I always imagined having a locomotive and its cars rumbling around the tracks in my basement. It didn’t matter that for much of my life I never had a basement for such a setup, but I’d seen them in photographs and houses on TV.
I knew that I wanted one.
I’m not sure where this allure for trains came from. I didn’t have brothers or male cousins who had trains or played with them as children. Maybe it was something about trains being on the open road and having the ability to take you far from where you were to a wonderful somewhere else. Maybe it was the sense of adventure into the beyond and unknown that attracted me to them.
I was an adult before I took my first long train trip and I was very excited. It was a trip with a friend from Philadelphia to Montreal – a long grueling overnight journey in rigid seats that took about 15 hours but felt like a month.
It killed the adventure part of train travel for me (the stay in Montreal was beautiful, though).
Now, I just admire the real thing and the models from afar.
I get a chance to do a lot of admiring because model trains show up by the tables-full at auctions very very often. It seems that someone is always unloading cars, tracks, transformers and Plasticville accessories that were obviously part of a collection.
At two auctions recently, rows and rows of tables and glass cases were lined with vintage and new trains – some in their original boxes (which adds to the value), some clean, some dusty and dirty – along with disassembled tracks, buildings and other accessories.
The auction houses make sure that they announce the items at earlier sales and preview them on their websites for the legion of train enthusiasts and hobbyists. They even set aside a special time to sell the items to keep these buyers from having to wait through other mundane sales.
And the guys do turn out, snapping up everything with nary a thought at price. The prices, though, seem pretty reasonable to me.
I’ve seen auctions not only of model trains, but of books, pamphlets, posters and photographs of the real thing. I’ve even found some books and pamphlets in my own box lots. (The book at right was published in 1936 for children.)
I’ve come across dinnerware, silverware and glass ware (new and reproduced) from Pennsylvania Railroad dining cars, and photos of old Philadelphia trolley cars and other railroad cars.
There are always plenty of Lionel trains, apparently the most collected. And a few months ago, I came across a Pullman car. I’m taken with those because of their association with the African American Pullman car porters. Their union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, fought during the 1920s and 1930s for recognition, and quality pay and working conditions.
Lionel was always king of the heap, the most famous and recognized of model trains that dominated the sector from the 1920s to 1960s. The company was founded in 1901 by inventor Joshua Lionel Cowen who set up in the window of his New York shop a train powered by an electric motor he wanted to sell. Customers were more enamored with the train than anything else in the shop.
The Roaring 20s were a golden age for Lionel, which had its own radio show, beautiful catalogs featuring its trains and working accessories for them. Business slowed during the Depression, and peaked again in the 1950s with a TV show, stereo camera, a pink Lady Lionel train (which didn’t do well but is considered highly collectible) and more. By the 1960s, though, it was down again: Interest in trains had waned, and Cowen died in 1965. The company filed for bankruptcy, and the license for its trains and equipment was sold to General Mills.
Lionel, though, produced another line before bellying up in the 1980s. General Mills continued to make the trains but finally sold the company to a group of investors that included singer Neil Young in 1995. The company is now privately owned, still in business and has begun to produce a line of Made-in-the-USA box-car trains in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Cowen was not the inventor of electric trains. That distinction goes to a company named Carlisle and Finch of Cincinnati, OH, which created the first one in 1896. Another Lionel competitor was Ives, which had also begun making trains some years before Cowen got started. Ives was a leader in electric trains from 1910 to 1924, but got major competition from Lionel and German imports.
There are tons of websites selling and auctioning Lionel, American Flyer and other trains, and offering information and tips on collecting. Lionel has its own collectors club, Lionel Collectors Club of America, and there’s also a Train Collectors Association with a museum in Strasburg, PA.
