I was reminded by a friend today that Ed Morlok passed away a year ago on April 18. He would have been 69 this year.

As noted in my post a year ago, we wrote the two part TCA series on OO together (published in the October, 1986 and April, 1987 issues of The Train Collectors Quarterly) and we corresponded for many years.

What is interesting, however, is actually I think his name is probably better known now in the OO community that is coming up than maybe ever thanks to the auction of his collection and subsequent sales on eBay. That it was a Morlok item is a selling point, it says to buyers that this is an interesting item worth a look.

OO buyers are from my impression a mixture of people who were already into OO and those new to the scale, and many I know must check this site regularly. It is especially great to see the interest of some new people; Ed would have liked that a lot. Many of those have collected various kinds of model trains and have stumbled into OO for a variety of reasons.

Thinking about that it made me ask myself, how did Ed get into OO? The OOldtimers all got in when it was in production back in the day, but Ed was a bit too young to be in that group. I honestly don’t know; I don’t remember asking him specifically. My impression is he was interested in model trains and collecting and found in OO to be a scale with a unique size and history that spoke to him. That those same models are of interest to others coming in is certainly a great thing. We miss Ed in the OO community but certainly still think of him today and his model collection does live on.

UPDATE 2014. Looking for something else (of course) I found the above photo of Ed. It was taken in 1986 or 87 the one time I visited him, down in his basement. His workbench is over on the left and you can see the boxes of storage. I wish I could get a better view of that locomotive, and really wish I could go back but you can’t go back in time. Clearly we had a great visit then, and he enjoyed his American OO models and friends.