Founded in 1943 at the Park Boulevard and El Cajon Boulevard corner, Frank the Trainman is San Diego's oldest model train shop, carrying new Lionel alongside pre-war and post-war tinplate inventory in O, HO, N, and Z scales plus American Flyer S gauge sets from its current Park Blvd address in Hillcrest. The 10,000 sq ft floor shares the same building as the J. A. Cooley Museum, whose antique automobile collection includes the 1885 Benz Model 1 — the first documented internal-combustion vehicle — turning this Park Blvd address into a dual-use vintage retail shop and working vehicle history museum. The buy-and-sell program accepts trains across all gauges, serving collectors liquidating vintage sets alongside those sourcing a specific pre-war locomotive or post-war boxcar, with on-site engine repair available for mechanisms that need service before returning to a layout. Layout-building materials — houses, trees, and terrain elements for scenery construction — fill a separate aisle for modelers building dioramas, connecting the same period-collector mindset that draws visitors to the vintage decorative inventory at Mission Gallery Antiques in Mission Hills. The pre-war and post-war Lionel tinplate collection — spanning Standard gauge and O gauge sets from the 1920s through the 1940s, before the industry's postwar shift to plastic construction — represents the most historically deep American toy-train inventory available at any San Diego hobby retailer.