About The Western Depot

A Brief History

The Western Depot was founded in 1977 after Bob McBratney retired from the Air Force at nearby Beale Air Force Base. Bob had been doing some trading and collecting of trains, primarily Lionel, for many years prior to his retirement. He started The Western Depot in his garage by assembling passenger car kits made by Williams and selling the completed models.

Bob had a friend from the Air Force, Don Ibbotson, with whom he started a partnership in commercial real estate. Bob and Don bought a parcel of land on the western side of Yuba City between Poole Boulevard and Starr Drive and began construction of a commercial office building, doing most of the work themselves. The Western Depot was moved into one of the suites of this building and opened to the general public in 1979. This was this The Western Depot’s first retail store location: Suite C on Poole Boulevard. The Western Depot also did some mail order sales and distribution which operated from the back of the store.

Bob’s commercial real estate rentals continued to do well and he and Don continued to build buildings on their property to expand that business. The Western Depot had grown enough to require a larger space for the retail store and moved to a larger suite in another building on the property in 1986. This was The Western Depot’s second retail location: Suite O on Starr Drive. By this time The Western Depot was doing a large mail order and distribution business and Bob was forced to rent a small warehouse down the street from the retail store to hold all of the inventory.

In 1990 Bob decided that using a separate warehouse down the street was getting to be too inconvenient. He therefore bought another property and began contruction of a new building on Sierra Avenue; one that would not only contain retail space for The Western Depot, but also would have warehouse space for the store as well as several suites of commercial office space for renting to other businesses. Construction proceeded quickly during the summer of 1990, and in February of 1991 The Western Depot moved to its current location on Sierra Avenue.

In April 1997 The Western Depot connected to the internet. Our ISP at the time created the initial start for our web site, ready for us to fill in the outline with what we had available for sale. We quickly inserted the information we had and posted our site for the world to see. It wasn’t long before we completely modified the initial outline provided by our ISP to better suit our purposes.

Later a new ISP, Clear Connections, moved into a second building that Bob had built on his Sierra Avenue property and we switched to using their services since by using them we were able to get high speed internet access using a simple cable hung between the buildings. They helped us convert our old web site from a simple list of what we had for sale into a complete online store with secure online ordering. Since then, The Western Depot has always maintained its web site without outside help.

When Clear Connections moved away they set us up with our own web server computer and helped us obtain our own T-1 line. We now host our web site on our own computer. We do everything we possibly can to maintain the security of this computer and protect the information contained on it. The amount of business we do online has continued to grow ever since.

As we look to the future the one thing we can be assured of is change. Through the years we have seen manufacturers and dealers come and go. We look forward to the challenge of remaining in business to serve our customers in the coming years.