A Short History of Penn Line
by Frank Dill
The Early Years
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Other Penn Line links:
Penn Line
Assembly Instructions at hoseeker.net
Penn Line
Catalogs at hoseeker.net
I am going to give a personal account of Penn Line
Manufacturing, a maker of HO scale model trains from 1947 to 1963. The
company was in my hometown, Boyertown, Pennsylvania. The company's
existence pretty much corresponds to my youth, I was one going on two
when
the company was started. Penn Line went bankrupt the year I entered
college.
The three founders were a generation older than I, but I had some
acquaintance
with each. I knew Penn Line president Bob Faust best. He was a
close friend of my father's and we spent many summer holidays at his
home
and traveled to the New Jersey shore together several times. Abe
Mercer was a frequent customer in my Grandfather's store. I remember
him
as far and away our best balsa wood customer. Linwood Stauffer
was
just an occasional customer, his daughter was in my class at Boyertown
High
School. Boyertown only had a population of about 4000. If you had lived
in Boyertown during those years, you probably would have known these
men.
And I believed that if you had know them, probably you would have liked
and respected them as I did.
Family photos from St. John's Lutheran Church
Boyertown, Pennsylvania 1966 Photos taken three years after
Penn Line closed
All three founders and their families
were members of the same church that my family attended. I have
included
thumbnail size photos from the 1966 church directory. I am sorry that
the
photos are so small. The photos were taken twenty years after the men
began
to form Penn Line. The point that I want to make is how young the
three were, Faust and Stauffer were 28 when they started making the
plans. Also note that they all had children to support during the
Penn Line years.
Abe and Linwood were married to sisters maiden name
Karver. The mothers in the center and right photos are the
sisters. The founders of Penn Line are the men in the photos.
Linwood Stauffer is the one standing in the center of the third
photo. At the time of the photos they were in their 40's and the
company had already been closed three years.
Coincidentally my Grandfather had a Penn Line
association right from its planning stages. His name was Doc Sands.
Just by "accident" one of his first employees became a founder and
later president of Penn Line. Doc Sands Store and Penn Line
trains both began in the small town of Boyertown Pennsylvania. Both
began as one room operations about a year apart in time and two blocks
in distance. Doc Sands opened his sporting goods and hobby store in the
summer of 1946. One of his very first employees was Bob Faust who had
just lost his right arm in an industrial
accident. No longer able to continue working as a tool and die maker,
Bob
Faust took a temporary job in Doc Sands Store.
The story of the accident deserves telling because I
have heard it said many times that were it not for the accident there
might never have been a Penn Line. Bob Faust was working as a tool and
die maker at one of the town's largest industries the Boyertown Burial
Casket Company. Boyertown had about a half dozen factories that
provided very steady employment and wages sufficient enough for a
skilled worker
to afford his own home and live very comfortably working for the same
company his whole lifetime. Abe Mercer worked at the Boyertown
Auto Body
Works another such factory where it was not uncommon for several
generations
of the same family to find lifelong steady employment. Linwood
Stauffer worked at Tung-Sol, still another of Boyertown's large
employers. It was not unusual for workers at that time to think they
would spend their entire working life at such a factory.
The Casket Company operated in a multistoried
building that used large freight elevators to move the caskets between
floors. One day Bob Faust went between floors on an elevator filled
with caskets. His arm was not completely inside the elevator. He
lost his right arm which pretty well ended any chances of a career as a
tool and die maker.
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Bob Faust's loss of his right arm ended any
chance of continuing his career as a tool and die maker. It also
explains his signature on letters as president of Penn Line. The simple
signature made all the customer's feel like they knew him personally.
|
One of the reasons that I have so much respect for
Bob Faust is because of what happened next. You all know what most
people would do today after such an accident. The would sue the company
for all it is worth and sit back and do nothing for the rest of their
lives. Not Bob Faust. While he was recovering he took a low paying job
and immediately starting planning what to do the rest of his life. You
will notice from the pictures above and below that Bob always posed so
that
know one would know of his handicap.
At Doc Sands Store Bob had access to wholesale model
train catalogs and the opportunity to meet some of the salesmen who
called on the store. About this same time two brothers -in -law from
Boyertown were thinking about going into business together. At
first Abe Mercer and Linwood Stauffer were not
completely
sure what business this would be. Abe dropped into the store often to
chat with Bob and look over the wholesale model train catalogs. Bob had
frequent chances to talk with the model salesmen. And all three men
talked together after hours. Abe and Linwood attended a model train
convention
and noted that there were not many models available of the locomotives
of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Their plan was to produce models of these
locomotives, hence the name Penn Line. They got together an
example
of their work.
One day Abe and Bob waited in Doc Sands Store for
the weekly visit of a model distributor from Philadelphia. They
convinced him to distribute their work if they went into production.
Abe would later recall this moment as the official start of the Penn
Line Manufacturing Co.
Now back to the statement that without the accident
there might never have been a Penn Line. Mercer and Stauffer were
thinking about going into business. I stress the word "thinking." They
had decided that the business would be model trains even before Bob
Faust entered the picture. The reality is that Mercer and Stauffer both
had secure jobs
and young families to support. Bob had the necessity to find a career.
Which is why he pushed so hard to gather the information and help from
the model distributors who called at the store.
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