NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare and Mary Gail Hare,SUN STAFF | November 12, 2004
Sykesville dedicates its new train station tomorrow, with children outnumbering town officials and the local Rotary Club replacing railroad executives at the ribbon-cutting. The station, a replica of a rural depot, will serve Little Sykes Railway, a toy train that has carried some 5,000 riders on roundtrips since the town acquired it four years ago. The 700-square-foot building was a community project. The town staff designed the building. The Sykesville/South Carroll Rotary raised about $10,500 to pay for the materials, including a metal roof, cedar siding and fir beams and brackets.
BUSINESS
By TaNoah Morgan and TaNoah Morgan,SUN STAFF | December 27, 2000
In many American homes, it is no surprise to find a train chugging and puffing under the tree on Christmas morning. But more often these days, the train is not for junior, it's for dad. Toy trains are growing more popular among baby boomers who remember having the model trains in their youths, and one local toy-train company is capitalizing on the trend. Mike's Train House, or MTH Trains, has been slowly growing its line of old-fashioned, die-cast locomotives and highly detailed cargo trains to cater to the aging boomers and to stiffen competition with the nation's best-known toy-train maker, Lionel.
NEWS
November 21, 2000
Purkey's Toy Trains will hold its grand opening from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at 7604 Main St., Sykesville. The store is believed to be the first of its kind in the historic town. Owner Wiley Purkey, 47, opened the store Oct. 1. His train shop offers new train sets from Lionel, MTH, Marx, K-line and soon LGB. The shop also has wind-up toys, O-Scale cars and trucks, Plasticville buildings and used trains. The train shop adjoins Purkey's other business, Craftsman Art Co., the framing shop he has operated since 1988.
FEATURES
By Jacques Kelly and Jacques Kelly,SUN STAFF | October 11, 1997
A set of circa-1915 Baltimore-made toy electric trains, wrapped in brittle newspapers and stored away for the past 40 years, could be bid up to the cost of a new Ford Explorer when sold today at a local auction house.The pair of locomotives and an electric streetcar, with nine freight and passenger cars in their original pasteboard boxes, were produced before World War I by an electric motor company named Voltamp and modeled after B&O Railroad trains and city trolleys. The dozen pieces could sell for more than $30,000 at a Greenberg auction at the Sykesville-Freedom Fire Company in Sykesville.
NEWS
By Jacques Kelly and Jacques Kelly,SUN STAFF | December 22, 1996
The incoming-call telephone board at Mike's Train House in Columbia looks like a flashing set of Christmas lights as callers beg for Amtrak diesels and Pennsy GG1 electric engines, dining cars and cabooses to highball around their basement rail layouts.This unadorned warehouse is the home depot of the country's No. 2 producer of O-gauge classic electric toy train sets and costly collector pieces, detailed steam locomotives that sell for $300 to $1,400 and occasionally jump in value the day they are delivered.
NEWS
By Heather Reese and Heather Reese,Contributing writer | April 25, 1995
Bruce and Linda Greenberg have turned childhood hobbies into a successful business as owners of Greenberg Shows, a Sykesville company that organizes toy train and dollhouse shows.The Greenbergs' first toy train show was in 1976 at the Ellicott City Armory. They now do 35 shows a year in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.The Greenbergs also are expanding their shows into convention centers and fairgrounds in such states as California and Texas. But their annual show at the Timonium Fairgrounds -- the closest to their home -- continues to be their biggest.