Glory Days of our Hobby

There was good competition back then. And competition breeds innovation. sadly , lacking  today.

The newest items today were only dreams back in the late 70s early 80s. I still like that period as MPC/Lionel came out with new product, one thing at a time. We could buy and sell with ease. Everything was in high demand. Even some of the sets were Hi End for their time with cars and graphics never made by PW Lionel.

@Dave Koehler posted:

There was good competition back then. And competition breeds innovation. sadly , lacking  today.

I was MIA so to speak during the era of which you speak.  I have yet to buy any stuff made in the last 10+ years.  My first brand new purchase is a Lionel Cotton Belt diesel engine from their 2023 catalog, and it should be here in Oct/Nov.  I am anxiously awaiting it to see the quality.  Based on stuff I read on the forum, I'm a bit uneasy but I'm a positive guy.  The one thing that really saddens me is all the manufacturing has been shipped overseas, as far as I can tell.  I go out of my way to buy 'Made in USA' products always, even at twice the price.

I have yet to devise a means of giving myself a good hard kick for not buying sets of K-Line passenger cars for favored roads.  I got some blown-out Heavyweights, including unmarked ones to bash, but miss(ed) a number  of the streamliners in certain sets.  I remember that period with nostalgia and regret.

IMHO, the true Glory Days began shortly after Mike Wolf started MTH.  No so coincidentally the Glory Days started to fade shortly after Mike Wolf walked away.

I have been back into toy trains as an adult  now for 48 years and as far as I am concerned, that has been over 17,520 glorious days and still counting!   Suppliers come and go just like in any other business so maybe we should just enjoy the day.

"Yesterday its history,

Tomorrow is a mystery,

Today is a gift,

That's why they call it the present."

Happy railroading,

Don

There have been peaks and valleys throughout the decades: 1940, 1950, 1990(!?)  The best thing about MTH is that they were perhaps the first real competition Lionel had since American Flyer after WWII.  They knocked Lionel on their duff and woke them up!  I guess I agree that c. 2000-2001 was "peak train"--there was actually a glut- maybe too much product.  Some years later, Legacy and Lionel's Layout Control System (LCS) were important advancements.  Hopefully the best days are yet to come!

Very good point about competition...so many catalogs per year, too.

I tend to view the early 21st century of toy trains as a rennaissance of sorts, although some might say it began in the mid 1990s. From the catalog artwork to the actual items produced, and companies were taking chances with new and innovative items.

Again, I may be bias somewhat, as we had a local and very informal group of guys getting together regularly and enjoying the progress we all were making on our respective layouts. If I ever can afford to retire, I'd very much like to get back into a similar group, just run trains and help each other.

For me the best years of the hobby began in 1988 with Richard Kughn purchasing Lionel. He soon realized that he needed outside consulting in order to restore Lionel to its glory days. Enter a brash young guy from Columbia, Maryland named Mike Wolf. He gave advice to Mr. Kughn especially regarding using a South Korean train maker named Samhongsa. The die cast engines that followed including the Chessie Steam Special, Mikado, Hudson, B-6 switcher were flawless castings which were so much better than the domestic castings Lionel had been getting. When the purchases from South Korea began to decrease from Lionel Mike stepped in and in 1994 brought out his own line of engines from the South Korea train maker. A couple of lawsuits both of which Lionel lost gave Mike the capital to invest in bushels of new tooling. At one point in the late nineties Mike was producing six catalogs a year, three premier and three Railking. Lionel was on the ropes. After two or three changes in leadership Lionel regained some momentum and the two companies competed well into the new century. Meanwhile, other smaller firms were making contributions especially Maury Klein at K-Line. His accessories, aluminum passenger cars and die cast steamers were wonderful and to this day command premium prices. Weaver had brass locomotives and a great variety of rolling stock while Atlas introduced the line of woodside reefers which became instantly collected. Then Lionel sued K-Line and forced him out of business and Bob Weaver passed away. Richard Kughn sold Lionel to a holding company and so the bean counters entered the hobby. The move toward scale while it made for great locomotives and rolling stock it signaled the demise of the toy train aspect of the hobby. No one wanted a #97 coal loader, #164 log loader or the culvert set or the bascule bridge or the magnetic cranes. Instead people collected Woodland Scenic and Menard's buildings.  Through it all one constant has been Ross Custom switches making the best turnouts in the hobby. The shift away from the accessories and the toy like aspect of the hobby is saddening to me. How many engines do you need? How many dozens of rolling stock items are required. So, I currently see the hobby as somewhat static with whistle steam and using an ipad to run your trains the only really new features. No, for me the best years were from 1988 to 2005. Since then there hasn't been much to get excited about

If I were going to wallow in nostalgia, I would pick a time before I was born. When Lionel was selling kits for 700e Hudsons and scale tanks, boxes, and cabooses. When Model Builder was selling dreams to boys AND men. Those were the catalogs I salivated over as a child--circa 1940.

I guess that the golden years will be defined by your age. For me, at 74, I consider the 50’s the golden age  I think that whenever you got infatuated will be your golden era.  The nostalgia of our youth is always gold tinted.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately. I used to visit multiple train stores when we went on vacation. They are all gone now. The train magazines were over 100 pages with advertisements. The forums were quite lively with many great layouts being built by some interesting people. The catalogs were awesome! Lionel, MTH, Weaver, K-line, and Williams, along with all the cottage industries. I remember fondly the Williams fold out golden memories catalog and the great debate that their reproductions caused. I have quite a few of their F3s.

For me, the golden age is over. It's now just memories. They're happy memories, and a little sad, too. I now understand how the postwar crowd felt 20 years ago. The amazing times they lived through and how they enjoyed the hobby changed, possibly too much for many of them. I feel the same way. I haven't even looked at the recent Lionel catalog, maybe I should.

From a pure nostalgia perspective, it would be the mid to late 1970s.  In 1975, after some tough times for our family, my mom took me (12 years old at the time) to a local train store.  I'd saved up some money from mowing yards, etc. over the summer.  I bought two cars (Frisco box car and a N&W three level auto rack) to go with the used/second hand set I got for Christmas a few years earlier, and the owner gave me a Lionel catalog.  I spent hour upon hours going through the catalog and wanting pretty much everything.  Over the next 10 or so years I made more purchases from the shop before getting a job in a different city.  Even with the new scale items that I have, I still have a soft spot for the MPC era trains.

The Golden Age of Toy Trains . . . that would be 1940 to 1960, with a few exceptions either way. In the late thirties those guys at Lionel were all about excellent engineering and prototype look as the hobby pulled out of the Depression. Even with the interruption of the War, Lionel was able to unleash the floodgates of great trains in the late forties. But the late fifties and most of the sixties pretty much saw the abandonment of realism in the face of better selling "toy" items and colors. Quality absolutely collapsed. The fifties brought us to the idea that a toy, instead of being a thing of beauty that could be passed down through generations, was something made cheaply and to be thrown away when broken.

The glory days of today consist of being able to find parts for all those pre and postwar locos in a matter of seconds on the Web.

Turning 67 today, "Golden Age" is a mixed term. As a youth I was smitten by the 2900 series freight cars, which I learned about from my father's catalogs. I love my 226E 291W set, to which I have added 2 tanks, hopper, and box--to me the pinnacle of Lionel production. Yet this train runs only around the Christmas tree. My large basement layout is focused on B&O operations, and welcomes Williams, Lionel, MTH, Weaver, K-Line, and unknowns. I'm thankful for what has been made, and optimistic for what still may be made.

I was a youngster getting the catalogs in the era you're talking about and I remember just being amazed at what was coming out. Sadly, I couldn't afford any of it because I was a kid. But I remember the competition being tight! It was awesome!

I still greatly enjoy this era of the hobby. I think every era is enjoyable for its own reasons because none of the eras are really alike. I guess I'm an equal opportunity enjoy-er! Or I just like nostalgia haha

Love "equal opportunity enjoyer"

I have been in this hobby now for close to 50 years continuously and they all have been glory days.  Never mattered to me what scale I was working with, what manufacturers were or were not around, nor did it matter if what I was exactly looking for wasn't out there.  Even as a small child, I was making my trains to match my dreams and visions to the best of my abilities.  Those skills have grown and, in some cases, regressed at times, but I have never lamented times past.  There is always something that catches my interest in this hobby.

What is interesting is finding items today, mostly accessories and structures though some rolling stock as well, that were evidently marketed during what I termed the glory days, yet despite being active in the hobby back then, I don't recall seeing them! And I used to study each and every catalog! I can only surmise that some items were released through limited dealerships, or I just missed them, or just don't remember!

It sure is fun discovering neat things made during those years that I can use on my layout. FWIW: the easiest method to find when an item was made is to enter the item's number in a Google search. This will give you a nice history with release date. Obviously, this doesn't work for K-Line and Weaver items. I recently discovered some wonderful brass structures that Weaver had made during the glory years, yet researching their origin was not so easy. I eventually found someone who had made pdf's of Weaver catalogs - good work! K-Line also made some wonderful and realistic operating accessories in the glory years.

MTH was producing a wide variety of scale-sized O gauge locomotives and rolling stock between 1995 and 2010. So, as far as what I was buying, they were the glory years of the modern era. K-Line and Weaver also were producing outstanding models. They are gone and MTH is not innovating as it once did. So, I would say that those were glory years. Things have changed but there are still many fine items being produced. Some are too costly for me but I still find interesting things to add to my collection.

MELGAR

Is this a "life is what you make of it" post? We all have different perspectives based on whether we are operators, collectors, rivet counters, etc. And they are pretty well represented above. From my point of view TRIPLEX pretty much nailed it. Richard Kughn's purchase and stewardship of Lionel were critical, but I mostly attribute the Golden Age to Mike.

However, what I think is being overlooked here, is our wonderful ability to communicate with many people over significant distances in a relatively easy manner. So IMO, the "Golden Age" consists also of friendships made, and I thank OGR for their significant contributions to that. It started with the OGR dinners at York a long time ago, and continues with many things to this day, perhaps most importantly this Forum.

Gerry

(Note: I model in HO, so my comments are from my history with HO/etc.)

"The Golden Age"

Seems to be a moving target depending on your age and inclinations.

I thoroughly appreciate the history of this hobby, and my involvement therein. I reflect fondly on my experiences of growing up with trains.

To me, though, I am living my "Golden Age" in modeling. Never has there been such quality and variety in my part of the hobby world. The engines run like Swiss watches, the sounds are incredible, there are many manufactures competing for my hobby dollar, and there's a huge market of previously owned HO product.

I love this era of modeling I'm living in.

Sorry for those of you that thinks it's over and gone, but in my case, my hobby world is vibrant and living.

Andre

More good points and reflections made.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, the internet was coming along, but the train magazines and the plethora of train shops and their advertisements was where many of us found stuff. The magazines were pretty fat back then.

I recall this fledging forum, where in early 2000 or so, a nice gentleman offered to help me with my first-generation TIU. I couldn't figure it out and had posted for assistance. Back then, a forum member's hometown was listed in their avatar, and because he and I were only about 10 miles away from each other, I was able to bring my DCS over to his house. That location feature along with our names helped facilitate making friends and form local train get-togethers.

In retrospect, I'd hazard a guess that some of these hi-tech trains and their control systems would've never got off the ground without forums and the internet.

I tend to agree with Gerry and Andre for the reasons they mention.

However, without being unduly critical of the surviving manufacturers who have a challenging, and arguably dwindling, market, the glory years when Mike Wolfe was at the height of his entrepreneurial powers were mighty fine for us model railroad enthusiasts, providing the competition that inspired Lionel, K Line, Williams, MTH and others to produce great products.

Let's not forget that the glory years also include the late 1940s through the middle 1950s, and maybe some pre-war years (I know very little about pre-war trains). Arnold

To quote baseball great Buck O'Neil.  "I was right on time".

I saw the end of K-Line, the end of Weaver, and the end of whatever you want to call MTH.

I saw the growth and development of Command and Control and my newest passion deadrail.

Each "era" has been great and I have grown year after year.  My "Glory Days" are RIGHT NOW.

The secondary market is plentiful.  Our LHS owner Mr. Wagner used to tell us, "There is no shortage of this stuff, nothing is rare.  They are in basements all across America".  This is further validated by the business Trainz has developed.

If I don't see exactly what I want at a great price, I wait, because it will be around soon.  And even if I can't find exactly what I want, I paint and decal it... because I like doing that too.

Have Fun!
Ron

Some have acknowledged the contributions of Mike Wolf to the renaissance or glory years of toy trains. There's likely a demographic correlation between baby boomers retiring and MTH's explosion in the marketplace.

From my perspective, it was MTH's wonderful selection of buildings and accessories, many of them being Railking yet O-scale in size, that greatly helped those of us who were (and still are) building layouts on a budget. Like JLC, Mike evidently understood that accessories were the key for engaging kids (of all ages). It's interesting that Lionel is now making some former Railking items under the Lionel name. MTH also recently announced some new Railking buildings, same buildings just different names.

I wrote about one product above, that was only one of several l think were peaks above the valleys.  I was happily collecting components of my childhood set when l heard that Williams, year forgotten, about 1985??, had offered an actual, scale appearing, Mikado.   (My dad had fired Mikados).  Was time to look at the brands with knuckle couplers! I chased one down on my one trip to the Altoona show.  Other peaks for me were some 3rd Rail steamers,  K-Line's Heavyweights and metal streamliners, and with "different" steamers, offering hope for a variety of prototypes, MTH offered passenger car sets (and their components!) with a variety of roadnames, and there have been later, even recent, peaks l noted, as the offering of the GW/Strasburg #90.  So, hang in there.....

@Paul Kallus posted:

It's interesting that Lionel is now making some former Railking items under the Lionel name.

Interesting or disturbing?  Lionel appears to be price gouging.  I first saw this at the Allentown train show.  Two exact pieces side by side of MTH and Lionel at wildly different prices.

This is from one of our forum sponsors.  I'm not calling them out.  It's not their fault.  I understand that they have to pay the price to Lionel and must set their pricing accordingly. 

MTH Country Passenger Station $95

Lionel version of the MTH Country Passenger Station $140

And like I said in my other post... No shortage of this stuff.  That famous auction site has a Buy it Now for $50.

I agree with a lot of what has been said here so far.  In terms of innovation and competition, the MTH era is probably the defining factor.  I am glad I got to experience at least the last half of the era, with the OGR York bus tours to MTH, Weaver, Tony Lash's layout and Bob Weaver's layout being highlights of my personal experiences.

That being said, personal perceptions of a "Golden Age" will largely be defined differently by each hobbyist as they pursue their own interests.  Collectors will define the age by the peak time of interest in their specific areas.  The golden age for Standard Gauge and Postwar collecting has come and gone, but judging by my personal observations at York and other shows, we may be approaching the golden age for MPC collecting if not already at the beginning.

Personally, I am in my own golden age right now.  I belong to an active club that spends 28-30 days a year (not counting setup time, which is fun, too)) running trains for the public (and always looking to do more), has weekly meetings and sometimes run sessions, goes on train-watching trips (sometimes long ones, like the two times we went chasing UP 4014), and do road trips to out of the area train shows and train shops.  Add to that, I still have a lot of fun hunting for the items on my "unicorn list", finding stuff I never knew I wanted, talking trains with friends, reading about trains, and dreaming of the day when a personal layout becomes a possibility.  So yes, my golden age is now, and is going to last pretty much as long as I can make it.

Andy

@colorado hirailer posted:

Other peaks for me were some 3rd Rail steamers

I was wondering whether Scott Mann would share some credit with the likes of Messrs Kughn, Klein, Wolf, Weaver, Brenneisen, et al, in the reminiscing here. 

The accuracy of his products and paint schemes transcending O2R and O3R has been very special in the last nearly 50 years.  In fact, if measured by the size of the 'bite' in one's wallet complementing the increase in the cardiac pulse rate upon delivery and unpackaging, Sunset/3rd Rail/GGD has been a clear winner of my "OMG! Award" time and time again.

And not just for his steamers.  His recent run of O2R/O3R ATSF E1's and B&O EA's was an epitome for this old phart.

All in all, though, the hobby has been one heck of a ride and very cathartic for ALL of my 78 years...and counting, Lord willing!

KD

Well said everyone.

For you younger fellows, there's no despair. I didn't intend this to be a lamenting discussion, and if you read my original post, I brought it full circle that I believe in the philosophy that it is up to the individual to make the most out of whatever they endeavor to do, be it work, school, family, or hobby.

There's no shortage of items in our hobby...except maybe Cab IIs , and if new engines and rolling stock are an indicator, it's very healthy. I believe I am having as much if not more fun today than I ever did.

For me the golden age is always now .  On the other hand,  I really enjoyed the resurgence of postwar repros and postwar with command control that occurred in the Century Club and Century Club II eras.  The various "classics" also were appealing, although I preferred the command control versions.  Command control (TMCC, beginning about 1995-96) was what got me back into three rail trains. So for me the height of the rebirth of three rail trains was the 1995-2005 era roughly.  I got to purchase reproductions,  usually enhanced, of the 1950s and 1960s trains that my family couldn't possibly afford back then.  I made up for that with perhaps over the top collecting.  I had little or no interest in large,  scale steam locomotives, although the Century Club II certainly included a few scale locos.  To me, that period was when Lionel finally came up with model trains that were as interesting and operations oriented as LGB, Marklin and Kato in other scales.

For me I believe the glory days were from 1900 to 1959. I was not around but Joshua Lionel Cowen was at the head of Lionel. The quality of Lionel was unsurpassed. A far cry from what corporate America is today.

@Dwayne B posted:

The quality of Lionel was unsurpassed. A far cry from what corporate America is today.

Dwayne,

I can't possibly let this pass without challenging your statement.  You clearly do not remember how poor in general that American quality had become by the late 70's.

You're correct that JLC's quality in his time was better, and in many cases much better than that, but it was the Japanese quality movement 1955-1990 that kicked our butt and got us back on track.

When we relearned how to compete from them, which was a long an painful process in itself, we met and then clearly exceeded the the quality level you speak so fondly of.

Quality control has been the heart of my entire career, which is rapidly drawing to a close as I near retirement, first in traditional product, then in software, and most recently in safety critical software.  Speaking of glory days, there's no question in my mind that late 1990's and beyond were the return-to-glory that the USA frittered away as the 50's become the 60's and then the 70's.

Yes the manufacturing business, including the stuff we enjoy in our hobby, has nearly all moved to China, but it isn't because our quality was poor.

There's one absolutely stunning example of why what I say is true, and you may disagree with me if you like:  Automobiles presently on the road, of nearly all kinds including all American brands, are now an average of 13 years old and still soldiering on.

    Q: How long did the average car last in 1955?

Yes JLC was good at what he did, and very was important for the hobby and the U.S.

And yes, recently Lionel's quality has apparently slipped, particularly with the high-end stuff.

But it's not because no one knows how to fix it.  There are plenty of us out there who were well trained in just how to do it -- in those 1990s glory days.

Mike

Great topic.

I am 56 years old.  I was HO 1971-1980.  Left hobby in high school.  

1998, my parents moved from their home about 5 miles from my home, and all my HO stuff and anything else I never took when I moved out years prior ended up at my house.  

I declared "I'm going to build a Lionel train layout."  Start of glory days.

Went to a LHS on Oakton Street here in Chicago, Skokie to be more precise  (long since closed, I think).  Got a Santa Fe GP9 set with a 1033 controller, basically an oval shaped layout and a switch.  Still have pretty much all of it.  Put together the benchwork frame of my layout using all my HO benchwork.  

Bug bit me.  I found out about TMCC - had to have it.  Sold all my old HO stuff to a hobby shop in Park Ridge, and got a board for my GP9.   I ordered a bunch of track and switches and well of course other things from a internet hobby shop in NY (guy was named Henry).

Christmas morning, 1998, I unwrapped all my stuff and vanished to the basement.  Hours later I had two ovals and a figure 8 in the middle.  One of my engines was a Lionel B&O GP9.  Also still have.  While my straight track wasn't so straight, it was OK in my book. I discovered Mike's Trains and Toys in Morton Grove and Chicagoland Hobby.

Subscribed to OGR and CTT, discovered eBay for train purchases.  Reading these two magazines, I discovered you could have a layout built.  Oh now that made a ton of sense for me.

In 2000, I had Layouts by Cardiff build my layout.  Simply wow.  I really liked TMCC so was pretty much sold on Lionel, Atlas and K-line.  MTH not so much.  Catalogs coming out were such a great wow to me but then realizing the time from catalog to a hobby shop was an eternity.  I could look at the catalogs for hours, and actually I did.

DCS comes along from MTH and I had to have it.  PS2 engines - great.  More opportunities to buy.  I am finding I have a problem.  I am getting a lot of stuff.

In 2004, I moved to my current house, old layout torn down and semi started from scratch.  My current layout was done in 2005/2006 ish time frame, and runs TMCC and DCS.  I favor TMCC equipped engines at the time because I struggled with DCS finding my engines.

In the past 10 + years we have seen the Cab2 system come out and DCS WiFi as well, also saw K-line and Weaver vanish.  Still feeling pretty golden to me.  MTH announces going out of business, and there is a frenzy of activity to buy stuff.  My one remaining hobby shop Chicagoland Hobbies is going to close soon.

I really love the new technology and the craftsment that exist in this hobby.  Had a B&O Lionel steam engine weathered along with a matching passenger car set, thank you @MrMuffin'sTrains and Harry Heike.  Just wow.

When my trains work, and for the most part they do, I feel very much I am in a golden age.

John

John

You have "walked in the moccasins" of many hobbyists who could offer similar stories to yours (and mine). Your story is about progressive revelations of the variety and scope of the world's greatest hobby; i.e., discovering more and more as time moves forward and extends your awareness and knowledge.

I was an American Flyer kid as a boy, but sold all that stuff to neighbor kid who was bedridden (in 1956) with a heart condition. His dad asked about my trains as a pastime for his son during recuperation. I still remember the asking price:  $330 for three trains, freight and passenger cars, a transformer and rectifier, plus track and switches.  Probably worth $1800 in today's marketplace.

When my dad passed away at age 80, I was 50 and re-entered the hobby through the Lionel gateway. I'm now 83, and have designed and built several O-gauge layouts. I joined the Lionel Collectors Club of America (LCCA) and met many train hobby friends. Then I joined a local train club that sponsored Train Open House events for the public.

With help from family, friends, and train hobby friends, I designed and built my current 15x19 feet L-shaped layout. It's wired for TMCC and DCS, but most of my collection is Lionel. Several trains are LionelChief2 - for my great grandkids. Fun for them, especially the Dinosaur Train.  Some pix are attached.

Carry on ...

To me the golden years were 1950’s and 60’s. No matter where you lived there always seemed to be a hobby shop within ten miles of home. And yes, a young boy or girl could easily save enough money through a paper route or allowance to always buy a train item, slot cars or whatever.

"There is no shortage of this stuff, nothing is rare.  They are in basements all across America".
I have definitely felt this when attending the York show as well as buying things online at the auction site.  There is so much unopened or barely used product out there.

For me, I prefer the die cast sprung trucks on the cars and find the plastic truck era pretty cheap and harder to do much more than run in a circle with.