Thought you all would enjoy this a friend sent this to me a copy from the newspaper in York, PA in December 1956.
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Dennis, we had a Joe's in Harrisburg as well, a lot the train stuff I received as a kid came from there.
Brad
Dennis, that is great! That advertisement was just in time for my first Christmas. Too bad I never got a train for a gift, I finally saved up my money for 1968 or '69.
Who knew back in 1956 that the County Fairgrounds just a few blocks from that store on Market Street in York would become the mecca of the toy train world!
Bill
Love those prices!
Peter
I'd buy dozen GG1s....
Yep, and the day after Christmas the prices would have been cut even more to get rid of them.
Slipped in a few Marx items, too. Their gantry crane, although totally manually, is pretty impressive.
I grew up in Martinsburg, West Virginia where there wasn't a hobby shop to be found but we did have Joe the Motorist's Friend and Western Auto to take care of our toy train needs. My Grandmother bought my Grandfather three inexpensive train sets in 1958 and 1959, one Lionel and the other two Marx. All three were from Joe the Motorist's.
I love old ads like this - they are a fascinating glimpse of a kinder, gentler time. I was only 20 months old when this ad ran, and growing up in Brooklyn, never heard of Joe's before, but it really wouldn't have mattered. The train fan in my family was my mother and she felt that a kid should be old enough to actually run the trains themselves before she'd buy them, so it was a couple of years before I got my first Lionel set.
Interestingly enough, my mother's favorite engine was the Pennsy GG1, but my parents could never really afford one when my brother and I were growing up (interesting that, in the ad, it cost almost as much as an entire "deluxe train outfit"). When I got my first job after college, I went a few blocks down Park Avenue South to Madison Hardware and got her a single stripe 2360. And in 1979, it cost A LOT more than $33.88!!!
Thanks for posting Dennis.
My first bike came from this exact store.
In that same shopping center there was a Roger's Toy Store, also sold trains. Extra freight cars came from Joe's and Roger's.
Gene Anstine
