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MTJ
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With the passing of Fred Dole, the hobby is a little bit poorer.
Fred was a consummate modeler and an enthusiastic devotee of promoting the hobby. Fred had been the Editor of O Gauge Railroading magazine and later became a regular contributor to, and photographer for Classic Toy Trains. Please click on this highlighted text to read the entire article…
UPDATE: We are updated to the latest and greatest, possible tweaks and changes in the future. Thank you all for your patience.
Just wanted to let everyone know, the MTJ forums will be down for a bit later today, as we will be doing some updates behind the scenes. Hopefully it won’t take too long and we’ll have you back on your way real soon.
By just 12 votes, Booth Rankins of Marion appears to have won the “Design Your Own Boxcar” contest held by Lionel, LLC. This means the iconic electric toy train company will produce an O-scale boxcar featuring his design as part of Lionel’s 115th anniversary celebration. Please click on this highlighted text to read the entire article…
When Peggy Keyes lost her husband to pancreatic cancer, she came up with a unique way to honor his memory.
She bought a building, and she created a model railway.
Not just any model railway. She built a museum. And she now runs that museum with the support of a team of volunteers and friends, donating 100 percent of proceeds to the fight against the disease that took her husband’s life. And she’s doing so while undergoing chemotherapy as part of her own battle against cancer Click here to read more…
Longtime toy train collector, Donald Brill, promoter of the Northwest Jersey Train-O-Rama, the Dover Train Show, and member of METCA’s Board of Directors, died April 11, 2013, at age 73. He was very active until recently, living and enjoying his passion–as a train enthusiast.
Don had almost lifelong ties to the Dover community, serving as a member and former usher at Sacred Heart Church for over 50 years. His ties to Dover included a career as a Police Officer with eventual promotion to Detective.
He was instrumental in starting the Drug & Alcohol Juvenile Awareness Program for Dover H.S. students and also served on the Board of Education for 28 years.
But perhaps Don is best known, to his legions of ‘Train Buddies’ and to the thousands of toy train collectors who attended his Dover Train Show for the past 37 years, for being a train enthusiast. His early shows packed the Dover H.S. Gym and soon grew into the auxilary gym across the hall. In its heyday the show outgrew the two gyms, that’s when Don expanded the show into the school cafeteria with tables spilling out into the hallways. At its peak, the show had room for over 400 vendor tables. When the hobby began to decline and his show began to shrink in both size and attendance, Don never lost his enthusiasm for the toy train hobby.
He was a regular visitor to other area train shows and an enthusiastic supporter of the hobby. It was always reassuring to see his Red Ford Van parked outside a train show, because I knew somewhere inside the show I’d meet up with and talk trains with Don. Looking back, his contributions to the hobby are enormous! He truly was an Icon in the Toy Train Hobby. Our deepest sympathies to Don’s family and friends.
“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” –Robert Lewis Stevenson
Did you have a fascination with trains as a child? I had a Lionel train set and one of my granddaughter’s favorite new toys at our house is the Walt Disney World Railroad train set. Seeing her playing with it reminded me of a presentation at The Walt Disney Family Museum by Michael Campbell, President of the Carolwood Pacific Historic Society, who spoke about Walt’s passion for trains and how this passion drove him creatively. Continue reading…
A special thanks to the Lionel Collectors Club of America for filming a great interview…See the interview here…