General Discussion (Model Railroader)

I worked as a salesman in the Lionel and LGB section of Allied Model Trains from late November 1990 to mid March 1995. It saddens me to see Allied close, because it was the most beautiful train store I've ever seen.

You can criticize its owner Allen Drucker all you want for refusing to sell toy trains for less than the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). Keep in mind that Allied was one of the largest toy trains stores in the world, and it was expensive to operate on that scale.  We sold all scales and manufacturers. Customers came from everywhere, not only Southern California. Allied was only three miles from LAX, so many people dropped in on their way to or from the airport.

I began working at Allied on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1990. We began work at 9:30 a.m., cleaning glass counters and re-stocking merchandise. The door opened at 10 a.m. On my first day, I sold $1,100 of LGB trains to my first customer within the first 15 minutes. I don't recall how many LGB Christmas train sets I sold that year (at $399 each), but I probably averaged six or seven a day until Christmas. Of course, I sold a lot of Lionel and other LGB merchandise, too.

Celebrity customers stopped by to see me all the time, but what I enjoyed most of all was waiting on ordinary people who, like myself, were fascinated by toy trains.

One of my favorite sales was to a woman in her 40s who had always wanted her own Lionel train. Her parents never bought her one when she was little because she was a girl. I sold her a vintage Lionel locomotive and a few cars from the late 1940s and early 1950s, including an operating milk car, enough track to go around her Christmas tree and even have a passing siding, and a vintage Lionel transformer. After her first visit, she stopped by several times that Christmas season with different friends, each time buying another vintage freight car.

On Christmas Eve during another holiday season, I was looking forward to closing at 6:00 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m., which we did every night since Thanksgiving. Twelve-hour days, day after day, can get tiring. About 5:45, a middle-aged father and his young daughter came to the store. They walked back to my area of the store.

"My daughter wants the LGB Christmas train," he said. I could see how happy the girl was. She was about eight or nine years old. We had sold our remaining LGB Christmas trains earlier that day--except for one. That was on the top shelf in the 12-foot-high recessed arch in the rear wall of the LGB section. There were about eight or nine shelves affixed to wall brackets above a glass display case in that arch. Allen Drucker did not want his salesmen climbing up that high, so I called him to ask him to get the train.

Allen came downstairs from his office, grabbed the tall metal ladder, and retrieved the loco and two passenger cars, handing each one to me very carefully. Allen climbed down the ladder, walked to our main LGB counter area, and gently dusted off the train. He tested the engine for the father and his daughter. It worked beautifully.

The father and his daughter were so happy. "We're Jewish, you know, but we always celebrate Christmas," he said to Allen and me. "I'm not a rich man, but I know how much my daughter wants this train."

It was about 6:15 when they left the store. I carried the train in its beautiful box to their car for them. It felt great to know they were so happy. We wished each other "Merry Christmas."

Memories of my own childhood in Chicago back in the 1940s came back to me, memories of my own father carrying home a bag of something or other on Christmas Eve, promptly hiding it, and then surprising me on Christmas morning with Lionel trains running under our tree. In time, we made our own layout in a spare bedroom, as this photo from 1953 shows:

It was a good day for me, too.

Now, it is a sad day because Allied Model Trains is no longer in its beautiful store....

Thanks for sharing your memories George!

 Sad to hear about Allied.

I live a long ways away in Indiana, but I enjoyed reading your post!

 Ed 

What a wonderful story.  Not earth-shaking,  but humble and honest.  George, I get the impression that you really enjoyed your work while you were with Allied and I bet you were a better salesman for it.  I'm sure your customers would attest to that if given the opportunity.  

Thanks for your nice memories.  It's hard to hire dedicated people like you these days that's for sure.  Today people are more worries about if they will be paid overtime for 10 min over closing and/or paid accurately etc. down to the nearest 30 min.

I think all the technological advances are great but I think we will have less and less human interactions like the old days.

I used to work in a retail store back in the late 90's as well and I really enjoyed talking to people as well and it's hard to imagine within a short period of mere 10 years how much had changed.

Anyway, always sad to see a store close its doors but thanks for keep the memories alive.

Klooka wrote:

You can criticize its owner Allen Drucker all you want for refusing to sell toy trains for less than the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). Keep in mind that Allied was one of the largest toy trains stores in the world, and it was expensive to operate on that scale.  We sold all scales and manufacturers. Customers came from everywhere, not only Southern California. Allied was only five miles from LAX, so many people dropped in on their way to or from the airport. George Spink - Los Angeles

Thank you George for letting us in on some good times at Allied.  I have been there many times but being in HO, I always worked with Nick at the store.   Most of us know a store has to charge list prices to keep the doors open and bills paid, especially in LA.  I did not mind that and purchased a fair amount of new and used brass from Nick.  There was always a deal on consignment brass and other items.   I also noticed the so called large discount stores are now gone too that once graced the Moreno Valley area.  It would seem that the Internet is doing them all in.

I can understand Allen's reason for shutting down the store also since he can be a landlord without the hassle of the daily grind.   We will all miss the store with the giant Daylight on it.  

 Thanks again

 CAZEPHYR

Thanks for the nice story.  I was critical of Drucker's comments in the LA Times article, but Allied was more about the fine people like you, Nick, Bob, Reg and others who made the place the great store it was through the years.  I enjoyed taking my kids there when they were little, back in the Pico days. Even though my boys are now in college, they still will take a ride to the train store with me when they are home on breaks.

The shining light here is that Nick will reopen in July accross the street and the beat will go on.  Thanks again for the story. 

Klooka,
Allied isn't closing, it was sold and is moving (according to reports).

Online, the complaint about Allied wasn't about the prices, it was about the poor customer service.  The Atlas Forum in particular had many complaints about how if one wasn't a celebrity or a regular who spent big, the retail staff couldn't be bothered.

Don't mistake me, as I've been working retail for 18 years and I know how some customers can be, shall we say, "difficult".  But it appears that Allied had some lazy or bitter employees...

Paul A. Cutler III
************
Weather Or No Go New Haven
************

Allen Drucker's smaller building is across the street from the one that resembles Union Station in downtown L.A. (pictured in the illustration below). It is this smaller store that will now be the home of WhistleStop Trains (or a scaled-down Allied Model Trains). The smaller store is a decent size for a typical hobby shop, but it doesn't hold a candle to the main store.

Here is an illustration to show you what Allied Model Trains looked like:

This is the store that will now be home to a Samy's Camera store.

thanks for the great story . i only visited Allied once (it's a looooong comute from toronto!) and didn't really notice what the prices were like . i guess i was comparing them to canadian retail prices , which at the time were 1.5 x US msrp . more important was that i'd never seen a mrr store that big and impressive before and i probably could have spent a day or two there but my wife and the friends we were visiting (he's an rc plane guy , almost converted him that day though ) had other ideas about how to spend our time

sorry to see it go 

Paul3 wrote:

Online, the complaint about Allied wasn't about the prices, it was about the poor customer service.

Paul,

Don't listen to those grumps. I visit Allied Trains every time I go to L.A. About twelve trips to Allied and never had a bad experience. George was only too happy to discuss Lionel Trains with me and the staff up front was just a friendly.

By the way, the big LGB layout is still in the old building, now Samy's Cameras. It was running when I was there last December.

webenda wrote:

Paul3 wrote: Online, the complaint about Allied wasn't about the prices, it was about the poor customer service.  Paul, Don't listen to those grumps. I visit Allied Trains every time I go to L.A. About twelve trips to Allied and never had a bad experience. George was only too happy to discuss Lionel Trains with me and the staff up front was just a friendly.

Yeah I have to agree here, every time I visited Allied I had an awesome experience,whether I made a purchase or not, the staff was very friendly, and very  helpful, in fact during one visit  Gary Coleman, and Bob Mcneil (from ST Voyager) were both in the store....I didn't notice any fawning over them.....in fact I was surprised George remembered me from my last visit which was almost a year before, I was also surprised that Coleman was buying N scale as I always heard he was a Lionel buff :P No I can think of several Shops back home in NC and here in NY , that could learn a thing or two from the Allied gang.

I want to thank all of you for posting your memories of Allied Model Trains in Culver City, California. I hope others will keep doing so.

There is one thing I should point out. There were two of us named George working in the Lionel Trains/LGB section when I worked there (November 1990 to March 1995). The other George was George Spelmeier. He had worked there for years as a salesman and a repairman. There wasn't anything he couldn't fix. George Spelmeier always went fishing on his days off, Fridays and Sundays.

On the other hand, I couldn't fix a thing. But I could wire a Lionel train layout using contactors or relays so you could have a great automatic train layout. I never did that for Allied customers, but I've always done that with my home layouts -- Lionel, HO, or N. I always enjoyed taking time to build my layouts with nice scenery and structures, too.

George Spelmeier had a mustache; I didn't. And, I was the thinner of the two. I think George Spelmeier still works at the new store across the street from the old one. Today, I would bet that I'm the heavier of the two! How does that happen? I'll have to stop by to find out who is the heavier.

I could sell Lionel and LGB trains effortlessly. Selling came easy for me. I sold men's clothing when I was in college at Silverwood's in Santa Barbara and Baskin's in downtown Chicago. I didn't know squat about LGB when I started, but I soon learned. I also had to learn about Lionel's new products and I had a lot to learn about prewar and postwar Lionel.

The customers made it fun to work at Allied, at least for me. Sure, there were plenty of celebrities, and I enjoyed meeting and selling to them. But there were far more regular folks like you and me. One of my first customers lived only a block away from Allied. It turned out he had grown up in my hometown, Berwyn, just west of Chicago.

It also turned out that Allen Drucker's father, Steve, had lived in Berwyn in the early 1930s. When he told me he rented a room in a home on Riverside Drive, I knew exactly where it was.

I met a number of people from Berwyn while I worked there. One was a woman about my age (I turned 50 in September 1990). She came in on a busy day just before Christmas. I noticed her staring at me as I waited on different customers.

Finally, she walked over to me and asked, "By any chance are you from Berwyn, Illinois, did you go to Morton High School -- and are you George Spink?"

I said, "Yes!" She surprised the hell out of me!

It turned out we dated a few times during our senior year. She was still very attractive -- and happily married. I apologized for not recognizing her, but more than 30 years had passed since we last saw one another.

Another time a beautiful young woman in her 20's came in. I helped her pick out a Playmobil train set and some accessories for her young son. She told me she worked with her parents down the street at Villa Italiana, an Italian restaurant and pizzeria. I told her I grew with great pizzerias back in Chicago.

"Where did you live in Chicago," she asked.

"Berwyn, a suburb just west of Chicago," I said.

"That's where my father is from!" she said. She invited me to stop by to meet her folks. I did so a few days later. No wonder there pizza was -- and is -- so good! It remains one of my favorite pizzerias around my home here in L.A.

On another time, I noticed a man about my age staring at me from the N-scale section as I checked out one of my customers. I had seen him in the N-scale section often. When I walked backed to the Lionel/LGB section, he followed me.

When I went behind the counter, he walked over and asked me, "Did you go to St. Leonard's in Berwyn, Illinois and graduate in 1954?"

I smiled and said, "Yes."

"So did I," he said. "My name is John Hejka, and we were classmates."

In the months that followed, John told me that he had been a Christian Brother for many years, living at a Christian Brothers home in Woodland Hills. A few years earlier, he left the order. He said he worked for a small company in L.A.

After I left Allied Model Trains in March 1995, I never saw John again. When my classmates and I planned our 50th Reunion in June 2004, we learned that John had died in 1997. I will always be grateful that John Hejka and I had the chance to renew our childhood friendship while I worked at Allied. I am sorry that John did not live long enough to attend our 50th Reunion, which was without a doubt one of the best experiences of my life.

George Spink - Los Angeles
Email: georgespink@gmail.com

Klooka,

  I've never been to Allied Trains and know nothing about the "stuff" others mentioned.  But I do know that you wrote some wonderful postings and I thoroughly enjoyed them.  I'm from Chicago (Lane Tech - Feb 62), and can certainly relate to some of your musings!

There was a hobby shop across from Lane (B&E Hobbies) and I would drool over the Lionel and later on the HO stuff they had.  How I envied the young guys that worked there!

Thank you,

Mobilman44

 As a former customer of Allied and The Original Whistle Stop, I can assure everyone that service is still the best at both stores.

 The new Allied may be a smaller store,but, the warmth and professionalism are still there.

 Nick, Brian, and Fred go to great lengths to see that they take care of the customers AND the traditions of the hobby.

 Why am I a former customer?

.......because, now I am an employee!

 I am the shipping clerk at The Original Whistle Stop..........and we will continue to give great customer service.

Keith Turley