bomccarthy -> RE: Building 1/700 - 1/350 ships (6/7/2015 11:45:16 PM)
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ORIGINAL: wdolson quote:
ORIGINAL: bomccarthy You're right - I saw my dad yesterday and asked. He's been seeing them starting at $1,500 in HO. Speaking of Pasadena, he and my brothers used to frequent the Whistle Stop on Colorado Blvd. He remembers seeing G scale (I think) display-only locomotives listing for $20k there and at another shop in eastern LA County in the 80s and 90s (we grew up in Whittier). The owners told him that collectors who worked in the entertainment industry would usually buy them within a few months of the store getting them. I'm sorry to hear how age and the passing of your mother has affected your dad. Mine has been slowly losing his fine motor skills, so that he can't paint and work with small details like he used to. He seems to accept it as a normal part of the aging process. A few years ago, he purchased a Hasegawa A-3 Skywarrior and we bought him a Hasegawa F4D Skyray, both 1/72 scale. As he was building them, he acknowledged that he had trouble painting the canopy framing and that some details ended up sloppier than he would have liked. But they were icons of his Douglas career and he had always wanted to display them in his living room. We're from the same stomping grounds. I grew up in Monterey Park right on the edge of East LA (two blocks from East LA city college). We went out to Chino several times a year, that was much better than Disneyland. I remember the Whistle Stop, I was in there a number of times with my father. There was another big hobby store on Colorado Blvd, but I forget its name. We used to go to a hobby shop in Alhambra that was also a Schwinn bicycle shop and there was a smaller shop on Garvey in Monterey Park. Back when my father was serious about model railroading, he used to hang out at a shop called Troxles near downtown Los Angeles. That was before he got married and moved to the suburbs. My father's scale in aircraft was 1/32. He has a bunch of them that are mostly finished in his layout room that I will probably take and finish when he's gone. I'm also going to try and take apart the layout and move it. That might proove too tricky though. Bill I've lived in Southern California for 50 of my 52 years and haven't been out to Chino yet. As kids, my dad would drive us past there and continue up to Cajon Pass -- where we could have sat for hours as he photographed trains, if my mom hadn't objected. As an adult, I've been too busy with work to find a day to go out to Chino. I've always wanted to see the P-26 or A6M5 flying, although I understand they're too valuable to operate more than once a year, if that. The Whistle Stop is still open. Since my dad stopped driving a few years ago (his peculiar diabetes results in huge and very rapid swings in his blood sugar with little notice) he rarely gets out there anymore, but orders most all of his items online. I don't remember if it was the Whistle Stop or another shop, but the late actor Gary Coleman used to frequent the shop so often in the 90s that he would sometimes ring up customer purchases. Since my dad didn't watch much TV besides crime dramas or movies, he didn't know who Gary was, until my brothers told him.
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