WORCESTER Mass— Michael Lavin’s scale model of Union Station got back on track after the Worcester Historical Museum showed an interest in it.

Lavin started the project, a 36-foot long display featuring both the old and new Union Stations as they looked in 1911, about 10 years ago. “I picked away at it and, once people at the museum discovered it last year, I probably did more on it in six months than I did in nine years,” said Lavin, an artist and former cabinet maker from Sterling.
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A wonderful selection of more than 200 toy train lots awaits bidders, with many pieces coming from the Estate of Kenneth J. Rohrbaugh. “The trains in the Rohrbaugh grouping had been on loan to the Lincoln Train Museum in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,” explained Morphy’s Chief Operating Officer Tom Sage Jr.

The predicted top lot in the train section is an outstanding Lionel Mickey Mouse Circus Train set, complete with its original box and cardboard inserts. Additionally, there are many excellent prewar Lionel 0 gauge passenger sets with original boxes, an American Flyer standard gauge stadium set in original set box, and a number of more contemporary trains, including productions from MPC and MTH (Mike’s Train House.)

“There’s a good mix of trains,” said Sage, “including a standard gauge white Ives 3243 set, an American Flyer President’s Special set, Marklin and other European trains.”

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Advertised as the largest operating model railroad in the world  ‘Miniatur Wunderland’ covers 12,380 square feet, and features almost six miles of track and is still not complete.  Twin brothers Frederick and Gerrit Braun, 41, began work on Miniatur Wunderland in 2000 and expect completion in 2020!

The layout covers six regions, including America, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Germany and the Austrian Alps.

Although the layout is in Hamburg Germany, the U.S. is well represented  with giant models of the Rocky Mountains, Everglades, Grand-Canyon and Mount Rushmore.

It is expected to be finished in 20 20, when the layout is anticipated to cover more than square 19,376 sq  ft and feature almost 13 miles of track, by which time detailed models of parts of France, Italy and the UK would have been added

Its stats are amazing:  It’s composed of Marklin HO products exclusively, with more than 900 trains with more than 14,000 rail cars. The longest train is 46ft long.  Scenery includes 900 signals, 2,800 buildings, 4,000 cars – many with illuminated headlights….and 160,000 individually designed figures.  Thousands of pounds of steel and wood was used to construct the scenery… The 250,000 lights are rigged up to a system that mimics night and day by automatically turning them on and off. The entire system is controlled from a massive high-tech control center.

In total the layout’s construction has taken 500,000 hours and more than twenty-two million dollars to to together, the vast majority of which has come from ticket sales.

Gerrit said: “Our idea was to build a world that men, women, and children can be equally astonished and amazed in.”

Click this highlighted text to watch a four minute video of Miniatur Wunderland.

The Highland Park Historical Society will host the fifth installment of its highly popular History of Toy Trains exhibit beginning Saturday, December 31, 2011, through Sunday, February 5, 2012. The exhibit will be open on Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., at the Society’s Museum located at 326 Central Avenue, Highland Park, IL. Admission is $5.00 per person and $12.00 per family. Special group tours during the week are available upon request.

This year’s event, History of Toy Trains V, will showcase American Flyer and Lionel Standard Gauge trains built between 1910 and 1935. Standard Gauge trains were the largest models manufactured by American Flyer and Lionel. A Standard Gauge Locomotive weighs nearly 26 pounds. An engine with a set of metal passenger cars can measure over eight feet in length. Because these trains were so large and built of all metal, the vast majority were melted down for their metal content for World War II. The trains being featured are extremely rare examples seldom seen outside of museum exhibits or elite private toy train collections. To read more about this year’s History of Toy Trains event, click here.

When Ed Martz was a boy growing up in the Bevo Mill area of south St. Louis, his grandfather took him most Sundays to the railroad crossing near his home, where the two watched as the trains rumbled past. During the week, his dad met them after work at the crossing or nearby overpass, and the three took in the sights together. Click here to read the whole story and view a great video.

Since the late 1940s folks have been saying O-gauge trains is a dying hobby, but the hobby keeps on chugging along. Click here to read this ‘Christmasy’ feature appearing in The Brookings Register about one man’s ulterior motive behind setting up his model railroad in a public setting for people to see.

Here’s a nice article along with a great video to enjoy over the Christmas Holiday.

Lionel train motor repair is one of the Motor Doctor’s specialties.  The Doc can perform a wide range of Lionel train repair services that include Lionel train repairs not typically covered nor performed by most Lionel train repair centers.  You can count on the Doc to handle difficult Lionel train repairs and Lionel train motor repairs such as armature rewinding and armature coil-to-commutator repairs.   Included in the scope of the Doc’s Lionel train repair services are complete motor field repairs and general solenoid rebuilds for accessories that use coils to activate mechanical features such as semaphore flags. So….please read on and learn about what the Doc can do for you when it comes to pre- and post-war Lionel train repair and the repair of other trains by MTH, Bing, American Flyer, Atlas, Ives, Bub, Marx, LGB and more!!

According to business-journal.com, Lionel LLC, one of the best-known manufacturers, if not the best-known manufacturer, of model railroad sets, has operated its global customer-service department out of this unassuming building the last two years. And business keeps chugging along. Read more…

The beautiful large scale tin-plate train layout of popular television broadcaster and avid train collector, Tom Snyder has been successfully moved to the New Jersey-Hirailer’s facility in Paterson N.J. Click here to read the full story appearing on NorthJersey.com