Midtown Shop Leaves Its Competition, and Its Trains, in the Dust
Great profile of midtown’s the Red Caboose, one of the last brick and mortar stores for train and bus model hobbyists left in Manhattan, from The New York Times.
“You’re either a bus guy or a train guy,” Arnold Hochberg said the other day. He has a collection of more than 500 model buses. He is a bus guy.
Mr. Hochberg, a 60-year-old salesman, was browsing in the basement of a small Midtown Manhattan office building, pointing into a display containing model buses and locomotives.
“That’s a Setra touring bus,” he said. “It’s German.”
He gestured to another. “That’s a Triboro Coach,” he said wistfully. “They used to go back and forth from La Guardia. Until not that long ago even.”
New York City might seem a lonely place for such enthusiasts, but Mr. Hochberg was within a subterranean shop cluttered with thousands of models and figurines known as the Red Caboose, a bedrock of the city’s hobbyist community — particularly for model train collectors — since 1970.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.