I'm a former Lionel operator (1942 - 1949) who switched to HO.  After going to work for the New York Central, I lsot interest in modeling, having a real railroad to play with.  After a 20 year detour into computer systems, I returned to the railroad world around 2000 working with HO first at the Tech Model Railroad club and then with the North shore MRRC.  In 2013, my return to the world of tinplate and toy trains began with a great Lionel collection.  That got me into cleaning, repairing and selling old Lionel.  Now it's business that keeps me busy 10 to 40 hours a week.

I think of myself as a value added reseller.  I acquire those old Lionel trains that have been sitting in attics and basements for 60 years and bring them back to life.  I sell everything and that's how I finance my own small collection - which is all items in the 1946 to 1949 Lionel catalogs.

I mentioned only Lionel, but you don't see many large batches of Lionel that don't include pieces from Marx and American flyer.  In fact one of my favorites is an AF whistling 2-4-0 that just happend to be in one of those lots.  Look for seller mlaughlinnyc on eBay to see what I've recently worked on.

I've just joined this forum mainly because of American Flyer.  I've been following Northwoods Flyer on other froums for several years and wanted to get easy access to his collection of information.