Another long gone great hobby shop was The Corner Store over in Lorain, Ohio. Jim had an operating layout and an excellent supply of trains, parts, and magazines which covered all scales. He also had a sub-group of regular clientele who sometimes could be found gathered all at the same time in the store.
One of the more memorable happenstance gatherings of this group occurred in the early 1990's. Ray, a standard gauge buff, had received one of those toy-train-for-sale phone calls and, as a result became the new owner of a Lionel Standard Gauge 408E complete with 4, 6 wheel passenger cars. What made the set interesting was the paint scheme - very dark green - and the markings on the cars. Instead of the usual rubber stamping below the windows the four cars were rubber stamped Erie, Nickel Plate, B&O and W&LE, and New York Central. The engine, instead of the usual Lionel identifiers on the brass plates had "Van Sweringen" on one plate and "Union Terminal Dedicated June 28, 1930" on the other.
Ray and I did a lot of research and came up with a lot of dead ends. I ultimately wrote an article about the set which appeared in the November 1993 issue of CTT. The magazine had even more resources than I had and they managed to find an article in the Cleveland Press (a by then defunct newspaper) with a date line of June 28, 1930 which described the Terminal Tower dedication ceremonies and which also mentioned a running display of toy trains. The editor included this information in my article. While the Press article didn't provide specific details I was pretty sure the train Ray had purchased and the one mentioned in the newspaper article were one and the same.
