https://www.modeltrainstuff.com/ted-klein-memorial/
Condolences to all who knew and loved this man. He was courageous and faced some important realities when he knew it was time to do so. He leaves a respected and heavily patronized business with many loyal customers. And rightly so.RIP
I knew Ted, I was both a customer in the days when he still worked every day in the store, and I was a colleague in the friendly business community of hobby shops here in the Baltimore area.
I was always impressed with how friendly he was, and how he not only knew who I was as a customer and friendly competitor, but he often mentioned to me that he remembered my father coming in the store, and he remembered when my uncle had a small hobby shop on the other side of town.
My condolences to his close friends and family.
He is on that list of great people in this hobby that I have had the privilege of knowing. He was a man with vision ahead of his time. He was the beginning of a whole new way of selling model trains.
Sheldon
My condolences to his family and friends.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
He deserves a picture. I don't think MTS will mind
I went there in the 80's but not enough to cultivate a personal relationship. I remember an older guy.
At 85, he had a good run. Condolances to his friends and family.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
The Army sent me to Maryland in 1963, and my first stop was M.B. Klien's on Gay Street in Baltimore. I was quite impressed on how much was stuffed into such a small space and Ted's friendly demeanor....and of course his famous ability to ad a column of numbers faster than could be punched into a calculator. During the years prior to the move to Cockeysville, I stopped going as to getting two parking tickets and my car towed from the lot next to his building. I wish his family the very best and indeed he will be missed.
Ted was a major player in on-line retailing....possibly the best, but few knew who he was except for the Baltimore area. If this thread read that the owner of Modeltrainstuff.com passed away, the comments would be huge.
Add my condolences to those already given. As we age, we're losing more and more "friends" from the hobby. We may not always know them personally, but their contributions to the hobby make them seem like family.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Howard Zane Ted was a major player in on-line retailing....possibly the best, but few knew who he was except for the Baltimore area. If this thread read that the owner of Modeltrainstuff.com passed away, the comments would be huge.
My thoughts on seeing the Obit banner was that Mr. Klein was one of those people who just made things work in this hobby, yet was happy just to do it without much in the way of self-promotion. It's easy to know many of the greats in this hobby by attending a convention or hanging out on email lists or forums with them, because many do that generously. But the ones who just keep at things quietly have been just as important to the hobby. May he RIP.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Howard Zane If this thread read that the owner of Modeltrainstuff.com passed away, the comments would be huge.
You are correct. I made the change.
Was he the owner, owner and founder, or founder?... Sorry to be picky, but as the owner of a business, I find these details important.
Simon
snjroy Was he the owner, owner and founder, or founder?... Sorry to be picky, but as the owner of a business, I find these details important. Simon
The business started as a hardware store owned by his father. He worked there. His father allowed him to start selling model trains in the store. A big hobby distributor, Kramer Bros, was right around the corner from the hardware store.
This allowed Ted to fill orders quickly and keep his inventory complete with a small investment.
His father owned the building, and I believe it was paid for before Ted ever sold the first train out of it, so his overhead was low. At some point he took the business over from his father.
He started almost right away offering discount prices, something unheard of back then. Most everything was 20% off retail.
Before long he was buying most model train lines direct from the manufacturers at distributor pricing and the "hardware" department got smaller and smaller while the train department grew.
The last vestige of the hardware store was the key making machine. In the 1980's you could still get a key made, or buy a snow shovel in winter, but the rest was trains.
The Kramer Bros who who owned the hobby distributor business, went on to found Life Like.
Kleins always had the best prices on LifeLike.......
Thank you. I was just trying to be fair to the existing owners, and trying to avoid rumors from the title of the thread.
selector Condolences to all who knew and loved this man. He was courageous and faced some important realities when he knew it was time to do so. He leaves a respected and heavily patronized business with many loyal customers. And rightly so.RIP
Fair question.
Ted's dad started a hardware store. It was withing walking distance of City Hall, the domed building in the background and what was called Corned Beef Row, a Jewish section of town, where not only were there a lot of Delis, you could pick out the live chicken that you wanted to eat tonight, when I was a kid.Per there website, in the 70's it became a full time model railroad store. They had to move the store because of the construction of a downtown interstate. The only parking was at meters and with flight to suburbia, there were fewer retail establishments that people wanted to go to that were downtown, especially in a sketchy neighborhood.
They transitioned to include mail order business. As a data point, the two video games of 1980 were Pong and space invaders, both black and white videos.
Somewhere in the 90's Ted recognized the future was the Internet. He was not a young man then. People his age, didn't want anything to do with computers. MTS is now a major player in the online model railroad retail space.
He was definitely well ahead of the curve when it came to online sales. A smart investment that made them bigger than ever while hobby shops in general continue to decline.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Also, long before the internet, Ted realized the value in discount pricing and buying direct from the manufacturers.
Another hallmark of his business approach was a very complete inventory. It it was available, there was a good chance they had it in stock.
Even though most everything was discounted 20%, and most products came directly from the manufacturers, Ted still used the various regional distributors for fill in orders between the big shipments direct from the manufaturers. It was about always having what people came in looking for.
In my days working in the hobby business, I visted a number of distributor warehouses, at any given moment, Kleins had as much or more Athearn, MDC, etc, as any distributor in the Mid Atlantic.
I never knew Ted. May he rest in peace. I do know he offered quality MR products at a low price. Obviously a good businessman.
By the picture he sure looks like a great guy. I have been a customer of his for years. Condolences to his family and friends.
Farewell Ted, Thank You