13 Feb The Power of Prewar Locomotives and Trains to Transport Imaginations
Toy Railroads from 1900 through 1945
The fascination of model railroading . . . is typically American. Each individual has the opportunity to inject his own personality into his work, to create a railroad system unlike any other one in the world.
Joshua Lionel Cowen, late Chairman of the Board, Lionel Corporation
The model rail empire established by Mr. Cowen in 1900, however, started from a less quintessentially American fondness for the romance of the rails. “In those early years, Lionel was a small firm with stiff competition at home and abroad.” Greenberg’s Guide to Lionel Trains 1901-1942. Up to the outbreak of the First World War, “[i]mported trains . . . , especially those from Germany, were readily available at attractive prices. People believed they were better than American toys.” Id.
America has no patent on the railroad. She did not invent it. The origins of the locomotive, train, and railroad that would revolutionize the United States lie ironically in Great Britain. Watching developments unfold across the pond though were pioneering American engineers, the more farsighted ones already predicting that steam locomotive power would transform American transportation. L. Phillips, Yonder Comes the Train.
Joshua Lionel Cowen (originally Cohen) did hold a patent that indirectly led to his becoming the father of model railroading. “In 1899, at only 22 years of age, Cowen filed his first federal patent for a battery-powered device that ignited a photographic flash.” Impressed, U.S. Navy officials signed the young man to a $12,000 contract to produce detonators for underwater mines. “With that money, Cowen and a partner set up a production facility in a Manhattan loft in 1900, and incorporated as the Lionel Manufacturing Company for the purpose of ‘the manufacture of electrical, mechanical and industrial appliances . . . and toys.’”
As the soldiers who liberated France and Germany during World War I returned home and the victory parades faded, the American sense of accomplishment quickly evaporated. Dissolution and isolationism set in. At the same time, the 1920s saw the the use of automobiles, telephones, films, radio, and electrical appliances by millions in the Western world. Lionel became one of the top three manufacturers of electric trains in the United States. While American prosperity was widespread by the middle of the decade, it was coming fast to an end. The Wall Street crash of 1929 ended the era with the Great Depression bringing years of hardship worldwide.
Lionel and the Golden Age of Railroading overcame the tough economic realities of the Great Depression and the WWII years when Lionel factories manufactured military instruments instead of trains. But the halcyon days of both were over, “brought down by the era of television, the popularity of the automobile, and a change in American pop culture.
Yet for all the technological wonders and terrors of our modern age, there will always be a simplicity and charm in hearing the whistle of a steam train. There will always be a thrill at the sight as one of the greatest examples of American industrial power chugging gracefully around a curve.
Lionel and American Flyer along with Bing and other European prewar trains especially are suberbly engineered to transport these feelings. In their 1957 short film Toccata for Toy Trains, preeminent American industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames put it this way: “Most of the trains we have used [in this film] are old, and some are quite old. The reason for this is that perhaps that in the more recent years, we seem to have lost the knack of making real toys. Most old ones have a direct and unembarrassed manner that give us a special kind of pleasure. A pleasure different from the admiration we may feel for the perfect little copy of the real thing.”