While running errands today, we passed the Lomita Railroad Museum. Damsel took this photo of their locomotive as we drove by. Click to enlarge image.
The Lomita Railroad Museum was the first of its kind west of Denver, Colorado. It was made possible through the generosity of Mrs. Irene Lewis who donated the Museum to the City of Lomita in honor of her late husband, Martin Lewis, in 1967. It was a rather natural thing for Mrs. Lewis to do since she had been a dedicated railroader and spent many years building Little Engines, a business devoted entirely to developing and manufacturing miniature steam operated locomotives which were sold all over the world. The museum proudly displays some of these locomotives.
When I had my RC cars business years ago, I had them do some machining work for me. They were pretty nice guys.
We need to stop in there again one of these days – the last time we were there we were thrown in with a bunch of school kids whose class was visiting that day.
RC Cars? Interesting . . .
I used to develop RC products for Mattel®.
Y’all are making me weep since I won’t have the camera this weekend at the Train Song Festival. I love trains. Love, love, love!
Man this is small-worldy
I work at Harbor Occupational Center in San Pedro frequently.
Also, did you work at the Mattel factory in So Cal? My mom was the nurse there-
which was awesome ‘cuz for Christmas I used to get stuff like Big Jim sets that were never released to the public.
In fact my sister used to do factory tours there now that I think about it- ’70’s???
Goddess,
Always have loved the trains. My Granddad was a motorman on the Pacific Electric Railway. Once a year, we (the kids and grandkids) would go to Union Station in Downtown L.A. to see the grandparents off to Colorado – at the time, the trains were coal or oil-fueled steam locomotives. I love ’em too!
DAve,
I might have been there – worked at the 5150 Rosecrans building from 1980 to 1981 at which time I joined the aerospace firm from which I recently retired. Credit me for the jet sound generator in the Hot Wheels air transport toy and for the music generator in Barbie’s Piano.
Sweet…never knew you were in that line of work.
I started the business in the late 80’s, a year or two before the economy took a nose dive and people stopped spending on toys like R/C cars. We were mostly into the glow fuel powered models, and had 2 NHRA type dragsters and a line of support products and accessories. One of our products was shamelessly ripped off by Tower Hobbies. We’d sent them a press release and a sample, and got back a “No Thanks” letter. The next issue of their catalog had the same product in their packaging!
I’ve never trusted them since. Kyosho went through the same thing with them, and as a result of Tower ripping off Kyosho’s “Mini-Z” line of cars, they pulled the entire Kyosho product line from Tower.
Weird. I had not heard that about Tower. But then, I was into aerospace again by then. The segué into toys was kind of a fluke since I worked at Hughes for 13 years prior.