All aboard at shop
All aboard at shop
Akron shop on track with new rail displays
By Katie Byard
Beacon Journal business writer
Published on Saturday, Nov 06, 2010
Thirty-six-old Aaron Hoey went to the Akron toy train store of his youth and discovered the door was locked.
It was June 2009 and Glen's Train Shop on Grant Street had closed after more than 50 years.
This past summer, Hoey reopened the shop, dubbing it Aaron's City Trains.
''This is a passion come to life,'' said Hoey, who grew up in Cuyahoga Falls and now lives in San Francisco.
Hoey (rhymes with toy) bought the entire inventory of the store — a jumble of hundreds of boxes of toy engines and freight and passenger cars.
He also bought the building — a gray cinder block structure at 587 Grant St. that features a painting of a steam engine on the outside.
The place is noted locally and out of state for its huge stock of model trains, as well as its gruff-sounding founder and passionate toy train promoter Glen Uhl.
Uhl died in 1999 at age 91. His son Robert succeeded him. Robert died in June 2009 — days before Hoey's fateful visit.
This is hardly the first retail adventure for Hoey.
He travels the globe, heading a team of buyers for Anthropologie, the clothing and housewares retailer. Previously, he was an executive with the Gap clothing chain.
''Now I get to be an entrepreneur,'' Hoey said while sorting through the store's stockroom, which includes hundreds of toy train parts and catalogs left by the Uhls.
''I've always worked in large corporations and I've done really well doing that. But I've been obsessed about running my own business.''
(Hoey is giving the catalogs, dating from the past two decades, to customers. He plans to sell the parts to single buyers.)
Hoey hired a local manager, and his father, John, works at the store.
John Hoey introduced Aaron to the hobby, buying him trains made by Lionel.
''At Christmas, there wasn't just a train going around the tree,'' Aaron Hoey said. ''It took over our entire living room, [with] bed sheets for snow, mountains.''
Hoey got a ''good price'' on the building and inventory, said Cheryl Uhl, ex-wife of Glen's son Robert.
''We were thinking of trying to keep it open when Aaron called,'' Cheryl Uhl said. ''There was a sentimental value there.''
Others called, even though the place was never put up for sale. They wanted only the inventory.
Hoey was the best choice, Cheryl Uhl said.
Aaron ''had a a long-term plan,'' she said. ''He really was going to open it back up. Do something wonderful with it.''
Roger Carp, senior editor of Classic Toy Trains magazine, heralded the store's resurrection ''as an important event. It's one of those stores that is known well beyond the immediate area.''
Carp said train stores — like other small shops — are challenged by Internet sales, as well as by big-box stores.
''But what you often need when you buy an electric train,'' he said, ''whether you are a youngster or an adult — is the assistance, advice of a local hobby shop.''
The store sells only O-gauge (one quarter-inch to the foot) model trains. The two main brands are Lionel and MTH Electric Trains.
Recently, Hoey has spent a lot of time trying to put the store back on track.
He's spruced up the the building near the University of Akron.
Outside, he's installed an orange and blue Aaron's City Trains sign and lights reminiscent of those seen on a train platform.
Inside, Hoey has installed a large display — or ''layout'' — of model steam and diesel engines rolling on track, past replicas of buildings and signs.
He found an old wooden and glass display case at the store that he uses to show off model engines (steam and diesel), ranging from roughly $200 to $1,500.
He's hoping the displays will entice parents, as well as their children, for whom ''everything is digital and iPod these days.''
He noted that ''so much electronics have been packed into trains — you can run four or five on the same track and you don't have to do anything; they sense each other.''
Hoey said after he bought the store, ''it took us three months to move everything around.''
He noted his father and mother helped out. John and Pam Hoey now live in Canal Fulton.
Customer Larry Thesing, a retired electrical engineer who lives in New Franklin, said he was impressed.
''The place really went through a transition,'' Thesing said. ''You can actually tell what's there. It was actually hard to walk through the place before. You had to find little crevices.''
There was so much inventory that Hoey made his first order to replenish stock only a few weeks ago.
Customers of the old Glen's Train Shop will recall that Glen Uhl used to wear a trainman suit — bib overalls and a locomotive engineer's cap.
Hoey plans to frame the suit and display it at the shop, along with old train photographs he found at the store.
He'll also hang up a picture of Glen Uhl with Lionel officials. Uhl was known for showing up at Lionel stockholders meetings, where he would speak his mind about the quality of Lionel products.
Eventually, Hoey wants to sell items on the Internet while keeping the store open. Hoey, who graduated with a business degree from the University of Akron, hopes to interest a UA student in helping him build a Web site. The store does have a Facebook site.
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com.
