Route 66

"If you ever plan to motor west, take the highway that is my way and is best. Get your kicks on Route 66."

"It winds from Chicago to L.A., more than 2,000 miles all the way...."

In the late 1940s, Bobby Troup wrote that song and its great lyrics and Nat King Cole made it famous. I remember it well. I was seven or eight years old when "Route 66" became popular. It is still one of my favorite songs.

A dozen years ago, I had the good fortune to meet Bobby Troup here in L.A. He was a kind, decent man. I am glad I met him. I told him my parents and I sung his song when we drove from Chicago to L.A. on Route 66 in the early 1950s. It took four days. We stayed at the motels and cabins that are now all gone for the most part. In its day, though, Route 66 was the only way to go.

The Interstate Highway System, introduced in 1956 during the Eisenhower Administration, dealt the death knell to Route 66. At first, it was a four-lane highway running parallel to Route 66. Later, it was widened. Its exits, while frequent, were spaced too far apart to help many of the restaurant and motels along the old Route 66.

During the past 10 years, I've seen several programs on cable television and PBS tracing the history of Route 66 and lamenting its demise. It was great in its day, but its day, in retrospect, was short-lived.

In the late 1940s, my parents and I drove from Chicago to New York on Route 30, known as "The Lincoln Highway." The Pennsylvania Turnpike, another new four-lane highway, already was open, but we crossed Pennsylvania mainly on Route 30. We wanted to see Horseshoe Curve, Roadside America, and Gettysburg and enjoy the Pennsylvania countryside. When we returned, however, we drove along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was swift, allowing us to get back to Chicago in less than two days.

Those were truly great days....

Working at Allied Model Trains

For 32 years, Allen Drucker owned and managed Allied Model Trains, which he developed into the world's largest model train store. When he bought the store in 1975, it was located on Pico Boulevard in Westwood, just west of the Westside Pavillion. In 1989, he moved the store to a brand new building in Culver City modeled after Union Station in downtown L.A.

Allied Model Trains
When I moved to Los Angeles in late November 1990, the first thing I did was visit Allied Model Trains. For a toy train buff like me, it was seventh heaven. As it happened, I met Allen Drucker that day. The outcome: he offered me a job as a salesman, and I began working at Allied on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the busiest day of the year!

On Saturday, May 12th, Allied Model Trains closed its doors. Samy's Cameras, a large L.A. chain, will occupy the beautiful store. WhistleStop Trains from Pasadena will sell toy trains in the smaller building Allen owns across the street. It is scheduled to open in July. Allen will lease the two buildings to their new tenants.

Here is an entry I posted on Model Railroader Magazine's General Forum earlier today:

I worked as a salesman in the Lionel and LGB section of Allied Model Trains from late November 1990 to mid March 1995. It saddens me to see Allied close, because it was the most beautiful train store I've ever seen.

You can criticize its owner Allen Drucker all you want for refusing to sell toy trains for less than the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). Keep in mind that Allied was one of the largest toy trains stores in the world, and it was expensive to operate on that scale. We sold all scales and manufacturers. Customers came from everywhere, not only Southern California. Allied was only three miles from LAX, so many people dropped in on their way to or from the airport.

I began working at Allied on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1990. We began work at 9:30 a.m., cleaning glass counters and re-stocking merchandise. The door opened at 10 a.m. On my first day, I sold $1,100 of LGB trains to my first customer within the first 15 minutes. I don't recall how many LGB Christmas train sets I sold that year (at $399 each), but I probably averaged six or seven a day until Christmas. Of course, I sold a lot of Lionel and other LGB merchandise, too.

Celebrity customers stopped by to see me all the time, but what I enjoyed most of all was waiting on ordinary people who, like myself, were fascinated by toy trains.

One of my favorite sales was to a woman in her 40s who had always wanted her own Lionel train. Her parents never bought her one when she was little because she was a girl. I sold her a vintage Lionel locomotive and a few cars from the late 1940s and early 1950s, including an operating milk car, enough track to go around her Christmas tree and even have a passing siding, and a vintage Lionel transformer. After her first visit, she stopped by several times that Christmas season with different friends, each time buying another vintage freight car.

On Christmas Eve during another holiday season, I was looking forward to closing at 6:00 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m., which we did every night since Thanksgiving. Twelve-hour days, day after day, can get tiring. About 5:45, a middle-aged father and his young daughter came to the store. They walked back to my area of the store.

"My daughter wants the LGB Christmas train," he said. I could see how happy the girl was. She was about eight or nine years old. We had sold our remaining LGB Christmas trains earlier that day--except for one. That was on the top shelf in the 12-foot-high recessed arch on the rear wall of the LGB section. There were about eight or nine shelves affixed to wall brackets above a glass display case in that arch. Allen Drucker did not want his salesmen climbing up that high, so I called him to ask him to get the train.



Allen came downstairs from his office, grabbed the tall metal ladder, and retrieved the loco and two passenger cars, handing each one to me very carefully. Allen climbed down the ladder, walked to our main LGB counter area, and gently dusted off the train. He tested the engine for the father and his daughter. It worked beautifully.

The father and his daughter were so happy. "We're Jewish, you know, but we always celebrate Christmas," he said to Allen and me. "I'm not a rich man, but I know how much my daughter wants this train."

It was about 6:15 when they left the store. I carried the train in its beautiful box to their car for them. It felt great to know they were so happy. We wished each other "Merry Christmas."

Memories of my own childhood in Chicago back in the 1940s came back to me, memories of my own father carrying home a bag of something or other on Christmas Eve, promptly hiding it, and then surprising me on Christmas morning with Lionel trains running under our tree. In time, we made our own layout in a spare bedroom, as this photo from 1953 shows:


George's and his Dad's 1954 Lionel Layout.
Click photo to view an enlargment.
Those were good days, and I knew that this was a good day for this father and his daughter.

It was a good day for me, too.

George Spink
Los Angeles
Email Me