A cut Dr Beeching cannot be blamed for

Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory would be sad.  The Signal Box, a train model railway emporium in the liminal space between Chatham and Rochester has closed.  Despite a guarantee of 'World Wide Mail Order' from the purveyors of Hornby and others, Sheldon being fictional did not aid in this regard.
I noticed this as I made a fruitless trip to 'Thai Market' ('The convinent [sic] Oriental store') for kimchi.  Despite Shakespeare's injunction in Henry VI, Part II, to kill all the lawyers, they have proliferated into the vacant space where once miniature trains whizzed around.  So basic are their occupation of the premises that they have left much of the letterwork on the windows in situ (and there are two large stains on the thin, grey carpet).  Maybe the considerable shopfront was too expensive to redecorate bar the most perfunctory signs; maybe they just couldn't be bothered - a tired firm in a rundown urban locale.  Most of my peregrinations from the dockyard town to the cathedral city have occurred on Friday night as colleagues migrate from one pub to another when the cover of darkness obscures the awful truth.
In all honesty, I cannot say I was a patron but the existence of such a shop harks back to a more innocent and simpler age, with old verities persisting into the 21st century.  The warm glow of nostalgia is not always a commercial banker though.