Christmas Without A Toy Train – Sacrilege Or Fact?

In the early 1950s, Lionel, founded by Joshua Lionel Cowen in 1900, was the largest toy maker in the world.  In 1955, Lionel’s annual sales exceeded 140 million dollars, a very impressive figure for that era.

If you grew up between 1945 and the early 1960s, Christmas was not Christmas without a toy train.  Although many homes featured a permanent train layout in the basement, garage, or attic, the living room was the proper location of the toy train during the Christmas season.

In the 1950s, young toy train enthusiasts divided into two distinct camps—American Flyer (A. C. Gilbert) versus Lionel.  I lived in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, on Depot Street, two doors up from the railroad station.  I was an American Flyer loyalist.  And why not!  Real trains ran on two rails rather than three.  The freight trains that passed through Hellertown and the passenger trains that stopped at the station bore witness to this on a daily basis.

Cousin Dudley, who lived two doors up in the row, and Cousins Diane and Gary, three doors up in the row, had Lionel.  I tolerated their ignorance, but envied the better quality action cars on their layout.

My family moved from Bethlehem, where we had been living with my Prosser grandparents, to Hellertown in October 1948.  Just prior to Thanksgiving, Dad acquired a four by eight foot piece of plywood that became home to a basic track layout that included an extended oval with two sidings.  No train layout was complete without a passenger and a freight set.  The sidings were located on the right side of the board, thus allowing space for the Christmas tree on the left.  In our home, the Christmas tree was an integral part of the train platform.

When Christmas ended, the train platform was taken down to the basement and tied to the ceiling rafters.  When a detached garage was built, the platform was housed in its eaves.

My parents were sticklers about holiday observance.  Christmas did not begin until Thanksgiving was over.  The same was true for most stores at the time.  Toyland, whether at Bush and Bull in Bethlehem or Hess’s in Allentown, did not open until the Friday after Christmas.

Fortunately, the Thanksgiving celebration ended at night on the fourth Thursday in November.  While my mother and aunts often went shopping on Black Friday, perhaps more to see the holiday decorations than buy presents, I stayed home.  Friday morning Dad and I went to the basement and dug out the Christmas lights, stored in the same location year after year in the cupboard beneath the workbench.  Living in a row of six houses, there was not a great deal of frontage to decorate.  Using eye hooks left in place year-round, the outside lights were strung in a matter of hours.

The train platform arrived in the living room about two weeks before Christmas.  The big decision was not where to locate the train platform, albeit its location in the room did vary from year to year, but whether or not the platform would be placed on the floor or on sawhorses.  Dad preferred the sawhorses.  I favored the floor.  The argument in favor of the sawhorses was that the platform was up at a height where people could see the layout easier, you could operate the trains while sitting in a chair, and the area beneath the platform could be used to store extra cars, accessories, and other boxes.

Why the floor?  The answer is simple.  When the platform was on the floor, you could test the time honored question, “How fast can the train go around the curve without running off the track?”  Actually, the real question was: “How far across the room can you send the train when it did run off the track?”  Dad’s preference for sawhorses prevailed, but I have very fond memories of the few years when he acquiesced to the platform being located on the floor—provided I behaved myself.

The Christmas tree was acquired and decorated before the platform became home to the Plasticville houses and other accessories that comprised the village setting.  The arrangement differed every year as new pieces were added and some older pieces left in storage.  However, the Jazzbo Jim wind-up toy and a procession of cast lead toy soldiers made from molds belonging to Uncle Ken and painted by my Dad were always part of the layout.  They were out of scale and made no sense, other than it was a family tradition.

I still own the American Flyer trains, the Jazzbo Jim toy, the toy soldier set, and two of Uncle Ken’s toy soldier molds.  However, it has been years since I set up my toy trains.  I remember moving the track platform from Hellertown to my home in Bethlehem the Christmas after my Dad died in 1966.  A very clouded memory suggests I removed the tracks from the platform prior to my move from Bethlehem to York in 1972.

I never set up my toy trains for my children.  I was always too busy.  A nasty divorce did not help.  Two years ago, I took out the freight engine and several cars and displayed them on a section of track on top of a ledge in my living room.  I have lost count of the number of times I have resolved to recreate my childhood train platform.  Alas, I am still too busy with my career.  But, I have not lost hope.

It is Lionel who appears to have lost hope.  On Monday, November 15, Lionel LLC, filed for bankruptcy.  Admittedly, the move was to seek protection from a judgment of $40.8 million in a lawsuit brought by MTH Electric Trains, Inc., (Mike’s Train House) claiming Lionel sold trains manufactured by Korean Brass who used blueprints stolen from MTH Electric Trains, Inc.

The following information comes from an article by Joseph Pereira and Ethan Smith in the November 17, 2004, The Wall Street Journal entitled “Will Christmas Be Derailed for Lionel Trains? / Troubled Train Maker Lionel Clings to Box-Office Hopes for ‘Polar Express’ Replica.”

In addition to the issues surrounding the lawsuit, the article focuses on the successful sellout of Lionel’s $249.00 Polar Express train sets.  The Polar Express O-gauge set consists of a locomotive, three passenger cars, eleven pieces of track, a transformer, figures from the movie, and an instructional video.  The shelves are empty six weeks before Christmas, and Lionel’s supplier is not able to manufacture new stock in time for holiday shopping.

The location of these shelves is one of Lionel’s problems.  They are in toy train and hobby stores.  You will not find Lionel trains at Toys “R” Us and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.  Why?  The answer rests with the average Lionel customer—a 52-year-old male.

Little wonder toy trains are not part of Christmas any more.  The price point of today’s toy trains, whether manufactured by Lionel or MTH Electric, is extremely high.  A basic starter set costs close to $1,000.00.  Parents faced with buying video games and video game players for their children are not likely to put a $1,000.00 toy train at the top of their Christmas shopping list.  Even $249.00, the cost of Lionel’s Polar Express set, is prohibitive.

Toy trains have become the provenance of a graying generation of males who remember the real thing as well as the toys of their childhood.  Unless something is done quickly, when this generation goes to the great roundhouse in the sky, the last whistle is going to blow on toy train collecting as a viable collecting category.

This past September Lionel experienced a major management shake-up.  Is it too little too late?  It will not be if Lionel finds a way to reinstall interest in toy trains in boys who are between ages six and eight.  When asked to comment on why Lionel did not produce a less expensive version of the Polar Express set, Jerry Calabrese, Lionel’s chief executive, said, “When you have a brand like Lionel, it’s a real temptation to downscale the brand and go for the mass business.  The problem is you eviscerate the power of the brand.”

Wake up, Mr. Calabrese!  The future is and has always rested with the young.  If your attitude prevails, there will be no Lionel company in twenty-five years.  Lionel will become another toy train memory, just like American Flyer; and, Christmas without toy trains just one more fact of life.

Rinker Enterprises and Harry L. Rinker are on the Internet.  Check out www.harryrinker.com.

Home & Garden Television (HGTV) currently lists COLLECTOR INSPECTOR as on hiatus from January 1 through March 30, 2005.  Whether or not it returns as reruns in April depends entirely on HGTV.
 

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