There is an insidiously powerful obsession I get caught up in every few years, and that is model trains. I’m wise enough nowadays to be able to resist buying a bunch of supplies to finally build a layout — I think I’ll save that hobby for when I’m old and crochety. ;) However, the obsession comes through like a tidal wave every so often, wiping all other concerns from the landscape until it recedes. Thanks to the Internet, I can indulge myself by checking out really awesome layouts done by others, which allows me to obsess without actually buying anything. This is a good thing.
With this background in mind, and given the recent resurgence of this obsession, I was poking around the MetroLink website earlier tonight when I noticed they have a store. Oddly enough, it is only an ‘online’ store in the sense that pictures of their products are on a website — you can only order stuff by downloading an order form, printing it out, then either faxing or mailing it. Not email, mind you. Snail mail. Anyhow, before I got too pissy about that in the Year of Our Internets 2005, I spotted HO Model Trains. Whoo hoo! Man, they sure look cool. Oh wait: $65 for a freaking locomotive? This isn’t a full-size one, is it? Nope, it’s HO scale.
And thus my dreams of a ginormous Union Station/Chinatown/Chavez Ravine layout with Metrolink trains and old-school trolleys came crashing to a halt. At $65, it would actually be about the same to buy a roundtrip pass between Union Station and Rancho Cucamonga for Single-A Quakes games — on a real train, mind you — ten times. I guess they have to pay for their huge Flash website development bills somehow, but jeez-us.
$65 is not bad for a loco. If you go to the Athern web site, you’ll find (probably) the same thing retailing for $75
Here’s an Athern Metrolink Locomotive on their web site
I’ve already been bitten by that insidious obsession – slow progress, but I now have a 4X8 layout in one end of my living room. I sometimes feel like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Some Guy’s Web Page with pic
Robert:
Little did I imagine you to be a practicing ferroequinologist.
I can assure you that there is no appreciable profit made on the toy locomotives at the Metrolink store. They are a limited production item, that as others have mentioned, sell for a far greater price through other vendors. If you have any needs or suggestions related to Metrolink, please let me know.
Happy T’rails!
Brian Humphrey
wearing yet another hat on page 3
Well, Brian (as well as the Mikes) please know that my gentle whining above is from absolute adoration of all things train-y and a reminder (to myself) of how much the hobby costs — I mean in general, not so much Metrolink, despite my picking on them. And at the end of the day, I am complaining about the Flash site more for it being a Flash site than anything related to the locomotive. ;)
In any case, I will hold onto my HO-scale dreams and leave it at that for now.