I spent a fair amount of time on Google Maps looking for a model railroad store. I hunted around the areas where I live and work. I think I found a huge diamond in the rough, the Charles Ro Supply Company in Malden, MA. It is a few minutes detour when going to or from work and they are open till 9pm on Fridays. This could be dangerous…

THIS MODEL RAILROAD STORE IS HUGE! TRAINS GALORE!

Okay, maybe not like the entire Walthers catalog, but the HO selection was several decent. Several alises of buildings, figures, track, cars, etc. There was a large section for generic scenery / Woodland Scenics stuff. The prices appeared to better than Walthers but I haven’t been shopping for model trains in a long time, so who am I to say? Also, if you enjoy larger scale, over half this store is focused on O and G scales.

More info:

https://www.charlesro.com/
Charles Ro Supply Company
662 Cross Street
P.O. Box 100
Malden, MA 02148
1-800-225-4425

But poking around the store I found these Guilford and B&M locomotives, total beauties…

Guilford SD-45 by Athearn

Boston & Maine HH600 by Atlas

Which puts me on the proto path of smaller railroads that were gobbled up by larger names over time.  More on that in another post. So if you’re in Eastern Massachusetts / Boston area and looking for a great model railroad store, make the pilgrimage to the Charles Ro Supply Company, it will be worth your while. (This was not a paid advertisement, just my opinion.)