Personalization inspired by customer’s story
In June 2016, Lionel offered, for the first time, a
Father’s Day personalized boxcar. Among the orders was one from Chris Roys for
his father, Grove, whom he referred to as the “Lionel Legend.” We reached out
to find out his story.
Grove Roys Story - The Lionel Legend
Grove Roys’ love of Lionel trains goes back to his
childhood. He was just 5 or 6 years old when his father bought him his first
train.
“I played with that until the wheels ran off it,” Roys says
with a laugh. His father was a fan of model railroading, as well, and knew a
few people who had a large layout using Lionel OO Gauge items from the 1930s in
a nearby town.
“He took me over there and I was enamored by a true model
railroad,” Roys says. “It was huge. That grew the spark bigger.”
As he got older, the interest grew. He branched out to HO in
his teenage years, but the hobby took a backseat when he got married in his
early 20s.
“It wasn’t until I had my first son when I was 37 or 38 that
I happened to be at a swap meet in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and I ran across a
Lionel train set in the box. I bought it right then and there,” Roys says.
He set up a small loop in his basement, but it’s grown since
then. Grove got help from his sons, Tyler and Christopher, in building the
11-foot-by-24-foot layout he has now.
They used carpentry tools to build the benchwork, worked
architecturally to lay the tracks and used artistic abilities to create the
landscape.
“I remember setting my son up on the layout and he was
building a mountain as I kept handing him all of this sloppy stuff that we made
it out of,” Roys says. “It actually came out pretty decent.”
Now, at age 63, Roys’ enjoyment of model trains is greater
than ever.
“I have about six Lionel Legacy locomotives and maybe seven
TMCC locomotives,” Roys says. “Over the years, my two sons could tell you that
I’m just enamored with Lionel trains. They bring back a lot of good memories.”
Roys, whose sons lovingly call him the “Lionel Legend,” says
any time the family goes on vacation, his first stop isn’t at the beach, it’s
at a local hobby store.
“95 percent of what I have is Lionel,” he says. “The orange
and blue box is what I look for wherever I go.”
Years ago, one of his sons was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving
Day Parade. When Roys walked into Macy’s, he spotted a boxcar that commemorated
the parade.
“I had to buy it so my son would have it,” he says. “It was
a memory for him – but it was a Lionel memory.”
He’s passed along his love of trains to his sons, but also
to a student from the school where his wife teaches in Connecticut.
“A child there was being bullied because he liked trains,”
Roys says. “We invited him over and spent time running trains with him. He has
Lionel trains, too. We had a lot of fun so he knew he wasn’t different. His mom
says he was so excited the night before that he couldn’t sleep.”
That excitement continues for Roys year-round. His wife will
often have to yell down to the cellar to let him know it’s time to stop running
the steam locomotives and go to bed. He also sets up his oldest trains around
the holidays.
“There’s a part of me that really enjoys the stuff from the
1930s – the tinplate stuff,” Roys says. “I have a small collection and I run it
around the Christmas tree every year. It’s a locomotive from 1938 with a bunch
of those lithograph tinplate cars. I think it’s so cool that all that stuff was
made as toys. The craftsmanship that went into it – 60 or 70 years later, it
still runs.”
Roys says model trains have taught him a lot about patience.
He also enjoys meeting other model railroaders at conventions and tries to
attend one in Amherst, Massachusetts, annually.
“That’s when everyone comes out of the woodwork and you have
20,000 to 30,000 people showing up,” he says. “Then you go home and never
really know how many other people are enjoying the hobby.”
Like most model railroaders, Roys says his layout is never
done. He’s changed it over the years and always finds ways to improve it.
“I just got a billboard where it goes back and forth and
changes the billboard,” he says. “I got an infrared detector set up in the
tunnel so that when the train goes by in the tunnel, the billboard will change
only while the train is in the tunnel. There’s always something where you can
add lights or tweak something.”
Roys says he looks at it like a movie set. The benchwork and
scenery are the props. The track is the actor and the train is the story.
“When you look at it like that, you can always add stuff and
make it different,” he says. “You’ve got a customer for life here. I don’t know
what the ‘magic of Lionel trains’ is, but it’s hooked me.”
Published 8/10/16