All about the community of model railroading and rail enthusiasm
February 20, 2026
By TIM BLACKWELL/Cowcatcher Magazine
WEST SPRINGFIELD, MA — Mike Wolf had a fascination with O-gauge tinplate trains in elementary school, spending hours in his bedroom examining them inside and out. As his passion and a flaming entrepreneurial spirit developed as he grew older, he picked up work at Jerry Williams’ garage, where he assembled and sold model trains for Williams Electric Trains.
Wolf generated a stash of money between working for Williams and selling trains at weekend shows. So when Williams Electric Trains quit building Lionel tinplate, Wolf bought the tooling. After a trip to Korea he began manufacturing O-gauge model trains and, under license, Lionel standard-gauge trains.
After introducing its own line in 1993, the new Mike’s Train House ascended to the top of O-gauge model railroading, ultimately transforming a gauge coveted by toy train collectors and aimed at introducing families to electric trains.
With resiliency and the desire to raise the bar, Wolf turned M.T.H. Trains into a multimillion-dollar enterprise and a leader in model railroad trains. At its peak, the company was a major player in the two-rail and three-rail O-gauge, One-gauge, S-gauge and HO-scale markets.
Wolf was inducted into the 2025 Model Railroad Industry Division/Hobby Manufacturers Association Hall of Fame in January. Also, model railroad advocate and actor Michael Gross took home the Bobbye Hall Award in recognition of his service and commitment to the hobby. The awards were presented at a breakfast sponsored by the Amherst Railway Society during the Railroad Hobby Show.
Now retired from the company’s day-to-day business but still involved, Wolf never backed away in pursuit of producing the superior products that fueled the company’s meteoric rise.
Elevating O-gauge models to please a discerning audience became M.T.H. Trains’ calling card. Those who know him well say Wolf surrounded himself with people who could produce great products. Together they led the charge to offer more prototypically correct 3-rail and 2-rail models.
Sales VP Rich Foster, who has been with M.T.H. for 38 years, said Wolf’s legacy is that he has never been afraid to take risks in order to leave a mark on M.T.H.’s model railroad products.
“When you think back to when he started in his bedroom, he was relentless about reinventing his company and wasn’t afraid to innovate,” he said. Wolf was “fearless when it came to reinvesting and willing to put money into new tools and projects that led us over our competitors.”
Marketing and quality and an emphasis on replicating 3-rail locomotives and rolling stock closer to scale was instrumental, but what set M.T.H. apart was the company’s Premier line of models with high levels of detail.
“That changed the whole thing,” said Foster, M.T.H.’s most tenured employee. “It’s amazing. At first you had to put a scale diesel out there, but it didn’t have the prototype gingerbread. It just needed to be scale and look like it. As time went on, you had to improve because the 3-rail guy became more discriminating.
“It was a lot of reinvestment and a different vision of what the scale should be.”
Just a few months into the pandemic in 2020, he announced his retirement and planned to shutter the business in May 2021 but left the door open for others to form a new company. No buyers stepped forward, although ScaleTrains later bought the company’s HO- and S-scale lines and Lionel and Atlas some O-gauge tooling.
Attempts by some employees to acquire the company fell short.
While M.T.H. moved out of its Columbia, MD, headquarters in 2021, a vastly scaled down company continued to manufacture exclusive O-gauge products only available through many of its authorized dealers. Today, M.T.H. is a niche producer of dozens of special-run orders from existing tooling for dealers, clubs and other organizations.
At the Railroad Hobby Show, M.T.H. trains announced three newly tooled projects for release, the first of their kind since the company reformed in 2021.
Gross, the Bobbye Hall Award winner, is the 17th recipient since the recognition was established in 2008 to honor dedication and outstanding service in the model railroad community.
He has long been an advocate of model railroading while unselfishly maintaining distance from his award-winning career as an actor, producer and writer. He may be best known for his role as the father of Alex Keaton (Michael J. Fox) on the 1980s sitcom “Family Ties.”
As a grandson and great-grandson of Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroaders, Gross can’t recall a time when trains were not a part of his life. Growing up in two Chicago homes that were never more than half a city block from busy railroad tracks had a lasting influence as well, and model railroading became a lifelong interest.
His community service has been paramount to model railroading, prototype railroading and preservation. He has served as the national spokesperson for Operation Lifesaver, the World’s Greatest Hobby campaign and the HMA. He’s an on-camera host for the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.
Gross has long supported industry functions and organizations, including the former Hobby Expo and HMA shows in Chicago and the National Model Railroad Association. He has made numerous videos on model railroading, from getting started to building models.
He appears in the HMA’s promotional “I’m a Hobbyist” video released a few years ago.
“I know my place,” he said after learning of the award. “I am not the hobby’s most accomplished or prolific modeler, nor do I have a model railroad empire. No, I am merely a hobbyist who is a trifle more visible to the general public. It is a role I have been delighted to play for many years and, God willing, will play for many more.”
