"Lionel Trains Best Layouts and Store Displays"

[Firelock76]

Well, there I was supporting my local hobby shop yesterday and puchased the CTT special issue mentioned above.

Holy smoke, it's FANTASTIC!  An absolutely incredible work of research by Roger Carp.  If you loved the previous special Lionel issues you're going to go head over heels for this one. 

If "Professor" Carp keeps this up we're going to have to call him "Doctor" Carp, what a dissertation!

Run out, find it, buy it.  You'll be amazed at what's in there.

[sir james I]

Yes it is a good book but how much did professer Carp pay you for that review...

[Firelock76]

I took it in "kind,"  a pre-war scale Hudson.

Just kidding!

[phrankenstign]

It's too bad there had to be a page restriction, because many of the pics would have benefitted from being reproduced in larger sizes.

I did enjoy seeing the imaginative way in which the designers maximized the amount of accessories and interest within the size limits given.  However I've never been a fan of simple independent loops.  Some of the layouts could have been improved (in my opinion) by incorporating switches to allow access to the independent loops.  The layouts on pages 104, 107, 108, 109 all have independent loops (either inside or outside the mainline.  I know the biggest reason for those independent loops was to allow operation of multiple trains at the same time without much fuss.  However connecting them to the mainlines could have shown the potential for any one train to be able to access all parts of the layout should that be desired.

For display purposes, the connecting switches wouldn't be used much (if at all).  Since Lionel suggested selling off all the items (including the layouts themselves), the switches to the connected loops could be used to be part of the mainline.  One train could conceivably access all of the formerly independent loops entering and exiting them through the use of the switches' non-derailing features.

My biggest surprise is located on page 35.  I never knew there was a Lionel Folder-Catalog in 1927.  At first glance, it looked like it was the same as the "New 1927 Lionel Catalog" shown right under it.  However the Folder-Catalog has the locomotive flanked by a semphor signal and traffic signal with a blank area stating, "THE SMITH STORE TOY DEPARTMENT, ANY TOWN USA".  The "New 1927 Lionel Catalog" doesn't have that stuff.  Also, the Folder-Catalog appears to have only 14 pages.  Did the Folder-Catalog merely have a sampling of what was in the 46-page New catalog, or did it have entirely different contents?

One curious omission was D-27.  That ingenious layout had a long life-span.  Originally designed and built in 1950, it continued to wow customers into the mid-sixties, since I remember being amazed by it even then.  I know it's been featured at least twice in CTT.  However aren't these special issues meant to consolidate most of the information about a subject into one place for easy access not just for regular readers of CTT, but also for the casually interested buyers?  I'm sure the interest the D-27 generated years ago would also have generated extra interest in this special edition.  Heck, I was showing him the article about it in the new issue, and he was impressed by its ingenuity.