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.
Time for a LQQK! RARE! sale on eBay...
Rare, Medium, and Overdone.... :)
5-alarm fire burns warehouse:
"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!!!
future!!!
Melted Ravens coolers make for good scenic material?
If you're a Cleveland Browns fan it does.
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.
Oh, thanks. In pics on the news it looked like that building. So how many historic old warehouses do the occupy?
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