M.T.H. founder Mike Wolf began his career in model trains at the age of 12 by working for Jerry Williams of Williams Reproductions, which made replicas of classic locomotives such as the Ives No. 1694 and the Lionel 381 and 408E. Wolf started M.T.H., which stands for Mike’s Train House and is sometimes abbreviated as MTH, in 1980 when he was just 20. In the beginning, Wolf ran M.T.H, as a mail-order business out of his parents’ home, but he was soon sharing a building with Williams in Columbia, Maryland.

Like Williams, Wolf specialized in model trains from the hobby’s golden age. The goal for both was accuracy and detail superseding anything that had come before. While M.T.H. briefly produced brass trains for Lionel in the late 1980s, today it is known for its own lines. Trains in its Premier line run on O gauge tracks at 1:48 scale. Metal details are made out of real metal, and models such as the Santa Fe Blue Goose have lights and smoke. RailKing trains (sometime spelled as Rail King) also run on O gauge tracks at 1:48 scale, but the locomotives, passengers cars, gondolas, hoppers, and tenders are less detailed and shorter, which gives them a tighter turning radius. M.T.H. also makes HO trains, as well as tinplate reproductions of prewar Lionel trains.