The Canadian railway modeling community suffered a big loss recently. Morgan Turney, founder and editor of Canadian Railway Modeller magazine, passed away on February 6, 2025, at the age of 77.
It’s hard to overstate Morgan’s importance for Canadian railway modeling. When he realized that Canada was not well represented by the existing model train magazines or manufacturers, he founded Canadian Railway Modeller (CRM).
The first issue was published in May, 1990. He published it for 27 years, with the final issue coming out in 2017.
It gave a voice to Canadian railway modelers that they didn’t have before. Many articles featuring uniquely Canadian prototypes were featured over the years. I randomly pulled a magazine off my shelf – July-August 2013 – and it has an article on Modeling Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo 10-Wheeler #10 (by Mike Barone), one on modelling the Othello tunnels on the Kettle Valley Railway (by Dave Chomyn), and modelling the Confederation Train (by Fred Barkhouse). This is just one issue!
The magazine also helped Canadian model manufacturers. Jason Shron, president of Rapido Trains, said that CRM was largely responsible for the success of Jason’s early resin LRC models. Other Canadian manufacturers like Kanamodel Products, Prairie Model Works and Athabasca Shops were often found within its pages.
Morgan did a lot more than “just” publishing CRM. He founded the short-lived but high-quality Railfan Canada magazine (with Suzanne Lemon as editor). He produced a series of CRM-related material like train cards, pins and so forth. He was quite a salesman.
He was heavily involved in the Winnipeg Model Railroad Club. He was a member for 27 years, served in various positions, and was quite involved with the revival of the club layout, the Gateway Western, in the Winnipeg Railway Museum. As Program Director of the club, he convinced me to give a presentation on grain elevators to the club in late 2014. I’m slated to give another presentation at their April meeting (on trains at night) and it will definitely be dedicated to Morgan.
He always had a smile and a friendly greeting for me. I ran into him at train shows, and occasionally trackside. He sure loved to talk. I first met Morgan (and Suzanne) at Gooch’s Hobby Shop in 2009. He took me to see the club layout in the back. I looked through my emails and there are so many emails from him commenting on my blog posts, always in a positive way.
I remember going to photograph the Prairie Dog Central’s rare mileage run on the Greater Winnipeg Water District line and encountering Morgan protecting a crossing near Lagimodiere Boulevard. I know I found him trackside just east of Winnipeg once, photographing a CPR business train.
My condolences to his family. He’ll be missed by many, many people.
Morgan’s editorials in CRM were titled “From the Dome Car” and usually featured a VIA Rail “Park” car. I’ll end with one of his photos that he shared with me.
Other Tributes to Morgan
- Morgan’s obituary
- So I’ve Been Thinking (John Longhurst)
- Winnipeg Model Railroad Club (Paul Ullrich)
- 10 Questions for Morgan Turney