The Story of
Makin' Tracks!

I am John Scott Geare, "JS Geare" or "Scott," for short. I am retired, and live near Crozet, VA where I tend my property in idyllic central Virginia, grow vegetables in season, build web sites, do graphic design, work on my HO model train layout, write articles on various aspects of model railroading, and sell HO scale rail modeling products on the Internet, among other activities.

I am retired from the technology and insurance fields, an odd vocational combination that possibly explains why I retired early.

This is the story behind my internet selling activity, which I have named, "Makin' Tracks!" Like most people, where I am now in life is the result of many factors throughout the entirety of my life, which happened to come together in a particular way at a particular time.

In the Beginning
When I was a kid, back before there were Styrofoam cups, my Dad gave me HO trains for Christmas one year. I was hooked. But when I became sautéed in other adolescent interests, the trains went into storage.

50 years later, in my retirement, someone wisely said to me, "JS, you need a life." So I returned to the hobby interest of my festering youth - HO Scale Model Railroading. Here's what happened.

The Thing in the Basement
Retired now, and in the 6th decade of my life, I built a layout in my basement. Let me rephrase that. I STARTED a layout in my basement. Phase ONE is complete, so I can run trains. Here, have a look at this layout link. This page will stay open. Believe it or not, the trains actually stay on the tracks, even when they are moving. Amazes me every time I see it; they had not been so obedient when I was a kid.

My railroad empire is a DCC layout currently using a DSC50 (Zephyr) command unit from Digitrax, with stationery decoders, power management and reversing handled by Tony's Trains products. Most track is Atlas flex code 83. The layout is based, very loosely, on what I saw around me where I grew up in Cumberland, MD. The name of the railroad? TTITB RR (The Thing in the Basement Railroad).

I learned some things in building up the new railroad, and, owing to the Internet, was able to connect with other HO scale modelers around the world. Eventually, I began to contribute some of what I learned in Yahoo groups and elsewhere.

Put Down the Empty Package of Hamburger
. . .  and step back from the trash can! Given the modest size my retirement budget, and the fact that I'm just cheap anyway, I learned a lot about making things out of stuff you'd normally throw away. I have a whole new relationship with my kitchen trash. Convincing tunnel portals, for example, made from meat tray foam; yes, the stuff your burger sits in at the store. Roads and buildings made from orange juice carton material. Trees made from extension cords. Who knew?

I have also attempted to put myself in the position of someone who is considering or has just started the hobby, but is bewildered by all the terms, products, methods and techniques -aside from the sobering costs. Therefore I have written about the basics of building a layout, and touched on some key aspects which seem enshrouded in mystery. DCC, flex track, couplers, reversing loops, the operation of turnouts ("switches"), and upgrading broken old cars are a few categories. I hope to create a kind of library, based loosely on what seems to frustrate modelers the most. And through it all, I offer the least expensive, easiest and fastest ways I know to get the job done.

Like the Thing in the Basement, my learning and publishing efforts are a work in progress which I create, then alter, sometimes throw away and start over.

Sticker Shock
When I jumped back into model railroading, I landed in a hobby shop. In case you didn't know, model railroaders refer to this resource as the "LHS" (Local Hobby Shop). I like doing business with an actual person, the owner, someone who knows something about the hobby, someone local, someone accountable. At the same time, these folks need to charge prices that will earn them a reasonable profit (what a concept). But that means prices sometimes are out of reach, especially for a guy like me who buys expired groceries, on senior discount day at the Kroger.

Frankly, I think many of the hobby dealers in smaller towns stock model railroad merchandise more out of love for the hobby than the hope of making a living at it. The REAL money seems to be in quality RC planes and cars, far as I can tell. One owner actually told me that he buys as much from ads in the paper, local estate sales, or Craig's List as he does from the big distributors -Walthers and Horizon.

Let's just say that the hobby can rapidly turn from a recreational pursuit into an INVESTMENT activity, if you catch my drift. And a spouse, if not as excited about the hobby, may not always be on board with the notion that all those trains really qualify as an ASSET. Plowing a lot of bucks into this hobby is easy to do, but the "investment" value for many of us should be measured more by the satisfaction it gives us than the cash value now or later. Therefore, there is every reason to spend as little as necessary. Many modelers are quite good at knowing a bargain and spend a lot of time looking for them.

"Cheaper by the Dozen"
After my initial hobby shop purchases to get started, I looked at the secondary market in HO equipment, and snooped around auction sites, group message boards, shows and similar venues looking for equipment at a decent price. What I quickly discovered was that buying just one or two things at a time, from a collection of many, was expensive, because the seller knew the best items would have the greatest demand, be among the first to go, and would get a good price. Exactly right. The other problem was shipping expense, which can be a big part of total cost for purchases that come through the mail. Likewise the cost of traveling to collect something can be significant.

On the other hand, many people seemed eager to extend a substantial price break if I could buy everything they had for sale, and maybe even pick up the merchandise. So that is what I did. The good part? My average cost for the few things I really needed went down. The bad? I had a lot of stuff I did not need.

What Do I DO with all this STUFF?
Well, maybe I didn't need all the excess, but SOMEBODY could probably use it, or so I hoped. My railroad uses standard body mounted trucks, NOT "Talgo" trucks. My cars use metal wheels, not plastic. My locomotives are DCC, not straight DC, and as I've previously indicated, many scenic items and structures are made from trash -literally. While I won't be hired anytime soon to build a museum quality layout, my orientation is toward prototypical appearance and operations as opposed to play value or running trains in a simple oval. And even for material equipment which fits my general preference, there often is no physical space for it.

This is not to say that the gear I don't want is "junk." Far from it.  Models may be excellent from an appearance standpoint, but have operational issues -missing trucks, wheels, or couplers, etc. They  may be visually appealing, but they don't run, or could be improved to run better. And so, I found myself in the repair and upgrade business. And yes, some stuff is, quite honestly, "junk."

And the more I bought, the more this stuff started to take over my basement. Obviously, I had to dispose of the excess inventory, but how, and where?

Alien Territory - The Strange World Of Ebay
The immediate answer was the one we all know about - Ebay. But Ebay has problems; the fees, the fact buyer and seller can't communicate directly, and a wacky collection of strange and unevenly applied rules. And did I mention the fees? I would much prefer to deal one-on-one with a fellow modeler, to negotiate, to exchange ideas and information about the hobby. That ain't Ebay. And as I was to discover, a lot of model railroaders despise Ebay. The place made me nervous. To an actual modeler, this is indeed alien territory. I have yet to meet the hobbyist who proudly proclaims Ebay as a place to do business.

But at the time I turned to Ebay, the fees seemed reasonable enough and there were ways to deal with the iron curtain that made one-on-one buyer and seller communication so difficult. And I was blissfully unaware of Ebay's reputation as a bad part of town in the minds and experiences of many model railroad enthusiasts.

So, I listed my excess inventory. I had two main goals: First, to recover some of what I had spent on my own layout. Profit would be welcomed, but was not the prime mover. Second, I wanted to cultivate not just the business of modelers, but also their trust, at every skill and experience level, with an emphasis on the beginner to intermediate hobbyists -people like me. And that meant I could not simply put up a fuzzy picture, say a few words, and guess at a price. So I did research, took lots of pictures, wrote thorough, brutally honest descriptions, made my "starting price" lower than elsewhere, made shipping "free," and sent out product the same day I was paid for it. The idea was to present the best possible value anywhere, encourage new railroad modelers, provide a trusted source for the experienced user, and make the whole thing as easy and fast as possible. I am NOT a "dealer." I am an HO scale modeler who sometimes has stuff for sale. My greatest investment is not physical inventory; rather, it is the satisfaction and respect of my fellow modeler.

Be Careful What You Pray For
Evidently, my theory worked, because in a few short months I had reached "Power Seller" Status on Ebay and was charged lower fees. I could therefore offer buyers more product for less money, which is exactly what I did. Overall, my selling operations became marginally profitable. But the BIG payoff was the appreciation of modelers who liked my straight-forward approach and what they claimed was the best pricing they had ever seen. Buyer feedback tells the story. I was officially a "success." A small success, but a success nonetheless.

Soon, modelers who bought my stuff were contacting me; discussing "how-to's," hobby news, shop-talk -the same kind of thing that goes on at show or swap meet.  And of course, people were asking, "do you have?" or, "can you get?" All very good. Or maybe not. While all that was happening on Ebay, I, of course, was still busy on my layout, and was in the market as a buyer to feed the Thing in the Basement. So now, I had TWO want lists -mine, and my customers.

I should have seen it coming. My inventory wasn't shrinking. It was EXPANDING! I wasn't spending just a hundred or two at a clip, but now, sometimes thousands. How could I NOT be? I was shopping for 300 people! And the number was growing.

Rewarding as this was, it also presented me with challenges I had never anticipated when I first started out. And so, a day of reckoning was soon at hand.

Escape from Ebay
The biggest difficulty that I and my customers encountered was Ebay itself. The whole thing is set up to hide people from one another. Buyers and sellers are warned not to identify themselves and to reject offers made outside the Ebay tent, for our own "security" (not to mention Ebay protecting its own fees). This breeds a culture of paranoia.

But I, and people who buy from me are, for the most part, members of a community with a common interest and passion. We may never have met, but we speak the same language  and there is a kind of basic trust and honor among us. We are not at all like "dealers" in junk jewelry or antiques of questionable provenance. In a way, the wacky restrictions on Ebay almost seem to assume dishonesty and dirty deals. That's just NOT us. In this hobby, I have never encountered a phony buyer, and I have never offered a phony deal.

In the late spring of 2009, Ebay announced new rules, fees and ways of evaluating sellers and buyers which simply made my continued presence there impossible. I needed a new place to pitch my tent.

What I wanted was the OPPOSITE of Ebay: a low cost, easy to use web site with minimal, common-sense rules where buyers and sellers could communicate openly and make whatever deals were best for both of them, on the spot. Just like a garage sale, show or swap meet. I was on the verge of just making up a web site on my own, when I discovered what became my new home base.

Hello Bonanzle
As I was looking around for a "shopping cart" for a web site of my own creation (I design web sites) I stumbled on Bonanzle. Long and short: every seller has his or her own store, called a "booth." Sell however you want: auction, firm price or best offer. Take payment however you want. Make up your own shipping and return policies, chat in "real time" with buyers or window shoppers. Costs nothing - ZERO- to list as much inventory as you want. A very small fee is paid when you sell something, a mere fraction of Ebay.

Now THAT'S my kind of web site! So now, practically everything I list is on a "best offer" basis. My buyer's price can only go DOWN. I don't want customers to be bidding AGAINST each other; I want them to be working WITH me, to get what they want. And shouldn't there be a discount for buying more than one thing at a time -the way most modelers buy? Of course there should! That's why I have a discount schedule that reduces total cost by up to 20%. After all, the cost per item for shipping is less for a package of several items, and beside that, my mission is to figure out how to stretch your dollars, not snatch them away. Sometimes, especially with large orders, 20% still isn't right. Fine, offer me something less; you won't hurt my feelings!

Bonanzle is pretty much the way I would build up my own web site from scratch. And nobody is forced to "join" or "sign up" for anything. There are no "gotcha's." That's Bonanzle.

It's Really All About ME
Me? I am not a "dealer." I don't WANT to be a dealer. I am, rather, a retired guy with a crazy railroad in his basement who stumbled into this situation on the theory that it would help me finance my own hobby obsession. So far, so good. But along the way, I have ended up as a good source for other hobbyists, by a happy combination of intuition, some effort, time, and just plain good luck.

I can think of no better way to support the hobby than by supporting the hobbyist, and what you read here is how I try to do that.

And I call it What?
What should I call this enterprise? Well, it's all about how to get from here to there in the world of HO model railroading; how to help you make things work, and how to help you get what you need at a cost that's reasonable. How to "support the hobby by supporting the hobbyist."

I'm not sure where it will all end up, but, wherever that is, I'm . . .

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