Toy
Trains of Yesteryear
by
Case Kowal
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A Carstens Book
Book
is a collection of articles reprinted from Toy
Trains Magazine,
covering early manufacturers, train sets and more.
The early
toy train makers:
* Lionel
* Ives
* American Flyer
* Bing
* Dorfan
* Howard
* Weeden
* Knapp
and others are featured from 1900-1939.
Photos of rare old toy trains.
The Trains of Yesteryear puts
into one book many of the fascinating toy train collecting articles
written by Case Kowal for Toy Trains Magazine during the early 1950s.
The issues containing these articles have since been out of print and
the rare back issues of Toy Trains command collectors' prices when
they can be found. At the request of countless collectors, this 2nd
Edition has been produced.
Toy train collecting has come a
long way since the early 1950s, during which time the Train
Collectors Association was organized (1954). Many items manufactured
in the early 1950s and later have become sought after collectors
items in themselves. Restoration, once looked down upon, became of
age and is recognized as an important tool for the legitimate
collector when properly done. Train meets are regularly held
throughout North America.
While all the articles in this book
have been completely reset, the publisher has not changed the
original articles in any way. They are reprinted just as they
originally appeared insofar as the text is concerned and without
apology.
For greater reading pleasure we have redesigned the
pages and added new illustrations.
In 1906, Lionel introduced
a new line of model trains that ran on track with a width (between
rails) of 2.125 inches. In order to power the electric locomotives,
the track included a third rail in the middle, which conveyed
electricity.
After
coming up with a slogan that proclaimed Lionel—Standard of the
World, Lionel named the design Standard Gauge and filed a
trademark. Lionel derived the name from an incorrect interpretation
of a gauge defined by the German toy company, Märklin. Whereas
Lionel measured width between rails, Märklin measured the width from
the center of one rail to the center of the other.
In
fact, this standard gauge was decidedly non-standard—European
manufacturers had settled on two inches, as had Carlisle & Finch,
the company that invented the toy train. The No. 1 gauge was much
smaller, at 1.75 inches. But standard stuck and, more
importantly, implied the sizes of other brands were, in fact, the
strange ones.
Regardless,
Lionel’s standard gauge trains became exceedingly popular,
especially in the 1920s, when the company’s care and attention to
detail helped it dominate the market. Models like the super-realistic
State-series passenger cars and the huge Shasta locomotive (the
highly prized No. 381 E) thrilled kids—not to mention collectors
today.
But Lionel’s trademark didn’t prevent other
companies from producing their own 2.125-inch trains, which they
generally called “wide gauge” instead. American Flyer, Ives, and
Dorfan all entered the market, often with success.
Founded in
1924 by German immigrants Milton and Julius Forchheimer, Dorfan
specialized in wide- and O-gauge trains. Whereas Lionel promoted
itself as the standard, Dorfan pitched a slightly different angle—its
trains, the company proclaimed, were easy to disassemble and
reassemble. Accordingly, the company encouraged its young users to do
just that as a way of learning about the trains’ design and
inner-workings. Like Lionel, Dorfan also pushed for increasingly high
levels of detail, including illustrations of passengers in their
train windows. Like many other businesses of that era, Dorfan could
not survive the Great Depression.
Dorfan locomotives are
highly valuable today because of the copper-zinc alloy the company
used to manufacture them. This metal—now known as Dorfan
alloy—was prone to impurities, which caused the locomotives to
oxidize, expand, and crack. As a result, very few have survived in
good, original condition.
Another
producer of standard-gauge trains was Ives, which began as a toy
company in 1868. Buoyed by its famous slogan, “Ives Toys make Happy
Boys,” Ives was making toy trains early on. In 1921, it introduced
its own line of wide-gauge trains to compete with Lionel, perhaps
motivated by a fierce personal rivalry between Harry Ives and J. L.
Cowen of Lionel.
Although
Lionel bought out Ives in 1931, Ives made an important contribution
to the history of toy collecting in the 1920s when it arranged
exhibitions of its trains in New York galleries and showrooms. Many
historians believe these shows sparked an interest in old toys as
collectible objects.
American
Flyer was another player in the wide-gauge market, producing its
first wide-gauge trains in 1925. Unfortunately, within just a few
years the size began to fall out of fashion. As it had done with
Ives, Lionel eventually bought out American Flyer—that
consolidation occurred in 1967.
Once
a mighty fad in the 1920s, wide- or standard-gauge trains were killed
by the hard times of the Depression. Instead, companies shifted to O
gauge trains, which were smaller, and therefore cheaper, to
manufacture.
Even
Lionel, the inventor of the standard gauge, discontinued its own line
in 1940, although it reproduced its standard-gauge trains in 1990s
for collectors eager to own a piece of the past.
Contents:
Carlisle & Finch
Knapp
Trains
Weeden Live Steamers
Howard Trolleys
Howard
Trains
American Flyer's Unsuperstitious No. 13
American Flyer's
Deluxe No. 3020
American Flyer's Wide Gauge
Bing of the
Twenties
Bing Clockwork
Early German Clockwork
Lionel's No.
33
Lionel Electrically Lighted O Gauge
Lionel's Big No. 22
The
Lionel Armored Train
Dear Mr. Ives: No. 17
Ives No. 1
Gauge
Ives Economy Models
Made in The Ives Shops: Wide
Gauge
Limited Vestibule Express
Ives Streamline Train
Designs
Dorfan and Die Castings
Softbound,
8.5x11, 52 pages, includes text, 95 b&w photos w/extensive
captions, and illustrations.
ebay Seller's Note:
You may also be interested in the following hard to find, inexpensive NEW books which may be found in our ebay store:
* Toy Trains of Yesteryear
* Lionel’s Standard Gauge Era
* 150 Years of Toy Trains
* Complete Layout Plans
ALL above books: Carstens Books
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