New York Times Archives are a wealth of information about Lionel in the pre-postwar years!

[1688torpedo]

Hello All!   While searching the NY Times Archives last night & today they have lots of information about Lionel while they were based in New York & had their Factory in New Jersey. Plus, Obituaries for Lawerence Cowen in 1970, Charles Giacomo in 1964, & Arthur Raphael in 1952. Other tidbits of information include Roy Cohn & how he took over Lionel in 1959; Including the fact that he had borrowed over $932,000.00 from some associates in Panama & Hong Kong to help buy out Lionel in 1959 & also that one of his Cadillacs was repossessed for a Sheriff's sale in 1965 to help pay some outstanding debt & he did not miss the car as he had another just like it.(Wonder how he got home that night?) This happened while a Lionel share holder's meeting was taking place at the Essex House in New York City. More information about Lionel include: Their 1934-35 Bankruptcy, Financial Report's of the 1940's & 50's, Various Corporate leader's of Lionel & their aquisistion of different Businesses in the 60's & The Gabriel Toy Co interests in a takeover of Lionel around 1964 & Lionel's Lawsuit with A.C. Gilbert in 1950 over a Patent Infringment. It would be interesting if CTT or Tom McComas aquired all of the Articles From the NY Times Archives & compile them in Book Form as they would make very interesting Reading & are very informative quite literally about Lionel's History from the early 1900's to today. It would be costly & time consuming for a individual to compile these articles in book form. If CTT, Ron Hollander, & Tom McComas Joined forces with the Times they could probably do it in a reasonable amount of time. I'm surprised no one else has thought of a project like this as this would make a complete or almost complete history of Lionel available to the Toy Train Community & Collector's. What does CTT think? & would such a project have support from everyone? Would like to read your input. Take Care all.

[Brutus]

I think it would be interesting!  Maybe they could do a series of stories in CTT over the course of a year or so and then offer a collection book with lots of pictures and stuff?

[1688torpedo]

Jim- That would be very interesting as well. Forgot to mention that there were a couple of Articles about a Lionel Factory Strike in the years of  1948 & 1965. I knew they had a strike around 1938 in order to form a Union & this was the first time Mario Caruso's Power at Lionel was Challenged & it got weaker untill he resigned in 1945 to Manufacture Cigarette Dispensing Machine's on Staten Island & later on moved back to Italy in the 50's? Take Care.

[lionelsuperotrack]

Very interesting thread and a very good point. I would certainly find this very interesting and would enjoy CTT starting a regular section in each issue, page or so, about this.

Very best, Mike Spanier

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[brianel027]

Keith, I have always suspected that things in the past were just as interesting as today. Yeah, in these days of the internet, news about Lionel and the other companies is out for public consumption almost as quick as it happens. But it's also well known that J.L. Cohen was a pretty tough businessman and that things at Lionel were not always picture perfect.

Thanks for the info, and yes it would make some insightful and interesting reading for certain.

[statistician]

I can't remember where I read this, but I recall that the Lionel Corporation included a high-tech arm called Telerad Electronics that was producing missle-control systems in New Jersey. I know that they eventually sold Telerad before General Mills purchased the rights to market Lionel trains. 

[dave_hartmann]

Excellent idea.  I think CTT should take on the project and make it part of their "subscribers only" web content by catologing all the articles in chronolocial order and by category and have them indexed for easy searching.  They should also publish a limited assortment of the old articles in their magazine, maybe as a series, and tell folks that subscribers can access the full catalog of articles on their site.  This would drive traffic to their web site and give readers another good reason to subscribe to the magazine.

Dave
www.ogaugewatch.com

[1688torpedo]

Hello Statistician!    You are quite correct about Telerad Electronic's as there is a article dealing with their aquisition by Lionel  in the early 60's in the Times Archive. Another Article in the Archive dealt with Lionel laying off 30 Employees in April 1975 at their Hillside,NJ  Factory & finally closing it down. These particular employee's worked in the Service Dept there & kept a inventory of parts for repairs also. There was also some Trains Produced at Hillside in the early 70s & these included The Waterpoxy white single dome tank car & the early F3s made in that time period also. I hope that CTT or Ron Hollander considers this project as it would be worth reading these old articles & I would guess that there are some dealing with A.C. Gilbert & American Flyer in the archives also.Especially since they go all the way back to 1858!  Who knows. maybe Joshua Cowen's Birth notice could be in there also? Take Care.        P.S. -   I checked the Archives again & they have plenty of articles dealing with A.C. Gilbert & American Flyer., also,there are some about Marx Train's including their takeover by Quaker Oats in Febuary 1972.

[jefelectric]

Any comment from the guys at CTT

[Neil B.]

Hi guys,

Newspaper and magazine archives already have contributed to many of the Lionel history stories Roger Carp has written over the years. The best of them were put together in a book Roger wrote in 1997 called "The World's Greatest Toymaker: Insiders Remember Lionel."

Neil Besougloff
editor