lionel history

[oscaletrains]

well guys i need info on linoel trains from 1900 to 2-28-2006 i doing a school project about trains!!! manly linoel. so please help!!

[wrmcclellan]

Go to www.Lionel.com and drill down into their history.

Lot of articles at the TCA site http://www.traincollectors.org/

http://www.modeltrainsmuseum.ca/trains/history/lionel.cfm

Google Lionel Train History and search away!

Regards,
Roy

[palallin]

Your call for help suggests that your research remains unfocused. What specifically do you want to know? A comprehensive history is beyond the scope of a reply here. Summaries are common enough on the web. A number of good books have more detailed sicussions, but they may not be immediately available to you (what is your deadline?).

Tell us what the project is, and we might be able to suggest the right kinds of sources.

[Anonymous]

Go to the public library and look up Ron Hollander's book:

"All Aboard"


There are a couple of books by Jerry and Janet Souter as well, one on American Toy Trains and a second one onLionel Toy Trains.

Good luck

[Anonymous]

If you are looking for "Manly" Lionel don't mention the Girls Set.

[Anonymous]

Hollander's book is certainly the source I would recommend. A very thorough history of Lionel and written in an extremely easy-to-follow and entertaining style. It's the one book that, literally, got me back into O gauge.

[Anonymous]

RON HOLLANDER'S book

[1688torpedo]

Hello Oscale! Here is some info for you to ponder; Lionel was founded in Sept 1900 in New York City By Joshua Lionel Cowen & his partner Harry Grant. The first location of Lionel was Located at 24-26 Murray St in Lower Manhatten. This is approx three blocks north of the North Tower of the World Trade Center that was attacked in 2001& was where Mr.Cowen manufactured his First Toy Trains which consisted of among other things a Converse Trolley, Wooden Gondola,Non-Motorized Derrick Car, and a Electric Fan. Those first trains ran on steel rails mounted on wooden ties. The gauge of this track is Two & Seventh-Eighths of an inch in between rails & in 1906 Lionel came out with three rail standard gauge with a distance of Two & One-Eighths of an inch in between the two outer rails. This Gauge lasted until 1939 when it was discontinued. Lionel Brought out O Gauge in 1915 & has stayed with this particular gauge since. Also in 1906 Lionel moved to White St in New York City until 1910 when they moved to New Haven, Connecticut.( Reportedly this old factory still exists) In 1915 they moved their production to Newark,NJ & in 1917 they moved to Irvington,NJ where they built their large factory that burned down almost two years ago.They used this factory in Irvington for war production of Navel Navigation Equipment such as Compasses& Binnicles& Geiger counters in the postwar years. After World War Two Lionel built a even larger factory in Hillside,NJ which still exists today and housed their Service Dept also.The Postwar Years were Lionel's best & even to this day the trains from that time are highly prized & collected. In the late 50's Mr.Cowen was slowing down & eventually sold his company to Roy Cohn his Great-Nephew of McCarthy fame.Needless to say the company went downhill after this & was bought out in 1969 by General Mills which resumed production after Lionel had shut down in 1966 due to low consumer demand & lower quality trains of the time period. In 1986 Lionel was sold to Richard Kughn in Detroit who is a Real Estate developer who turned the company's fortune around & Mike Wolfe worked as a subcontractor for him in the late 80's- early 90's when they split up & went their seperate ways. In 1996 Wellspring Bought out Lionel with Neil Young & Richard Kughn as Minority Stockholders which continues to this day. Hope this helps you out.

[Dave Farquhar]

Lionel didn't exactly shut down in 1966. They sold the rights to the trains in 1969, but Lionel Corporation actually survived for another 20 years or so, operating a chain of toy stores, mostly in the eastern United States. When the original Lionel Corporation went out of business in the early 1990s, it caused some confusion. Some people were afraid the maker of their trains was going under! But Lionel Trains Inc. was by then a separate company, related only in name.

Lionel paid homage to this part of its legacy with its Lionelville toy store a couple of years back. The name of the toy store was Kiddie City, the same as the stores Lionel Corp. operated.

[oscaletrains]

guys thanks for the help with the company, and i was kinda veag but i need the most popular sets the tital is lionel trains, a history of happiness to give you a clue to what info i need

[pbjwilson]

I know you're a youngster, but a dictionary might help when you write your paper.

Good-luck!

[tschmidt]

You need to learn how to spell and use correct grammer. The content of your paper is only part of the whole picture. Practice makes perfect.

TomS

[Dave Farquhar]

I'll have to echo what someone else said earlier about the library. There are several Lionel histories out there, and most libraries have at least one of them. Being in Michigan, it wouldn't surprise me if your library had multiple copies of several of them. The Hollander book mentioned previously has the information you're after. There's at least one other book by Gary and Janet Souter, if memory serves, with good information in it too. For that matter just flipping through David Doyle's two-volume Standard Catalog of Lionel Trains will give you a good idea of what was popular and what it looked like. Everything in his catalogs has a rarity rank assigned to it. The less rare it is today, the more popular it was.

Writing is a good skill to practice. When I was 17, my writing ability kept me from getting fired from my first job. And I got my last two jobs solely because I could write--it's a skill that's fairly rare in my field.

[1688torpedo]

Hello All! Lionel did shut down most of their operations in 1966 as they had a skeleton crew working in their factory at the time.This is why the 1966/67 catalogs are the same as Lionel had no new product at all. only leftovers that was taken off the warehouse shelfs,packaged & sent to market. Here is a example: The 736 Berkshire was discontinued in 1966.Yet, it was cataloged in 1967-68.and the #54 Ballast Tamper was another leftover item that was cataloged in the late 60's also.No new Tooling was made during this time period and Lionel used their parts supply to make up engines & sets for special accounts/clubs also.Hope this helps.Take Care.

[Anonymous]

If you are going to title this project like you've mentioned, I would be inclined to think the following would be the mosty important 'fun' trains in the history of Lionel -

PREWAR ERA - Blue Comet set, State Set in standard gauge, 1917 Army Train, M10000 streamliner, and scale Hudson in O gauge. Trolley cars and Mickey Mouse handcar in Misc. and 840 power station, 313 bascule bridge, and multi-section scenic plot (920?) in accessories. Add WWII era Paper Train.

POSTWAR ERA - Santa Fe F3s, the GG1, and 726/736/746 Berkshire-types in Engines, 6464 box cars, longer streamlined passenger cars, and loaded flat cars in Rolling Stock, 3462/other milk cars, 456/397 coal loader combine, 022 switches, and ZW transformer in accessories, 1950 Anniversary set w/UP FAs, Girls Set, Military sets, and General set in Sets. Mention catalogs, which were fun even if your family was not buying trains that year.

MPC era - Cresent Limited / Blue Comet steam sets, F3 led streamliners in many schemes, return of O72 track/switches, return of 773 Hudson.

Modern era - TMCC/Cab 1 remote control, new larger steam engine designs, new realism and scale appearances, new accessories. You could conclude with a summery of how competitive the marketplace is for O gauge trains today, and how there are now several companies competing within the niche that Lionel carved out.

Good luck with your project; Im sure this post will generate some other opinions as well. IMO, the most important product Lionel ever built, the one that represented them better than any other, would be the Santa Fe F3, which was available a total of 18 years in the pre-1969 postwar era, and has been re-released more than any other paint scheme in the company's history. For many, it remains the ICON of Lionel and was happiness indeed....

[oscaletrains]

thank you and i will work on my spelling[:D]

[1688torpedo]

[#ditto] to Railmail!

[lionelsuperotrack]

Lionel "Super O" Track............What You Need to Know
http://reviews.ebay.com/Lionel-quot-Super-O-quot-Track-What-You-Need-to-Know_W0QQugidZ10000000000116034

Lionel "Super O" Track............An Historical Perspective
http://reviews.ebay.com/Lionel-quot-Super-O-quot-Track-An-Historical-Perspective_W0QQugidZ10000000000714604

Lionel_SuperO_Track Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Lionel_SuperO_Track/

Very best, Mike Spanier