My first foray into collecting toy trains occurred when I was a kid growing up in the Los Angeles area.
Back in those days (late 1970s through mid 1980s) there were three LA area clubs. TCA had their meeting at Bateman Hall in Lynwood, TTOS had their meetings in Arcadia and a small, regional club called MTA (Model Train Association) had their meetings in Bellflower ( I think?). Basically everyone went to all the meetings.
Each of these meeting occurred on a different Friday night of each month. There were table sales that started around 6pm, followed by a business meeting which was followed by an auction. Sometimes these auctions would go until midnight or later. During these years, there were so many trains coming straight from houses that there was seemingly unlimited amount of items to be sold and these weekly meetings were the only source to buy and sell items.
The TCA names I remember were Allen Drucker (owner of Allied Model Trains), Don Ladenburger, Ron Wade, Chuck Stone, Colonel Bragg (one of the first to do mail order with toy trains with his ads in Model Railroader), John Parker, John Daniels (JAD Lines), Lyle Cain, Ralph Pauly ( I believe he was one of the first people to make reproduction toy trains parts and may have been the founder of Model Engineering Works?), Jerry Rokos, Lee Harris, Pete DeBeers, some guy named Stearns who always had operating layouts or a test track and sold the raffle tickets, the Spellmire family, Ed White (who was one of the fewer people to sell "new" trains which were MPC at the time) , Bill Harris, John King (who, along with Allen Drucker, was usually one of the auctioneers at these weekly events) etc etc. I am sure there were others that I will remember soon. I wonder how many of these folks are still around?
Ward Kimball was not particularly active at this point, but I did get to go to his house/museum/Grizzly Flats railroad as I was also an early car collector and Ward was a member of one of the old car clubs. I also vaguely remember the train shop at Knott's Berry Farm that was loaded with early toy trains. I also remember going to one TCA National Meet at Disneyland and, of course, a few Cal Stewart meets in Pasadena.
It is interesting to consider that back in these days, the "new" Lionel MPC trains were the "latest and the greatest" while most postwar trains were still well under 30 years old. 90% of us back then just wanted pre-WWII tinplate and standard gauge was king!
Great memories from the past....
