Toy ChestVintage Toys and Games

K Line Trains and Its Origin

MDK Incorporated which is based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina originally owned these and sold them to K-Line Trains, a brand name for the S and O locomotive models. At the early age of four, Maury Klein started manifesting utmost interest in toy trains watching intently battery powered trains make those endless loops on those toy train tracks. The most famous train sets during those days was the brand Lionel and he got one as a present at the age of six.  As he tried to decipher the ins and outs of the train set he broke it apart, and in 1975, Maury Klein put up the MDK Inc which bears his initials.

Maury didn’t know that millions of people are also interested in these trains and in 1974 while he was in the University of North Carolina, he already started earning through a small mail order business selling the trains. As his sales grew, he began to believe that there was enough opportunity for him to set up his own train company in the tinplate marketplace.

Claims for more shipments with the ever growing increase in orders of his model trains, Maury Klein built a building on a piece of land near Chapel Hill, North Carolina and this is where his mail order business started growing by leaps and bounds. Maury’s father joined the business in 1979 to help him in the creation of brand new train models like the O27 and the ‘O’ gauge track, his own brand and model.

MDK sold quite a number of Lionel Trains which was also sold by one of its major competitors the MTH Electric Trains. While Maury’s mail order business grew, his ads appeared on well-known train magazines such as Model Railroader which was very famous towards the end of the decade 70′s.

A competitor Louis Marx and Company shut down operations in 1978 and this signaled the success of Maury’s MDK K-Line trains. Maury bought tooling and accessories owned by Marx previously and made use of him in his production lines and he was able to make some purchases of heavy equipment and manufacturing devices at very low prices. He had a lot of the other tools Marx left behind by scavenging through the old warehouses and factories and eventually found the molds for the Marx 1947 model #333 pacific and #1829 4-6-2 Hudson locomotives in a run-down Fisher-Price warehouse a few meters away from Buffalo, New York. Part of the story was the warehouse was so dilapidated snow was falling off its roofing and the warehouse had no lights and no heating whatsoever and there they found the molds.

Maury also had some significant acquisitions such as the Kusan rolling stock dies. The said dies are designed for the Auburn model trains which were known earlier ad American model trains. William Reproductions sold the dies to MDK K-Line way back 1986 and in the same year, MDK created a number of O27 locomotives, cars, and all other figures as well.

About the Author

Find out more about K Line Trains by checking on Model Trains Info.

MARX TOYS EASY WEAVER