70-year-old hobby store closes its doors

How sad.  I've shopped there for many years.

Classic hobbies are having a hard time especially those that require a little patience.

 

I grew up near Pendleton and Vic's was the very first Hobby shop I was able to shop at when visiting Portland.

He says some of the stuff will be sold and the rest "trashed" ?  How sad.

I grew up visiting Vic's when it was in the hollywood district and I was 7 yeaqrs old and now I am 63, have moved from portland some 15 years ago and when my wife and I come to town we always visited Vic's and a few other shops picking up things that we could use on our layout.

 

Sad to see it close it was a land mark in my own hart.

When I was growing up my life was planes and trains. My uncles worked in either aerospace or trains.

 

I spent several summers riding on trains with my uncle who was an engineer for UP. We would travel to places in his private train car so that he could work in new routes. My other uncles were in aerospace and would build jet engines and large commercial airliners that would eventually put my train uncle out of business.

 

Of course we had the Lionel train set that would run all over the basement. It was a big setup and I mowed a lot of lawns to pay for all of the "neato" stuff I bought. A train hobby was something that one could actually put together and make it go. Planes were models that just sat there. Not as much fun although I did have a lot of plane models.

 

To this day I still love trains. My wife and I get a suite on the train and just go places. We don't care where we go, we just want to ride on the train. I do miss the "clickty clack" of the trains wheels on the joints. Now the are very long between joints and are welded and the "clickty clack" is gone. The trains are also much faster and the time spent on the train is shorter. It's rather sad really.

Congratulations Leo, Good luck to you and happy retirement.  I, myself, LOVE trains and am happy to say I know many children who are enamored with them as well.  It is my hope that this piece of history lives on somewhere.  

I think the Oregon Rail Heritage Museum or OMSI needs to take his basement train setup and preserve it.  Very Awesome!!

A sad end to an era of imagination. Now days you don't need much imagination, it's done for you in a video. I spent many happy hours with my trains.

For those of you who are Train Enthusiasts, check out www.trainmountain.org  It's a place near Chiloquin off of Hwy 97. It's the largest combined collection of scale trains in the world. Something like 25 miles of track that goes out through the high desert. The trains are similar scale to the one at Oaks Park. The public can actually ride on the trains on Sundays I believe from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Donations accepted.

I'm sure this is the place my dad bought me my 1947 Lionel model #2020 train set, which I have to this day in great condition still. Don't make them like that anymore! The engine has 16 wheels and smokes and whistles. Sad to see this place go! Most likely will be what we need more I guess. Another 7-11 maybe

I hope that bus and that car can negotiate through all those train tracks safely.

With some rerouting of the tracks it would make a cool old timers pub...

I guess in the age of iPhones and PlayStations, there isn't much interest in traditional hobbies anymore. Sort of a shame, I used to really enjoy my HO scale train set when I was a kid. Another sign that the times are a changin.