Lionel Trains - You Were the Conductor of Another Fantasy World

At Christmastime, along with the Christmas toy catalogs of Sears and Montgomery Wards, came the train catalog from Lionel in glorious color, with train layouts, combination train sets, specialty cars and more accessories than you could possibly imagine.

The catalog defined possibilities, but it also defined what you couldn't have.

I didn't have the Automotive Refrigerator Milk Car where the attendant unloaded silver milk jugs which came from the all-white Milk Car.

I did not have a barrel loader, an oil derrick, a searchlight car, a water tower or icing station.

I did not have a dumping coal car or cattle car.

What I did have was a black steam locomotive with coal car, a log car, a freight car, a gondola car, a tank car and a bright red caboose.

For accessories, I had a crossing gate, a semaphore grade crossing warning sign and a tin tunnel.

Lionel Trains peaked in 1953.  By 1955 sales had dropped by thirty-eight percent.  American Flier, the hearsay alternative (so what if they operated on two tracks like real locomotives) also fell by a third.

The decline in model railroads mirrored the decline in American railroads, with the abandonment of track, reduction in service and the dissolution.

Railroads only occupied four spots on the Monopoly Board.  Model trains soon became replaced in the minds of young boys with model racing cars.

The decline was never evident in my bedroom - and I never did have any model racing cars or slot cars.  But I was the operator of my railroad universe.

I never had the F3 Santa Fe Twin Unit Diesel with built-in horn and Magna-Traction, with its silver body and bright red nose along with the yellow Zin symbol and the word "Santa Fe" in front.  The set included four Pullman Cars including a Vista Dome Car.

I never liked the diesels, and I had only one steam locomotive.

I had a four by six foot sheet of plywood with the track nailed down underneath my bed.  I would pull it out and set up all my accessories.  I think I had a single loop with several switches for sidings, with a large black colored transformer with a large lever on top.  All seemed to work perfectly every time I played with it.

I have an iconic photograph of me at about two years old asleep within an earlier train's oval with my father looking on.  Lionel Trains became the centerpiece of father, son and Christmas Tree.

In his obituary notice in the 1965 New York Times, Joshua Cowan was recalled as "the father of the toy electric trains that run on thousands of miles of miniature track in homes throughout the world."

The Times said "he had made the Lionel name the third wing of Christmas along with the evergreen trees and Santa Claus."

I did not have the big ZW transformers with two levers on the side which could operate four trains at once.

What I had was the most fun you could possibly have - a large train set-up coupled with unlimited imagination.  I was the engineer at my own train line.  I could dream about other cars and accessories from the annual catalogs, but I had plenty to touch, adjust the layout and successfully run freight - all in my mind's eye.

Lionel Trains' advertising held out the promise that the bonds between father and son could be met by working together on a train layout.

"Lionel Trains make a boy feel like a man, and a man feel like a boy."

In reality, it was my train set and I played with it on my own.  I never invited neighborhood kids to play or really knew if anyone else had a Lionel set.  It was something I enjoyed entirely on my own.