approaches that hopefully make us stand out.
Jamestown Trains is please to be a part of this Forum and hopes to add value. Please take a look at our website and stop by the shop if you are local! The newest release of our website went live this past summer; There is still content being added and it will be one of those projects that is never really DONE, very similar to a layout. We need and enjoy feedback, please send us a note via "contact us" on the site with suggestions and feedback.
Again, thank you for the warm welcome!
John Sherman
john@JTTrains.com
