K-Line

MDK was founded in 1975 by Maury D. Klein. Like competitor MTH Electric Trains, MDK was a large Lionel dealer, and its mail-order ads appeared in magazines such as Model Railroader in the late 1970s. MDK first used the K-Line name on a line of aftermarket Lionel-compatible tubular track as well as a copy of the A.C. Gilbert American Flyer line of two-rail S-Gauge track which Maury Klein acquired at Gilbert's demise.

Louis Marx and Company's final demise in 1978 led to MDK increasing the K-Line product line. In 1980, MDK purchased the tooling for Marx's Plasticville-like Marxville buildings and accessories for train sets at bankruptcy. K-Line was able to recover additional Marx tooling by scavenging through old factories and warehouses. In an oft-repeated story, Maury Klein and his plant manager, Brent Chambers, found the molds for the Marx model 333 and 1829 4-6-2 locomotives in a dilapidated Fisher-Price warehouse near Buffalo, New York in 1984. The warehouse was unlighted, unheated, and was missing part of its roof.

By 1985, K-Line was producing O27 locomotives, cars, and figures from former Marx and Kusan tooling, and, with minor changes, began marketing them under the K-Line brand, competing with Lionel at the low end of the market. The dies mostly remained unchanged, with only the branding changing—for example, "Marxville" plastic buildings became "K-Lineville". K-Line changed the couplers on the Marx-derived trains to make the cars compatible with Lionel, and, eventually, improved the graphics.

During the 1980s, K-Line filled much the same role that Marx had in the model railroading arena, supplying similar trains at a lower price than Lionel, but with less prestige.

In the 1990s, K-Line was able to purchase more disused tooling from other manufacturers, allowing it to offer full-size O gauge for the first time, which it supplemented with pricier O gauge locomotives and rolling stock of its own design. Shifting its emphasis away from its budget offerings, K-line made some of the very best mass-produced O scale trains with their detailed models that it released in its latter years. In December 1996, about 20,000 model trains were recalled due to a potential fire hazard from the coil spring overheating if the train derails. ^[1]

Many collectors consider K-Line's 1:48 scale offerings to be not only the best value, but also the very best mass-produced O gauge trains. K-Line's heavyweight passenger cars are among those exhibited at The Brandywine River Museum Railroad's annual "A Brandywine Christmas" celebration in Chadds Ford, PA. Its 21-inch extruded aluminum passenger cars are prized by 3-rail collectors and operators, and are often converted over to 2-rail "scale" operations. Lionel even began selling them for high dollars in 2010, before its license for K-Line products expired.

K-Line's S gauge offerings provided budget-priced cars as well as the already produced track compatible with American Flyer-brand trains. Unlike its latest O scale products, K-Line's marketing on its S gauge cars centered its price advantage over the competition. Most of the S gauge products were also made from old Marx O27 molds, with S gauge trucks replacing the O trucks.

The relationship between Lionel and K-Line had generally been more amicable than Lionel's relationship with MTH, before the 2005 legal debacle with Lionel. Lionel had licensed TMCC to K-Line, and K-Line produced a number of repair manuals for postwar-era Lionel. K-Line has also produced commemorative cars celebrating some of Lionel's significant anniversaries, whose graphics has sometimes caused confusion among collectors.

Because K-Line's budget offerings remained almost unchanged from the old Marx designs, Marx collectors sometimes sourced spare parts from K-Line.