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News column - 19
Briefly noted at press time...
. . .
Lawrence Dale Edwards 1921-2014
Dale Edwards, co-founder of Kadee Quality Products, passed
away September 19, 2014. He was 93 years old.
Dale, and his twin brother Keith, launched their company in
1940 with a small selection of HO turnout kits. Using the first
initials of their names, they called their new enterprise Kadee.
Operations were temporarily halted during WWII while the
brothers served in the U. S. Army Air Corps.
Machinists by trade, the Edwards brothers began working
on an operating HO scale coupler that looked like the real
thing. At the time, there was nothing on the market that by
any stretch looked or functioned like a prototype coupler. In
the early 1950s they developed an HO metal coupler with a
working knuckle that rapidly became the de facto standard for
model railroad hobbyists interested in operations. Continued
development over the years included magnetic uncoupling,
delayed uncoupling system, and most recently, the Whisker
self-centering coupler.
Kadee moved from Los Angeles to Spokane, Washington, then
back to LA before settling permanently in Oregon in 1955. The
brothers developed a highly successful line of N scale freight
cars they marketed under the Micro-Trains brand name. Dual
management is often challenging and in 1990 the brothers
chose to split the company with Keith taking Micro-Trains and
Dale continuing to manage Kadee.
Under Dale’s leadership, Kadee® Quality Products Company
built a new 22,500 square foot plant in White City, Oregon.
At the present time the company has more than 30 full-time
employees with all of Kadee’s more than 600 products being
manufactured entirely within the White City facility.
Dale led the company into an entirely new product line in the
mid-1990s with the successful introduction of an HO scale 40
foot PS-1 boxcar car that set a new standard for prototype accu-
racy in an injection molded model. Additional car body types
featuring the same dedication to authenticity soon followed.
After turning the day-to-day management of the business
over to his son Larry, Dale continued to explore new ideas and
develop innovative products including self-centering trucks,
delayed magnetic un-coupling, electro-magnetic un-coupler,
magnetic core actuator, truck pin post assembly, a two-piece
equalized truck, and the aforementioned Whisker® cou-
pler. After Larry retired, Dale’s son-in-law, Alan Vezzani, was
appointed president and general manager.
Throughout his retirement years, Dale continued to follow
the activities of the family business and remained a creative
influence in new product development. He continued to hone
MRH-Oct 2014
