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The Marx Trains Facebook page is reporting that Thor Sheil passed away this afternoon. While greatly known for Marx, his “All Gauge” website has been a longtime resource for countless modelers new, prospective and old. Quite a labor of love.

Thoughts and prayers to Audrey Sheil and family.

Last edited by Brian Olson
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Sad news. I got to know Thor when we were both members of the OCSMR club. He had a unique sense of humor that was an acquired taste for some. On this forum he often used to use the term "weenies" to refer to advocates of "lesser" gauges. This upset some, but he was genuinely kidding, and when he found I was dabbling in N gauge he gave me several books on N gauge track plans and modeling from his own collection which I still have. Another time, he sent a number of people to the OGR booth at the Edison show on some type of made-up mission, the nature of which I can't quite remember. I do recall Ed Boyle wanting to kill him over it though! Then there was the oft-repeated joke about a certain handshake I will not go into the particulars of . Many individuals have never met Thor or have experienced his humor, but have benefited from the wealth of info on his webpage over the years, as Brian mentioned above. I left the club due to the distance involved, and spending more time on other interests, and haven't spoken to Thor in quite some time. It's always sad when a friend passes, but when thoughts of him bring a smile to your face, he obviously left some good memories behind. Good bye buddy. 

Last edited by Former Member

Sad,sad news. My condolences to his family. 

I followed him on Facebook and enjoyed his postings immensely. He was an absolute expert on Marx and provided an amazing variety of layout ideas in three-rail over the years, no doubt helping many thousands of model railroaders with their layout planning .

 Thor was a great resource to the O gauge hobby, to say the least. He will be missed.

I'm very sad to hear this. I did not get to meet him, but as a lone o gauger up here in Canada I benefitted immensely from his posts and track plans. Our track plan is directly a result of one of his designs and I am grateful to this man for freely sharing his knowledge and passion with those of us he didn't even know. Thanks Thor! You will be missed!

Thor was a great online friend and I send my sincere condolences to his family. We had many fun discussions after he referred to the Forums Southern Ry fans as the "Kudzu Krowd" and asked if we used whitener on our "tooth"(singular). All the give and take aside he was always quick to share his O-gauge knowledge with others and as already noted above by German had a great sense of humor.  

RIP old Buddy!

Really sad to hear about Thor's passing. Way back in the late 1990's as a teenager who was just learning the internet, Thor's page was one of the first out there that truly was a resource. This was way before forums, Facebook, and everything else we have today. Thor was a leader and I'll always be thankful for him being an early adopter of getting O gauge content onto what was a pretty young world wide web at the time. 

I just learned of this on the FB Army Men page. So sad! I never met him, but communicated with him on a number of occasions, here and on FB. Both his knowledge and his humor were unequalled. After I got back into this hobby , I found his All Gauge website, and referred to it a lot. I also enjoyed his Army Men page, and that got me back into playsets. He will be stirring  things up in Vahalla now.  Rest in peace, Thor.

Last edited by jay jay

Sad news indeed. Prayers for his wife and family. I never had the pleasure to meet him or talk with him online but I have spent countless hours, especially when I was younger, finding every nook and cranny on his All Gauge and Army Men websites and dreaming of that someday layout. Probably the biggest influence in me discovering and buying Marx trains. He will be missed.

I am truly saddened and shocked to read this news about my former club member and friend. I was just talking to him last week on facebook kidding him that he needed more smoke fluid to cure his illness and to let the doctor use a cab-1 to heal him.

Thor ran his trains in conventional mode and at our club, he would run his Williams GG1 at a thousand miles an hour and we would all laugh.

Wow is all I have to say and will be calling Audrey for the funeral details.

We are all going to miss Tom aka Thor.

Last edited by Ted Bertiger

Thor gave us some good ribbing, Especially John Kohling,  me on scrapple, he will be missed.

Well John P, since you decided to utter my name in vain...

I was offline from the forum for several years due to major life events happening and recently jumped back in, and found out about Marty, Barry, Jim and Dale having passed away, and now Tom (Thor).

Thor was a real character, that's for sure.  I remember well his disdain for Command Control, comments on "weenie trains" (even though he had smaller scale trains and had resources related to smaller scales on his website) and referring to anything related to the Southern states as "goobers."  He definitely had what I call a "sledgehammer" wit. 

He and I used to have a few friendly back-and-forths on this forum on which countries were where the "real" Vikings came from (my family's ancestry harkens back to Sweden and due to his online moniker I'm pretty sure his was Norway ).  But in the end I always knew he was being a kidder when he was engaging in all the above discussions, and he always shared his knowledge on Marx and other trains with the forum frequently.

I also enjoyed visiting his website off and on, and am glad it's been preserved for all to enjoy, although it could stand to use an upgrade to WordPress, if anything so it's less vulnerable to hijacking due to old-school HTML coding in addition to sprucing it up a bit and make it mobile device friendly).

I am truly sad he's passed away as well as the other forum "greats" I mentioned earlier.  The hobby is less without them, but our memories and their influence will no doubt continue on for many more years to come.

Last edited by John Korling

Hey @John Korling, nice to see you. I was out of the hobby from about 2006 until I wandered back here a bit over a year ago.

I was thinking of Thor yesterday when someone made a post looking for small track plans- like 4' x 8'. Does anyone know if any of the info on Thor's page was saved or has resurfaced anywhere?  I'd like to see it again, if just for a trip down memory lane.

Edit: Just did a little digging around and found it. http://thortrains.us/

Last edited by Will

Well John P, since you decided to utter my name in vain...

I was offline from the forum for several years due to major life events happening and recently jumped back in, and found out about Marty, Barry, Jim and Dale having passed away, and now Tom (Thor).

Thor was a real character, that's for sure.  I remember well his disdain for Command Control, comments on "weenie trains" (even though he had smaller scale trains and had resources related to smaller scales on his website) and referring to anything related to the Southern states as "goobers."  He definitely had what I call a "sledgehammer" wit. 

He and I used to have a few friendly back-and-forths on this forum on which countries were where the "real" Vikings came from (my family's ancestry harkens back to Sweden and due to his online moniker I'm pretty sure his was Norway ).  But in the end I always knew he was being a kidder when he was engaging in all the above discussions, and he always shared his knowledge on Marx and other trains with the forum frequently.

I also enjoyed visiting his website off and on, and am glad it's been preserved for all to enjoy, although it could stand to use an upgrade to WordPress, if anything so it's less vulnerable to hijacking due to old-school HTML coding in addition to sprucing it up a bit and make it mobile device friendly).

I am truly sad he's passed away as well as the other forum "greats" I mentioned earlier.  The hobby is less without them, but our memories and their influence will no doubt continue on for many more years to come.

Nice to hear from you John K, Are you still a member of San Diego 3 railers? It was a nice club, I am still stuck in the DC area, We can sell the house but the houses we want cost a lot more, so here we sit. The AGHR club is still closed,  Matt goes down to make a security check so he brings a engine or two to make sure everything is still there and Ok( he says ) I am retired now and loving it.  Can not wait till So Cal opens back up to visit again to say hello to everybody. I hope it gets better for you I am sure it will.

John P

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