Andy Petersen started Petersen Supply in the late 1980's when he could not locate a boxcar he needed for his collection. He contacted Weaver Models about his first custom run car, the 40’ boxcar in Western Pacific silver with the orange feather. From an initial run of 300 cars Andy ended up selling over 1200 of this car, mostly to hobby shops around the country he had bought from over the years.
As a young boy growing up in Sacramento, California he watched the Western Pacific run through town and developed a fascination with trains. Whether it was Junior Achievement or selling logging equipment Andy has always been a salesman. Little did he know selling trains would become a major part of his business.
With the overwhelming success of that first Western Pacific car, Andy began to do more custom run cars each year. He saw a need for a distributor to hobby shops around the country that needed only one or two cars of a kind instead of a full case. Also, in advertising his custom cars he found retail customers who did not have a hobby shop nearby that stocked O-Scale products.
In 1993 Andy married Julia and the business became a partnership. Julia teases him that he had grown the business to the point that he needed help. Before meeting Andy, the only thing Julia knew about trains was sometimes they make you late when held up at a crossing. So the longtime bachelor found someone backpacking in the Oregon Cascade mountains with a business background and "the rest is history" as they say.
For a kid who always loved trains it seemed appropriate that Andy's business was in the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon. Portland is home to the Southern Pacific Daylight 4449 and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle 700 operating steam engines. They thought there was nothing quite like the sound of the whistles rising up when they are running....... and then Andy turned 70!
Andy and Julia decided they needed a slower pace (and less traffic). In December 2020 they moved to Albany, Oregon, population 52,000. They are one hour south of Portland. The Albany & Eastern, and Portland & Western shortlines run through town along with Amtrak and the UP mainline. They still enjoy lots of train sounds and sightings. The Amtrak station is an easy "FLAT" 20 minute walk away. The last snow storm helped them appreciate the flatness of the valley even more compared to the hills of Portland.
From his one car beginning, Petersen Supply grew to be a full line supplier of O-Scale products with emphasis on western roadnames. In addition to their many custom runs with Atlas, MTH, Weaver Models, Sunset Models, Athearn, Kadee and GGD they stocked a full line of regular production models. Yes, they are slowing down and the inventory is shrinking. No new custom runs are planned, but they are still here to help you with your O-Scale (and HO to a limited degree) needs.
