QUOTE: LIONEL STEAM LOCOMOTIVES Ask anyone on the street, “What do you remember about a Lionel train?” and most of them will smile as fond memories return and say “its black, heavy, and you put little pills in the smoke stack.” This is a fitting description for the bulk of Lionel’s postwar steamers. Lionel had introduced zinc-alloy die-casting in its manufacturing process prior to World War II, though it took a few years to perfect. Impurities in the metal can cause it to “rot” over years, swelling and disintegrating – a common problem in prewar trains, but unusual in postwar production. This new process allowed the company to create handsome, detailed, yet rugged locomotives. the mechanisms housed in these heavy metal boiler shells were works of art themselves, especially during the late 1940s when they were as precisely made as a fine watch. Ultimately, some of the less-expensive locomotives came to be made of plastic, but die-casting remained the basis for the better engines until the end. Continued innovation kept Lionel ahead of its competition, and the steam locomotives were at the forefront. Prior to WWII, Lionel had introduced its famed air whistle. Usually housed inside the tender, a small electric motor turned an impeller, forcing air through two acoustic changers and producing a realistic whistle sound. The motor was controlled by a relay, which was closed by imposing a slight DC current on top of the normal AC track power that ran the train. A similar relay was used to ring the bell on the switch engines. In 1946, Lionel wooed consumers by producing the first locomotives with a puffing smoke. These were replicas of a handsome 2-8-4 Berkshire and Pennsylvania’s revolutionary, albeit unsuccessful S-2 turbine. The first year’s smoke unit used a special oversized light bulb to heat the smoke material, but beginning in 1947, a nichrome wire-wound heater element was used instead on most of the larger locomotives. It was these units that seemed to have an insatiable appetite for the memorable “SP” smoke pellets. In the late 1950s, a third type of smoke generator appeared that used a liquid rather than pills. Lionel’s golden anniversary year of 1950 saw the final major innovation in steam locomotive production – the introduction of Magnetraction. This feature was intended to better keep the locomotive on the track and increase its pulling power by using powerful Alnico magnets to magnetize the wheel, “sticking” the train to Lionel’s tin-plated steel track. The fortunes of Lionel seemed to parallel that of full-size steam locomotives. Both reached their zenith in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and both seemed to be fading memories by the late 1960s.
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