I just saw on the news this evening that the Life-Like warehouse in
Baltimore burned down today. It was a very old building, I think their
Proto 2000 warehouse was loosely based on it.
I don't know how many of their operations were run from that building
but there may be a shortage of green foam tunnels and grass paper for a
while.
Traction Co. building covered city block at Druid Hill Ave. and
Retreat St.; 4 workers for Life-Like Products escape injury
The Baltimore Sun, January 15, 2005
"A five-alarm blaze tore through a Northwest Baltimore warehouse filled with
foam picnic coolers yesterday, destroying a turreted turn-of-the-century
building that once powered and stored city cable cars. ..."
The warehouse was their form division (not model railroad related).
There will be a shortage of form coolers for now (like we consumers
need it with the temp below 32 degrees F).
I live in Baltimore and the building that burned was neither the headquarters
building nor the model railroad warehouse which are located in Hampden. As
reported in the local papers and television stations, the building contained
styrofoam containers which is a very successful Life-Like product line. As to
whether this will have an effect on the model railroading end of the business,
time will tell.
Scott inBalto
Life-Like product line<
Actually LL was bought out (year or more ago) by another styrofoam
container company (both private so data is limited). They bought LL for the
container part of the business and the train part was of minor concern.
Completely separate from their model RR operations and should have no effect on
it. Nonetheless Baltimore loses a grand old building and some are clamoring
for new development in its place.
New owners... but the company is still Life-Like, just as it was before the
purchase. And the Styrofoam container business is very successful for
them -- although it sounds like they may have a "fire sale" in the near
future!!!
That is (was) a cool looking building. I always thought it looked like
something that George Sellios would build.
They used to have a wharehouse sale there every December, I got a nice
HO racing set for my kids for about $20 bucks. The would always have
some random MRR stuff for sale as well. I went there a couple of years
ago and they had hundreds of Bangor & Aroostock BL2s - go figure.
The building that burned is not the building they have their annual
pre-Christmas warehouse sale at. That building still remains and is located in
Hampden on Union Ave. next to the notorious Pepsi sign adjacent to the Jone
Falls Expressway.
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