You said it George! For me, the fun of the hobby is building the trains, since I've never had the space to build a layout. I've got a few blue box loco kit bash projects I want to finish, but after that I'm really seriously considering quitting the hobby. Although there are still plenty of people willing to pay $130-$150 a pop for, an admittedly nice, Athearn SD70ACe, what is killing local hobby shops is online sales, with Walthers being the #1 culprit. I tried to order something through my local hobby shop the other day, they said that I'd have to wait 3 weeks till they made another order with Walthers, since Walthers is now placing minimum order limits on hobby shops. It's no longer cost efficient for hobby shops to special order individual things for customers, now that Walthers has realized they can charge full retail price online (and $8 shipping for a bunch of detail parts that could go in a bubble envelope for a couple of stamps)!
Matt
Moscow ID