Martha Rial, Post-Gazette
	Scott Charles pauses with his grandaughter, Kelly Rech, 4, while packing remaining merchandise at the hobby shop his grandfather, A.B. Charles, started in 1945. A.B. Charles & Son closed its location on West Liberty Avenue in Dormont over Memorial Day weekend.

Yellow and black plastic caution tape hung across the doors of the A.B. Charles & Son hobby shop in Dormont yesterday afternoon.

The community landmark -- for more than 60 years home to floor-to-ceiling shelves and stacks of model trains, planes, and automobiles, remote-controlled everything and even dollhouses and dollhouse furniture -- has closed. The building at 3213 West Liberty Ave. has been sold, but the family plans to relocate and reopen.

"I've been here 40 years and I'm not dead yet," said Scott Charles, 55, owner of A.B. Charles & Son. His father, Edward Charles, ran the shop before him, and his grandfather, A.B. Charles, before him. "We're not going out of business. I'm too bullheaded."

The hobby shop looked battle-worn and a mere shell of its former narrow-aisled, filled-to-the-brim self yesterday.

"This shop had the charm of the old general store or the old hardware store," said Jim Sampson, 55, of Dormont, who played slot cars there as a child and has worked there the past three years. "You would walk through the store 15 times to make sure you wouldn't miss something."

One worker dismantled glass display cases, carefully removing an antique Lionel train engine detailed in copper, while friends, family and volunteers packed up box upon box of model kits and toys to be put into storage until the shop has a new location.

Lionel trains. Bavarian rifles. The Invisible Woman. Precision Trophy Kits. Canadian Fishing Schooner wooden model ship kits. Hot Wheels cars.

"If you were looking for a circa 1800 [dollhouse] rocking chair, you would find it here," Mr. Sampson said. "If you were looking for the trolley of Mr. Rogers, you'd find it."

"Thanks for the Memories. Look for our new location updates at www.ab-charles.com," read words painted on one of the shop's large front windows.

The hobby shop has been in its present location since 1959. The shop originally opened in 1945 and has been in a few different places along West Liberty Avenue over the years.

Need a wheel for a Lionel train from the '30s? A.B. Charles & Son probably had it -- in stock -- and had people who knew how to fix it, said Charles family friend and financial adviser David Maniet.

"It's a place you can send your kids, where they could run the slot cars and you knew they would be safe," said Mr. Maniet, who fondly recalled visiting the shop when he was 9.

"I'd get on my Schwinn, get a slice of pizza at Mineo's for a quarter and come up here to talk cars and trains. It's the only place where you can get a can of Pepsi for 50 cents, to this day."

Michael Rooney (yes, of the Steeler Rooneys) remembers going to the shop as a child.

"I was mainly into the radio-control cars and trains and that was the place to go," said Mr. Rooney, 38, who owns Steel City Hobbies in Bridgeville.

"The cool thing was, they didn't have shopping bags or anything but they'd wrap up your item in brown paper and it was such a thrill getting home from the hobby shop and unwrapping your car, " he said in a telephone interview yesterday.

In his youth, before he headed off to Steelers training camp where he worked as a ball boy, Mr. Rooney would buy 10 model car kits and work on them in the evenings.

"Oh, my Lord," said Dr. Jim Ferguson, 70, of Mt. Lebanon, as he watched people load some of the shop's vast inventory of model kits and toys into a moving truck. "It's a really sad sight to see."

He was 9 or 10 when he first saw an HO scale train layout in a glass case, complete with "all kinds of scenery" and trains at the old shop at 3229 1/2 West Liberty Ave. He has been a model train enthusiast since.

"I just hope they reopen soon," he says. "I'm always up here getting a little piece of this or that. I hate to mail-order things."