Can anyone tell me abou the history of K-line?
Hello Alex! Maury Kline got his start by repairing Lionel Trains in 1974 while going to college in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After that, He started manufacturing O gauge track & he published postwar repair manuels for Lionel Trains also. He bought some of the old Marx & Kusan Tooling & started to come out with freight cars based on the old Tooling he bought. Then it gradually progressed to diesel & steam engines & operating accessories as well as complete sets. In the late 90s Maury came out with new tooling for steam & diesel engines like the ones you have in your collection & tooling for even more expensive engines as well & was selling them at a loss which led to their falling behind & A Former engineer with Lionel was hired & was the biggest cause of Lionel’s lawsuit with K-line as Lionel discovered someone in their employ with stolen trade secrets based on the CW-80 Transformer & others dealing with Cruise Control for Toy Trains who was in contact with K-line’s Main Engineer for product development & This did not help out KLINE & eventually they went under due to their debt. ( The same engineer was also responsible for the Lionel-MTH Mess) Too bad this had happened though. Take Care.