Hobby shops / train shops in Akron OH area

Try playing around with this search:

I'm looking for someone who has "been there." I learned a long time ago that ads in the Yellow Pages or even in MR don't mean that there is a good train shop on the other end of the trip.

So, let me reword my request... from personal experience, where are the good train shops in the Akron area?

dlm

I've stopped a couple times at "Nick's Sales and Service" in North Canton, Ohio. It's a lawn mower / small engine business with a fair selection of HO and some N. I was last there four or five years ago, so I can't say what it is like now, but then I'd judge its stock at maybe a third of the Train Station in Columbus (which I was by recently and also enjoyed), but Nick's had a lot of interesting and hard to find parts, and seemed to do a fair business in quality, older used equipment (e.g. Hobbytown of Boston one time I was there and not just blue box Athearn). Nick's was a little hard to find - it's out in the country on a 2-lane road; my recollection is that it was perhaps 8 miles NNE of Canton and about 3 circuitous miles E of the interstate.

I was in Alliance on business maybe 8 years ago, and there as an interesting small shop in an older downtown storefront. I don't recall the name and don't know if it's still there, but if I remember correctly, it had a rather large layout under construction. I seem to recall it was less than a mile W of the Alliance Amtrak station, which was then a fairly busy train watching location. Geezer