THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412230289
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Olde Town Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
A. J. ``Junie'' Lancaster still remembers a Christmas more than 70 years ago when he got his first toy - five hand-built wooden log houses and a church.
Among today's whiz-bang, computer-driven gadgets, they probably would be lost somewhere between the Nintendos and Power Rangers under most Christmas trees this season, but Lancaster's first toys survived and fortunately for us this yuletide they remain at the origin of one of the nation's greatest toy collections and most generous gifts to the City of Portsmouth.
``Each year my parents would put my log houses under our Christmas tree and my brother and I would play with them,'' Lancaster recalls. ``Then they would go back to the attic until the next year. Just like the other kids in the West Haven section of Portsmouth, we played with the rest of our toys every day and they got lost, broken or given away over the years.
``I was in my 30s, working for the Virginian Railway Co., when I began to remember back to my childhood and then the `collecting bug' started. For the last 45 years of my life, my wife Millie and I have traveled across the country looking for toys we knew as children,'' Lancaster added.
The first result of his collecting was the 1968 creation of Coleman Nursery's Winter Wonderland. ``At that point, all we had was one electric train, which belonged to a younger associate Mike Twiford, running around a Christmas tree. But after we added a few more tracks and some of the antique toys, people really seemed to enjoy it,'' Lancaster said.
Each Christmas season thereafter saw larger crowds and long lines of traffic at Coleman's from Thanksgiving through Christmas. By the early 1980s a new home had to be found to accommodate the growing collection and demand from tourists and nursery customers alike who urged, ``Leave it up all year!''
The remedy came when Lancaster bought land to develop his Bennett's Creek Wholesale Nursery at the intersection of U.S. Route 17 and Shoulders Hill Road. Located half-way between Portsmouth and Newport News, just a few miles from the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel, it proved to be an ideal site for a partnership between Lancaster and Mike Twiford.
Finding spare time while running a 70-plus acre nursery that included more than 1 million plants and 60 hothouses, Lancaster and Twiford decided it would be fun to open a toy shop and museum. The result of this union led to the 1983-opening of Mike's Trainland and the Lancaster Train and Toy Museum.
Today the walls are literally stacked with plexiglass-covered exhibits featuring every type of gauge from G, O, Standard to HO and Playmobil. The train collection, which dates back to a 1908 trolley, includes everything from a founder's set to an all-copper version, which is one of the owner's favorites next to his Orient Express.
An adjacent gallery houses every type of military train built by Lionel. Encased a few feet away is a complete collection of Aster electric trains that look as though they were just taken out of the box on a Christmas Day 50 years ago. Names as legendary in railroad lore as New York Central, Pennsylvania, Union Pacific, Baltimore & Ohio, and Norfolk & Western are represented among the hundreds of detailed miniatures. Other exhibits are filled with rare classics from Ives and American Flyer.
History buffs can browse through artifacts from an entire century of steam and electric train development while LGBs, American Flyers, and Lionels in all available sizes whistle through Alpine valleys, stop at Bavarian village stations and switch off in complex rail yards.
Everything from music to whistles and bells are synchronized along the larger layouts that form the center of the museum. A recent addition depicting an entire circus lot layout, with two continuous running circus trains, features a big top, amusement rides, and even a revolving carousel.
Even on their busiest days, with a recent record of more 3,000 visitors one day this month, there's plenty of room and still more to see as Playmobil trains make their way through more than a dozen of the popular toy company's theme sets.
Visitors will find that Lancaster's antique toys fall into four major sections feature; die cast, wind-up, Buddy L and pull toys that date back to the 19th century with wood and die cast iron circus wagons, horse-drawn fire engines.
Popular among them are wind-up toys from the 1920s including those depicting whimsical cars driven by Amos N' Andy, Charlie McCarthy, and Mortimer Snerd. Nearby a character band from Li'l Abner tunes up their instruments. An entire collection of Buddy L sit-on toys from the 1920s through the 1940s are displayed nearby. ``And they all have a story to tell,'' Lancaster emphasizes.
A 1930-series of electric novelty toys featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse produced by Lionel portray how the company adopted an idea from Walt Disney that helped save it from financial ruin.
In 1955, Lionel came out with a ``hot pink'' series called ``The Girl's Train.'' But due to extremely poor performance on the market, the company recalled as many as they could find and repainted them along traditional guidelines. Fortunately for train buffs, Lancaster was able to find one of the original ``Girl'' trains, still in the original pink, which has a prominent place in the collection.
Even though a progressive case of Parkinson's has bound him to a wheelchair, Lancaster can still be seen watching in a corner as visitors appreciate his lifetime of collecting.
Not long ago a little boy came up to Lancaster and said, ``Sir, your trains make me so happy.'' To which Lancaster replied, ``That makes me happy!''
That brief conversation says it all about a man named ``Junie'' Lancaster, his collection, and the public that has come to know and love them both.
It is indeed a Christmas present to us all that the collection will be preserved for future generations of children to enjoy. To be housed in the city's new Children's Museum, the collection will serve as a permanent reminder of what Junie Lancaster knew from the beginning, ``No matter how old we get, there's still a child in all of us.'' ILLUSTRATION: File photo
A. J. ``Junie'' Lancaster decided it would be fun to open a toy shop
and museum while still running his Bennett's Creek Wholesale
Nursery.
Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
``I was in my 30s, working for the Virginian Railway Co., when I
began to remember back to my childhood and then the `collecting bug'
started. For the last 45 years of my life, my wife Millie and I have
traveled across the country looking for toys we knew as children,''
Lancaster said.
by CNB