Rail Tales — Local services in Charlottesville

At a time when hobby shops are a dying breed, any shop is a welcome business. This shop is a fairly well stocked train and model store. They have a good supply of HO and N scale detail parts and scenery supplies. If you use Acrylic paints you will find what you need but if you use enamel paints, they are sadly lacking with only a very small selection of military colors. They stock some scratch building supplies but they are limited in scope. The two men who appear to own or run the store appear to be knowledgable about the hobby. My biggest complaint about this store is your initial entry to the store. You will be immediately stopped and asked to produce your "papers" regarding covid injections. If you can't produce this document you need to either don a mask or leave. I've never been asked for proof of a covid shot since this problem started. It's their shop and they can run it any way they want but I found it a bit insulting and unnecessary at this point. They don't mind handling your credit card or the pen you use to sign the receipt. A mask is no protection from someone that might be sick. If I hadn't needed to buy a couple of things, I would have told them what to do with their card or mask...

Rail Tails is one of the finest hobby shops I have ever been into. I should know for I am the once owner of the long gone Dutch Pond Hobby Shop in Suffolk Va. Brent and Nat both are on top of the latest in the market and have a fine selection of both trains and models plus a long line of accessories. He has on going discounts on certain items each month so it helps to shop there. You never know what you are getting when you order on the internet. Yes you will pay a little more from Brent but remember with shipping and wait and not knowing what the condition will be when it arrives makes a difference to me and should to you. All my paints and models mostly come from Brent. I live out in Culpeper and drive a full hour and forty five minutes just to buy from him. So with all this said until a hobby shop comes along to Culpeper that can supply me NOW as does Brent and Nat then I will be driving that distance. Peter Griffith Retired owner of "Dutch...

Sent in a model to have it rebuilt and have the mechanism updated. I sent the model here back in 2014. It took 5 YEARS to finally receive my model back from them, and looked as if a blind child did the work! The wiring is a total disaster with about 200% extra wiring than was needed, the motor failed after 3 uses, my model came back damaged with missing parts from when I shipped it off. I would email Brett the owner, asking about an update on the work to only hear back 3 months later with no new work done to it. I would have to chase the staff on the phone to get the information I needed. I would not recommend sending any models here to have any kind of work done! WORSE SERVICE EVER! Was not worth $200 at all! After receiving the model and it failing I had to spend another $800 to have their botched work fixed. Please stay...