Some thoughts for Roger Carp and Len Carperelli, re: the Lionel 2296 CP outfit and Lionel's influence in Canada

[IDM1991]

I just received my September issue of CTT in the mail yesterday, and read with interest Len Carperelli's analysis of Lionel's 2296 Canadian Pacific passenger set, first catalogued sixty years ago.  Both this article and Roger Carp's piece in the May 2017 issue reached near-identical conclusions: (a) Lionel's leaders ought to have known that the Canadian market for trains was small, and (b) that Lionel may have done better at reaching audiences in the "maple realm" had it infused a Canadian-inspired outfit with more action.

While I don't own the Canadian Pacific set in question, I do have a great interest in both postwar Lionel and Canadian railway history alike, and would like to offer some thoughts about Lionel's impact (or lack thereof) in Canada.  I think there are two primary reasons for this.

First, population.  Canada is a massive country, and most of its population is concentrated in southern Ontario and Quebec (and we might also include urban British Columbia and urban Nova Scotia here, as well).  Len points out in his piece that Lionel maintained several hundred authorized service stations in the United States, and had less than 50 in Canada, but I doubt that this had anything to do with a lack of interest in Lionel's products north of the border.  

I ran across a picture recently in a December 1949 newspaper which showed children admiring a massive Lionel layout in a Montreal toy department.  Another item in the same paper was an advertisement for a hardware store in Lindsay, Ontario, stating that it had Lionel electric trains in stock (though curiously, the small illustration accompanying this 1949 ad was clearly of a prewar train -- likely the locomotive heading the Flying Yankee set from the late 1930s).  

Is it possible that Canada's much smaller (and more scattered) population worked against Lionel's efforts to penetrate the Canadian train market?  I don't know, but it's objectively true that Canadian children were just as fascinated by trains, both real and miniature, as their American counterparts were in the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s.  Look at Neil Young, whose interest in trains can be traced to a Marx layout in Omemee, Ontario in the early 1950s (where he also would have watched CNR grain and passenger trains passing through each day of the week en route to and from the lakeside grain ports on Georgian Bay).

Second, sales philosophy.  Starting in the 1920s and continuing through today, Lionel has focused a great deal of energy in making and marketing trains with colourful paint schemes.  Indeed, a direct line can be drawn from the Blue Comet of 1930 to the fantasy "Daylight" scheme applied to a Southern Pacific AC-12 Cab Forward catalogued a few years ago.  Lionel likes its bright hues.

Yet, until the 1960s, the palettes of both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways were decidedly drab.  I'm Canadian, but if I was shopping for trains in the late 1950s, the bright red and silver of Lionel's Santa Fe F3 units, or the brilliant yellow of its Virginian FM Trainmasters, would have caught my attention more so than the somewhat drab gray and maroon used by the CPR (or, indeed, the dark green and gold used by the CNR on its diesels until the now-universally recognized CN "worm" logo emerged in 1961.

Perhaps, then, Canadian paint schemes were unattractive to both Lionel's decision makers and its burgeoning Canadian customer base in the late 1950s.  That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Roger Carp in saying that Lionel should also have offered a freight outfit to accompany the No. 2296 outfit shown in the 1957 catalogue.  Here's my suggestion for what would be included in such a "hypothetical" set:

Motive Power: I think hood units look better at the head-end of freight trains than do cab units, so what if our theoretical 1957 CP freight outfit featured a FM H-24-66 Trainmaster done up in CP's gray-and-maroon scheme (similar in appearance, perhaps, to the 6-81207 Trainmaster catalogued in 2014, but with 1950s technology and decoration)?  Don't forget that the only surviving Trainmaster is a CP unit, now housed in the Canadian Railway Museum!

Consist:

6464 Boxcar done up with CP (or CN, or maybe Soo Line) lettering; OR a 3494-625 Soo Line Operating Box Car

3662 Operating Refrigerated Milk Car (the brown roof would nicely complement the locomotive!)

3361 Operating Log Unloading Car

6446-25 Covered Quad Hopper, done up in CP lettering

6457 Caboose, done up in Lionel Lines lettering.

Add in a giant oval of O Gauge or Super "O" trackage and a milk car platform, and Lionel would have an outfit worthy of being appreciated by both Canadian and American audiences.


Ian McKechnie,
Lindsay, Ontario


 

 

 

[robmcc]

Well said, Ian! As a fellow Canadian toy train operator and collector, I certainly can agree there was (and still) some challenges when selling trains in this market. Unfortunately, the biggest challenge right now is the dollar exchange rate!! Unlike during the Postwar era, both CN and CP now have enough US presence, especially in the Mid-West and the East, that there is an interest in collecting and operating those roadnames on both sides of the 49th Parallel. I'm sure the 2296W would have possibly had more interest had that been the case in 1957. I'm thankful that Lionel and MTH do a good job at representing the Great White North in their catalogs. (Still waiting for a CP SD40-2F....) I like your CP Trainmaster freight concept set. 2298W maybe?

[Roger Carp]

Hi Ian,

 

I would like to talk with you about your ideas and the newspaper you mentioned. Please call me at 262-796-8776 ext. 253. Many thanks, Roger Carp, Senior editor