Welcome to 7th Street Shops - Rail Flanges & Gears; the official Blog for 7thStreet Shops It is here that we will share bits and pieces about our business and related topics and we welcome our clients to interact with us here. Naturally we are most interested in performing our purpose as a customizing and repair service for the Model Railroader community where we expect to spend most of our time but we want a fluid place where we can interact with others having the same interests to "Build Thangs", Run Trains and Have Fun." I am a model railroader myself with an accumulated knowledge of several decades on how to do this, that and everything else in this hobby. We hope you enjoy our website and we hope you find our blog worth of your valuable time.

 

Today Vicki and I live in beautiful Montana but this hasn't always been so. We started.7th Street Shops in Lakewood CO, after 26 years of drafting for a number of Engineering companies. When that occupation dried up a friend and fellow modeler expressed his willingness to pay for work on some of his brass models. We formed 7th Street Shops in July 2009. I do the craft work and she does the administration work.

One of the neighbor's kids in our yard

This is it - Curt's Train Set

The knowledge behind our business began when as a 5-year-old, my brother got a Gilbert Train Set for his 4TH birthday. His interest was as expected - as was mine - short lived; and that little train set wound up in the mutual toy box where it rapidly decayed into junk. To my brother, that was that. To me it was an infection that slowly incubated into an all-out "Dez-zzeeze"...  

At 14 my brother and I got an HO train set for Christmas; to go with our HO race car set. We "reasoned" it would add excitement to our "Rapid Transit System". Exit "rubber tires". Enter rail and flange.  

But that isn't the whole story. By that point we were already avid model builders. Being best friends, brothers and constant rivals, we each worked at out-doing the other and we regularly destroyed each other's accomplishments - as the mood struck. As early as 9 and 10 we built plastic cars by the scores - along with model airplanes in plastic and balsa, ships and even Big Daddy Ross models of caricatures - and we regularly tore down our bicycles to grease the bearings - all of them... whether they needed "greezin' " or not. 

We were native born Coloradoans raised by Coloradoans. My mom was a farm girl and my Dad who was also rural bred started his own church in his living room. He built his own rider lawn mower from a truck chassis and they raised 5, more or less rebellious, kids - whew! Perhaps the greatest gift they gave us was that Americanist form of independence known as "Rugged Individualism"; that knowing, I can never lose if I don't quit.  

It's a good foundation for life if applied productively. It isn't about pride or a need to be better than anyone else. It's about just being better!