For all you 3rd railers from the 1950's

Yessir!  I can remember when that was a new song.  And I remember the

scorn some "older" folks had for this trashy new rock-n-roll  .  .  .  .

 

     Hoppy

Great song, even if you aren't old enough to remember when it was first released.

Careful, the 50s Poo-Poo'ers will be in before long to knock the fun you're having enjoying stuff from the 50s!

 

(Though do-wop wasn't my bag, I can at least appreciate the talent it took to sing like that in front of an audience without the aid of microphones or a visible band.  Very talented! )

I was just saying the same thing to my wife, as we both were born after 1960, that the older folks probably thought the hair was to long, the music too raw etc etc.

She commented, had they only known that all the styles and music of the 50's was so much better than now.

All the guys with ties and jackets and the girls in dresses.

I realize this was the golden years of Lionel Trains, what was it like just going to a hardware store, dept store, really anywhere and seeing all those Lionel gems so readily available right then and there?

No Balshis, you didn't enjoy the 50s as much as you think. Those were awful times, we were so repressed and lived in fantasy worlds.  You'll see once the Poo-Poo'ers get here.

 

As for me, I too, lived in a fantasy world in the KC region of unlocked doors, playing with friends from multicultural backgrounds (Italian, Slovakian, Hispanic, etc, and didn't think a thing about it) until it was waaay too dark, rode and raced home-made and very unsafe "derby cars" we made using wagon wheels and leftover lumber... riding my bicycle for several miles through town to go to a local hobby shop. This and much more.

 

Little did I realize at the time just how bad those times were.  It wasn't until being enlightened by those that know more that I now understand just how awful it was.

One of my favorite groups, along with the Everly brothers. My age spanned 8-18 during the '50s...perfect timing, IMO.

That, and tailfins and "Dagmars" - it didn't get any better, ever!

Yep, you guys had the COOLEST cars, the coolest trains, and the coolest music!

I grew up in the 1960's (born in 1962) during Lionel's wane...I didnt like the music except for that played by the "Banana Splits"...

However, I do recall that going into Sears was like a Lionel train wonderland!

As late as 1967, I recall several layouts in the middle of the toy store, and there was also 2 rail sets (American Flyer/ Marx)?

Sears was my family's "go to" for everything, although my mom liked JC Penny better.

But now department stores were not as numerous in the 1950's correct?

So where did you guys buy your trains?

I lived through 1950s as a kid.  The reason people badmouth the 1950s as some idea of paradise is the ever present threat of nuclear armageddon at the height of the cold war, the strong pressure for social conformity, the lack of basic civil rights and equal opportunity for many large groups such as blacks, women and Jews.  Colleges, law schools and medical schools, for example, had rigid and very small quotas for many of these and other less "entitled" groups.  It certainly was a prosperous time economically, full of technical advances, new opportunities for housing, transportation, etc.  It was an era of relatively low crime (just like the present ).

 

And the music was great.  I've always thought of Doo Wop as part of the transition from  rhythm and blues/jazz to "modern" rock and roll.  Certainly Dion and the Belmonts had more in common with the early Beatles than they did with the Big Band Era that preceded the 1950s, or the McGuire Sisters .

As far as trains are concerned, i.m.h.o., the railroads in those years were

infinitely more colorful than they are now, especially the freights I used to

watch on the PRR as they came through town.  What variety in logos, paint

schemes, etc.  Nowadays, to me anyway, they're so boring and monotone.

And .....AND ........each freight train had a caboose!

 

Oh well - my $.02          Hoppy

LOL! My dad used to sing this song all the time, and this one too:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIfuNPbBaaA

To me the 1950's has some of the best Lionel trains ever made. Most of the stuff from the 50's had quality, not so today.

The music was different then the 1940's but so was the 50's, no more WW2.

 

Lee Fritz

I found a very good CD containing 25 Rock&Roll hits that will give you over an hour of blissful driving. " '50s Ultimate Rock & Roll Collection" on Amazon for $12.+ shipping. Most other CDs only give you 10 or 12 songs.

I was born in 1957. Only my cousin had Lionel trains. I was so jealous.
My local hardware store has an o gauge layout in the window every year.
They also cater to the homeowners with old New England houses stocking the stuff that you just do not find at the Depot or Lowes.

My earliest rock n roll was Elvis and Bye Bye Birdie.
Then the Beatles. And of course the Monkees.

Dion is still alive and well. I hear him on XM Bluesville often.Born in 53, I think our parents wanted us to never face what they did in 1941-45. On many levels the fantasy left us  them almost 50 years ago this month 11/22/63. I still live in the town I was born and go past the school yard I was in when the word came down 50 years ago.I'm thinking of stopping by there in a few weeks just to reflect a little. I still run my 2055 Lionel steam every for weeks ,wondering what happened, some good, some not so good, either way it sure do go fast!

I have worn out cars and only turned on the radio for tornado warnings...possibly one

or two never had their radio turned on.  I orderd my first two new cars without radios,

so that may clue you in to my interest in music. I have saved a lot of money to spend on trains by not buying things like records and players.  My mother listened to the radio all day, and I remember one new station that played "Purple People Eater" over and over all day long.  If I am lucky, they will play "Que Sera'. Sera'" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky" at my funeral.  That first was on the car radio on trips west to visit Colorado narrow gauge in the 1950's...not sure the second is from the 1950's but it, as the first, represents Wanderlust to me, and as you know, there is a poem about that...

"there isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going".  (can't remember the poet and am not sure the quote is correct)

 

Nuclear war was no problem.  We had drills at our school that taught us to seek shelter under our desk in case of a nuclear attack.

 

Earl

That video is from Dick Clark's Saturday night show. It was on from 7:30 PM till 8:00 PM. The show was sponsored by Wrigly Spearmint Gum as you can see all the kids chomping on the gum.
"I Wonder Why" was one of best Doo Wop songs of all time.

Look close for the train stuff...they are there.

Bob

 

Take Me Back To The Fifties

 

I was wondering what the deal was with the gum!

Even commented to my wife, "geez, they chewed alot of gum back then"...

Surprised, Lionel did not advertise during those shows.

In fact, I was surprised when I did a utube search of the lack of TV ads...looks like 3 or 4 recycled and edited.

  What the '50s haters don't tell you is that eventually all those wrongs they love to blather about would have been set aright, more or less at their own speed.  You can thank a bunch of politicians with hidden agendas in their back pockets for the catastrophe you have now.  The seeds were planted in the '50s, and came home to roost in the latter '60s.  We began to see social evolution being power-morphed into social manipulation....by the last people on this planet you'd ever want to trust !

  As for the chooch scene....Huzzah!   Lionel was the king, and all the Flyer/Marx folks were jealous as all get out, even if they won't admit it!   I grew up in my school years in North Jersey...and if you didn't have a big die-cast Lionel GG1... then you were some kind of weird-O nut job....and a bizarre outcast to be avoided !

( Got mine @ twelve years old, in 1966, and finally joined the human race !)

No one I knew had a GG1 - I don't think I knew what it was until college.  I lived in the western US - four corners area - at least a thousand miles from any catenary tracks and GG1s.  The "in" loco to have where I grew up was the Lionel Santa Fe Warbonnet F3 - you were extremely cool if you had an AA set.  No one I know had more than two units and I had only one.  I had a Marx set since it was less expensive but did had the one Lionel F3.  It had a D cell inside it that was always dead.  Now, sixty years later I am overcompensating and I have, oh, maybe a dozen ATSF Warbonnet F3s  - something like that. 

 

 

EDIT: Now that is seriously cool!  I didn't know you could do that -- I accidently selected the smiley face and points appeared around it and I could grab and expand it!!!

 Fantastic. 

 

 

Oh, I like this!!!!!!!

 

 

He looks like a Amish guy with flat ears!

I like that thanks for sharing the how to! I grew up in the fifties ahhhh memories some good some smarting on the backside. I wouldn't trade growing up in that era it was pretty good for me.

 

$oo

I believe that a case can be made for "the fifties" being America's finest decade.

 

You like doo-wop?  Here's Frankie Lymon performing one on live teevee that predates The Belmonts by a few years.

 

I attended PS169 and JHS164 a year behind Frankie.  I'll never forget when he sang Ave Maria at our fifth grade Christmas assembly, so beautiful I had chills up and down my spine.  Couple years later at Junior High I played stickball with him and a couple of the guys from his group on 165th street.  Regular guys, they were.

 

formerly "New Yawk" Pete

Any of you attend the Alan Freed Rock&Roll shows at the Brooklyn Paramount in the late '50s? I did, twice. Many big stars (not Elvis) appeared in the same show. A riot almost broke out when Jerry Lee Lewis wiped his brow, then tossed his hanky into the audience.

I never made it to any of the Alan Freed shows.  The only Rock variety show I went to was a Murray The K show at the RKO 58th St. in Manhattan.  Two of the opening acts were Cream and The Who!!  The headliners were Wilson Pickett and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.  Went to a few shows at The Apollo on 125th St. though, the best of which was James Brown's.  Electrifying doesn't even begin to describe it!

 

Pete 

I grew up a bit later in Fargo ND, but I remember leaving for a family vacation say around 1962.   We were pulling out of the driveway in our station wagon, when we remembered "Oh no did we lock the door?"   Mom ran back to make sure that the door WAS UNLOCKED so that neighbors could get in in case they needed to borrow a cup of flour or sugar or whatnot while we were away.   Boy have times changed!  

 

Moms and kids formed their own informal neighborhood watch back then.

Again, I vote with Lee.  As a Marx owner as a kid, I much preferred my 3/16th set

over my cousin's prewar Lionel set with the weird latch couplers, and thought my cars and engine were much more realistic, an opinion I hold to this day.  At the risk of throwing stones inside a glass house, it was quite a while until they upsized a GG-1 three rail model to scale, although I saw the Lionel midget ones in stores as a kid and became familiar with HO scale models of them in my teens.  As for Hudsons and Berkshires, I never saw any...my dad fired Consolidations and Mikados.  I, too, remember the big deal in Sears and Sutcliffe's (sporting goods store that opened a train dept. during the holidays) was the Santa Fe F-3's.  I bought the Marx #51 knockoff, but never liked it, but not because I wanted a Lionel version, which I did not. Another Lionel item I remember was lusted after when I got back into tinplate, was "Madison cars".  I hear nothing about them any more, but I always thought they were too short and wondered why there were no head end cars, and definitely never saw the attraction.  I acquired K-Line Heavyweights, and plenty of their head end cars...and then, their aluminum cars.....never owned any Madison cars (or GG-1's).    Marx, too, can be faulted....the so-called "deluxe plastic" cars have never measured up to their metal 3/16 ones (IMO), and then there is the dummy knuckle stuff.  Marx had other lines avidly collected by others, too, so the rule is collect what you like and hope few collect what you like.  Do I hear that glass breaking?

I actually wanted the AT&SF F3 set MORE than a GG1, perhaps cuz the "G" was going to be impossible at that point in my life.  I had a  girlfriend in 2nd grade, who's family had a ping pong table sized Lionel layout.  They had three expensive Lionel engines; a Berk 736, which sorta belonged to her older brother, the obligatory GG1, which was her dad's...so to speak.  And Martha was assigned the big 2343 double A set of AT&SF F3s !!!  What a dream relationship !   Woman with killer chooch ! All was heavenly 'til the day I busted the front truck off her dummy "A" unit!   Then it was run for your life!  Years later, I caught up to Martha in high school, where she now looked a million times better than her F3 set.  Yet the memory of that earlier disaster dampened another would be dream relationship !

....And such is the ebb and flow of life's mountain railroad !

Wow, such great posts!

As for what trains we all had or saw, I can only attest to the early 60's, where I only saw locomotives pulling freight.

When I got my 212/213(?) Sante Fe set with passenger cars in 67(?), I thought it was the most beautiful train i had ever seen!

I still have it and its box and will never part with it.