Passing of David Shaw -- The Train Station of Mountain Lakes
Aug 15, 2024 4:43:54 GMT
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Post by rockymountaineer on Aug 15, 2024 4:43:54 GMT
For those of you who have resided in the NY, NJ, PA, and CT area at one or more chapters of your life... you probably at some point in time have visited The Train Station in Mountain Lakes, NJ (just north of Piscataway and Morristown). Their website has posted the passing of David Shaw, a key principal of the business. I believe his Dad, Donald, who founded the store DECADES ago... recently celebrated his 94th birthday earlier this year.
With David's passing, the store will be closed until further notice. Here is a link to David's obituary:
I lived in Middletown, NJ back in the mid-1980's for about 10 years. And I stopped in at the store many times. It was a charming, old-style mom-and-pop train shop in the basement of a building ironically a block or two away from the train tracks of the NJ Transit Montclair/Boonton line.
Back in the 1980's, Lionel postwar fever was running quite high. And The Train Station was often in the thick of many postwar transactions. The store had an ENORMOUS Lionel collection for anyone with the deep pockets to afford Lionel Postwar during what was otherwise a modern-day "collectors era". The Train Station was also WAY ahead of its time trailblazing an online presence and hosting a weekly online auction long before eBay existed. And as you might expect, The Train Station was one of the oldest Lionel Service Stations. It might not have been Madison Hardware, but I surmise David's father Don had some very strong ties to JLC when Lionel trains were manufactured just a few towns away in Irvington, NJ.
My visits to the store became farther and fewer in between, after I moved to southeastern PA. But I occasionally would see David at York. He was only 61 at his passing a couple of days ago... 4 years younger than me. And I couldn't help but pause and acknowledge the number of my contemporaries who have been called home far too soon. We're all seeing and feeling this right before our eyes. So enjoy your trains... and enjoy this wonderful hobby at every opportunity you can, because it's only by the grace of God that we get to run those trains again tomorrow.
RIP, David... and my deepest condolences to the Shaw family and friends who knew David.
