Meyer had spent years researching and measuring actual train markings throughout North America. In some cases, he used blueprints from railroads to make the decals.

He bought the Champion company in 1963 from Max Gray, who had moved it to California after starting it in Ohio in 1940.

Meyer, who was born and raised in Minot, had a fascination with trains and printing his entire life. He got his first model train as a child, and his first printing press when he was a teenager, said Connie Meyer, his widow.

"He was able to turn his boyhood love of trains into a business," she said.

Of the business, she said: "Rich paid $15,000 for the company. It just grew and grew until it peaked in about 1990. It's been going down fast ever since."

The model railroad decal business did have its gravy days. It allowed Meyer to build an upscale ranch home in Minot, designed atop a 2,500-square-foot basement, where he constructed a replica of Great Northern Railroad's line from New Rockford, N.D., to Whitefish, Mont.

Pint-sized trains chug around an elaborate layout of track, tunnels and bridges. Train horns are tooted at automobiles, people and wildlife frozen in time.

Meyer often donned his engineer's cap, while his wife wore an engineer's jacket while running the trains, whether visitors were present or not.

In another part of the home, hundreds of thousands of decals fill scores of small file-cabinet drawers. The water-slide decals are printed at a separate building that was once a baggage terminal for the former Soo Line.

Champion Decal is one of only two companies that use a letterpress printing press. Kim Whittemore, Meyer's daughter and the company's graphic artist, said most modern printing techniques can't match the sharpness of a letterpress, which is precise to within a thousandth of an inch.

The decals are printed with special inks and on paper imported from England. Connie Meyer said decals made decades ago still work perfectly.

Microscale Industries in Fountain Valley, Calif., is the only other company that produces model railroad decals using a process similar to Champion's.

Champion Decal specializes in transfers for steam and early diesel trains in O- and H-O scale. O-scale is 1/48th the size of a real train and H-O is 1/87th.

Decals cost between $2 and $12.50. Richard Meyer had valued the company last year at $500,000. It has about three years of inventory, his widow said.

Connie Meyer said she intends to sell the inventory, then shut down the business if a buyer cannot be found.