Well, as we are heading past Moncton we have only a few more hours until we are home and our weekend trek is officially over. It’s a fitting time to make my last entry of our adventures.

We struck out for Laval to find Van Horne Hobbies. Derwin had been there once before so we knew it was difficult to find. If it wasn’t for the GPS we would have missed it. The building is not what you would expect to house a model train store (see photo below). The sign is also not what most would consider “eye catching” either. I really had no idea what to expect inside such a place.

Let me tell you, I was not even remotely prepared for what greeted us inside the door. The place was wall to wall and floor to ceiling display cases and boxes full of train stuff! Chris related it to something you would see on the TV show “Hoarders”. You could hardly move for all the stuff!

I spent a long time looking through boxes of old Athearn and Roundhouse kits and hadn’t seen them all when Chris said “you have to see this”. So I went to the back of the store and saw several very large display cases FULL of locomotives! Everywhere you turned were cases with what I would guess were hundreds of HO scale locos! Unfortunately there were some completely obscured by the boxes piled around them.

The place is definitely worth a stop. But I have a couple of suggestions if you do go… 1. Don’t bring your family and 2. Plan on a couple hours to browse through the boxes.

I wasn’t planning to buy anything more after our visit to Hobby Junction but I just had to drop a little more cash at Van Horne!

So now we are almost home and I am officially broke after paying for gas in Salisbury. I don’t mind though because our weekend adventure in Montreal was definitely worth it!

ps – the photos of the display cases below were taken as I was standing in pretty much one spot. I don’t think any of them are of the same case.

After visiting Canada Central we headed over to Hobby Junction. I thought I had pictures from Hobby Junction but I can’t find them now.

After a lot of browsing, free coffee and donuts, and dispersal of funds the guys at HJ suggested we visit a club only 5 minutes away – they were having an operating session.

So after a quick lunch at a nearby deli we headed over to the club. We were told to ring the doorbell and “tell em Dave sent ya”.

We received a very warm welcome and were invited upstairs. Unfortunately, they had already finished operating and were packing up.

We talked about their layout, their modules and plans for the future. Derwin was star struck when he realized the guys he had been talking to were Ken Goslett and Stan Smaill. He actually felt a little faint as we left the building.

It was a great layout that looked like it would be a lot of fun to operate. It would be nice to organize a trip to operate there some day.

Anyway, they said we really had to go to Van Horne Hobbies. So, with Only a little time to get there before they closed we decided to get on the road quick.

Next post, The Van Horne experience!

We had a very busy day yesterday. We arrived at the Canada Central very close to opening time and the place was already packed with people. What a layout (but I’ll get to that later).

Just inside the entrance were a bunch of sales tables with a lot of ‘stuff’. We wandered around for a bit to see what was available and get an idea of prices. Some thing were a little more expensive then we are used to but a lot of stuff was pretty reasonably priced. Canadian Express Lines was there so I picked up a sound decoder for my US Interchange locos and also a couple automobiles.

Then we headed into the layout room. All I can say is ” “. That’s right, I was speechless. “WOW!” does not even come close to describing my initial reaction.

The place is huge and it was made for operations. The three of us could have gone there for an operating session and not seen one another the whole time we were there!

The crowd made it very difficult to get around to see it all, and to enjoy the experience, but we managed.

Here are some photos that I managed to grab with my phone. I have others I took with my SLR that I’ll upload later, hopefully, when I am at a real computer. I’m typing this on my iPhone as we ate speeding along Rte 20 heading home.