I have never ordered from

I have never ordered from them and know nothing about them.  However, I did track the phone number they list for contact and it reportedly is assigned to Olyphant, PA which appears to be a suburb of Scranton, PA.

The web site would appear to be a stock web design from Shopify.

They list a mail contact as Post Office Box 235, South Canaan, PA 18459 which is near Olyphant.

I would suspect it is someone operating out of their home, but that's only speculation.

. . .

The location rang a bell.  There was a post a few days ago re ModelTranCloseouts   Now if you look at both sites  you will notice certain similarities

Model Train Closeouts
2269 Easton Turnpike
South Canaan, PA 18459

Hobby Rails
Post Office Box 235
South Canaan, PA 18459

They also come under several different names as  one un-happy client who posted to You tube discovered

They also are under the name Hobby Models LLC  and have this as a refund / return address

P.O. Box 235 South Canaan Pennsylvania US 18459

If you Google using this :  P.O. Box 235 South Canaan Pennsylvania US 18459  .. you will get on big surprise.

Of interest are the BBB postings as well.

You have got to love the WEB, safe and reassuring. 

They could be ligit  and the fellow has been a victim of his popularity with so many balls to juggle.

For what it is worth as I have never dealt with them at all.

Wow....

How do they fit all this business in one PO box?

Here's a link to the WHOIS

Here's a link to the WHOIS page for their web site.... it has a name and PO box for contact. This is a public record anyone can access for any web site.

https://hobbyrails.com.cutestat.com/

Scroll about 2/3 down the page for the full WHOIS info.

See also:

h ttps://hobbymodels.com.cutestat.com/

Discover should cover you

I would call Discover pretty quickly and provide the evidence above.

Vendor Scams

First of all, I would like to thank all who did research and took the time to respond to my post. Great bunch on the forum........thanks again.

I read the post a few days ago about ModelTrainCloseouts but was not aware of any similarity in the two addresses. At that time I had already placed my order with HobbyRails (July 27) and felt sure I was safe. And I take pride in myself for usually spotting a fake website. The HobbyRails website really looked good to me. Well....Shame on me. The fact that there was no physical address listed should have tipped me off but I was so happy to find a vendor that had the items I needed I moved ahead.

I will call Discover again tomorrow and pass along the info you guys have furnished to me. I am in good standing with those folks (they love my money) and they seemed eager to help. I am hoping for a refund, not a $67 "lesson".

Thanks....John

Yes, GOOGLE any address or phone number

Charge Suspended

I contacted Discover again today with the additional info provided to me by others on the forum. My charge has been suspended for 30 days during which time Discover will do their investigation. They made a note of my info and said I would hear something via e-mail soon.

After reading this post topic, I hope some other forum members will exercise a little more caution in making a purchase from a new or untried vendor and won't have to deal with problems like I am having. Joe offered some good advice for all of us to do our due diligence in verifying a possible scam. Hopefully others won't make the mistake I have made and will learn from my situation. I certainly will be more careful. Knowledge is power, use it wisely.

but do remember when using

but do remember when using Google earth to look up address that a lot of the smaller vendors are Ma and Pa shops working out of their house. Plus most shots on Earth are anywhere up to 10 years old, date is in small print on the bottom of the screen. So would be a good idea to make a phone call also. 

rich

i have seen some google earth

i have seen some google earth shots dated back into the 1980's.

but yes always check out any vendor online, even the good ones. knowledge is power. and less tums.

hacking

No offense Joe, but the hacker code likely has no idea who you are or how big you are or aren't. Most all attacks are heavily if not completely automated and they cover entire IP address ranges. They try various things and if they get  in, they get in and complete the attack. Only the largest and most carefully planned attacks pick their victims.

In fact, many attacks do not care at all how big or unimportant their victims are: they are all candidates for ransomware, etc. Finally, an argument can be made that the big places are better defended than most of the small fry, thus a small fry may be a better mark. (One might or might not win that argument, but it can't be thrown out as frivolous.)

To add some emphasis, the web server that hosts my club's web site has been attacked (at least) three times since I started typing this message—I have its log scrolling in a window. TMTV is the big time compared to a web site for the convenience of a total of 13 people! [oops there's #4!]

Hobby Rails.Com is surely a scam

Three months ago, I placed an order for one (1) Kato N 40-210 Unitram Street Track, Electric Turnout R180mm, Left with Hobbyrails.com.  They immediately charged my debit card justifying doing so as they had to order the track from Japan and pay up front. I attempted to contact them via phone (went directly to voicemail) and sent several emails as I found myself feeling uneasy about this purchase. In my voicemail and emails I requested that my order be canceled and a refund issued. No response.  I contacted the Better Business Bureau (BBB). After about a week, the BBB informed me that Hobbyrails was not a registered entity with them, so they had no means of disparaging their business. As others have stated here, I will be more diligent in future model railroad purchases. 

Contact your credit card

Contact your credit card company, immediately. It may not be too late.

That website sure makes them

That website sure makes them to appear to be legit? I wish they would throw some of these such scammers in jail.

"That website sure makes them seem legit"

I honestly cannot imagine anyone who was intending to scam people intentionally putting up a website that seemed anything BUT legit.  Typographical and spelling errors, weird usage of English phrasing, links that are broken - those are usually indicators that someone from far far away might be behind the scam, but there are plenty of native English speaking scammers out there who check their work before lofting the website onto the internet.

Best bet:  if you yourself or a friend has not done business with a site, check the BBB or at least all the model railroad forums you can find, and google the hell out of everything about the website -- before placing your order.

Another thing:  use a credit card, perhaps even a disposable "burner" credit card that you can pick up at a brick-and-mortar store, rather than a debit card.  Unless things have changed recently, as far as I can recall, there are far fewer consumer safeguards in place regarding debit cards than credit cards.  I could be wrong, but I've avoided debit and ATM cards for many years now, and have found absolutely no compelling case to start using them over credit cards.

Janet N.

credit vs debit cards

It depends on the specific cards involved, but my debit cards, at least, offer protections that are just as good as the credit cards I've compared them against - and I've read the very fine legalese print on the account holder agreement. The 'credit cards are safer' was, IMHO, always a credit card company narrative to get you to pay annual fees.

In 20 years every time there's been an issue with a fraudulent charge or vendor dispute I've gotten 100% reimbursed quickly with my debit cards. And I've never been hit with a finance charge or paid any interest since I ditched my last credit card twenty years ago.

Only use known vendors

For hobby stuff, only use known vendors, M.B. Klein, Tony's, Spring Creek, etc, etc, etc. There are many well known and reputable sellers, as well as small sellers going through eBay where you have some level of protection. Many companies that sell their own stuff are well known through train shows that they attend.

Scam site

Somebody spent a decent amount of effort putting that scam site together, they even plagiarized Kalmbach's website.

Hobbyrails.com legit?

SMART.REVIEWS evaluation …

Is hobbyrails.com legit?

Rating: Poor

• The SSL certificate is valid
• This website has existed for more than 3 years

• Mostly not trusted websites are linking to this site
• We found several negative reviews about this site
• Facebook account not found
• Instagram account not found
• Business not mentioned on Wikipedia 
• Pinterest account not found
• Linkedin account not found
• Twitter account not found
• Youtube account not found

I have another selling site I am suspicious of,..

https://www.atgroupex.com/

When I look at their listings for model train items there are just too many to be believable?

https://www.atgroupex.com/model-railroads-trains-c-1_56.htm

I also do not see a physical address, nor a phone number? Am I missing something or is this legit??