Casey Naton, 6, from Lewisburg admires the train display at Grizzly Industrial, Inc. near the Lycoming Mall. He is the youngest member of the Loose Ties, a model railroad club.

MUNCY – Grizzly Industrial, Inc., located at the Lycoming Mall Circle in Muncy Township, featured a Customer Appreciation Day on Saturday, Dec. 10 to begin an annual tradition of charity gift giving, and to showcase a 16 by 16 foot Lionel Train display that the employees built entirely of wood. The train set was a personal possession of the general manager who wanted to bring it out of storage and put it on display in the showroom, but the display kept growing.

“We started working on this project in April and it just snowballed from there,” said General Manager, Chuck Moore. About 85 employees got together to build the display with three running trains. “Many in the community are not fully aware of what we are about. Locally we have been in Muncy since 2001,” Moore said. Two buildings occupy a total of 430,000 square feet which includes distribution space, a call center and the largest Showroom for machinery and tools in the world according to Moore.

This is the first year the company has hosted a Customer Appreciation Day. In addition to the train display the employees partnered with the Favors Forward Foundation. A local contact, Bo Laughner, who works at Grizzly and volunteers at Favors Forward, set up a meeting with them to “adopt” two families this holiday season. They are a non-profit organization within Lycoming County. Favors Forward is a social networking system that links the skills and talents of volunteers to help others in need by matching programs and existing community resources. In return, those who receive help, will then donate their time in the future.

Grizzly favored in sponsoring two local families and through their efforts and a partnership with Favors Forward they were able to contribute 35 gifts, a Christmas party, plus free food and gifts for two families in the area.

“The employees really came together on this,” Moore said. From 11 to 6 on Saturday, the company was able to have wood turning demonstrations, refreshments, and the arrival of Santa Claus for customers. At 3 p.m. a prize drawing was made by Santa, who was one of the employees, for an electric train set valued at $150. “This was a donation from English’s Model Trains in Montoursville,” added Moore.

Grizzly hopes to continue the company tradition and many of the staff are already discussing plans for next year. “We keep adding to it, and certainly have the space for it,” Moore replied. The train display will be up until the end of the month for public viewing.