Remember being a kid in the '50's and Lionel kids versus Flyer kids?

All of my relatives and friends and I that had trains were 100% Lionel, except one that converted to HO as a teenager. However, I remember this debate, Lionel 3 rail v. American Flyer 2 rail, on the McComas and Tuoy 6 video set, especially by Bruce Manson and Brad Nelson, whose layouts were featured on it.

I always enjoyed this debate between model railroaders; it was lighthearted and entertaining.

I think Lionel track and wiring is much easier to assemble than Flyer to get the trains to run well, but I would give the nod to Flyer for appearance.

Now, let the debate rage on! LOL. Arnold

Funny but true perhaps but I never "Put Down" any kid who owned American Flyer trains.  On the other hand, I was envious of a kid down the street in 1956 who received a nifty Lionel O gauge set for that Christmas though.  It was powered by a Lionel Lines 2-6-4 steam locomotive (best I remember you understand) a "whistle" tender, assorted freight cars, and a TW (?) transformer with black and orange handles. 

It "ran circles" around my O27 2-4-2 and striped down "SP" Lionel Lines caboose that I received for my fifth Christmas in 1951.

In early 1962 I sold my Lionel to a guy who happened by Grimer's Hobby Shop in Tampa, Florida, for $10 bucks.  I invested that ten spot in HO.  Regrets?  None at all!  Now at 74, I'm a qualified Armchair Model Railroad Tycoon and enjoy the companionship afforded by each and everyone of you who are part of the OGR Family.  Indeed, you are a bunch of fantastic modelers and/or collectors as is the OGR Staff and I'm proud as my late grandmother's cherry pie to have been welcomed into the  OGR Family by Alan!  Thank you Alan, and all of you too!

Godspeed everyone.  Please Pray for Peace.

I had Flyer, and my friend next door had Lionel. His was on a painted 4x8 board. Mine was loose track that we laid on the basement floor. I recall we took turns running at each other's home until around 1967. Mine stopped running (I finally god my engine fixed in 2006) and he lost interest in his.

In 1952 (age 10) my best friend had a Flyer passenger set, and I had a Lionel freight set. I would have been very happy to switch with him. I now have a set just like his on it's own small layout (K5 engine and green New Haven cars). I loved passenger cars, the choo-choo sound, and the white-lined drive wheels. I could not afford to buy Lionel passenger cars at $10. each (about $100. in today's money).

Nawww...l had Marx 3/16, as did my brother, and the two cousins at opposite ends of this tiny tank town that the Southern blew through both had Flyer Atlantic sets.  Not until we moved to a larger town did l meet a kid who had Lionel.  I used to admire the Flyer U.P. 4-8-4's in the department stores and wish Marx made bigger engines.

@Trinity River Bottoms Boomer posted:

Funny but true perhaps but I never "Put Down" any kid who owned American Flyer trains.  On the other hand, I was envious of a kid down the street in 1956 who received a nifty Lionel O gauge set for that Christmas though.  It was powered by a Lionel Lines 2-6-4 steam locomotive (best I remember you understand) a "whistle" tender, assorted freight cars, and a TW (?) transformer with black and orange handles. 

It "ran circles" around my O27 2-4-2 and striped down "SP" Lionel Lines caboose that I received for my fifth Christmas in 1951.

In early 1962 I sold my Lionel to a guy who happened by Grimer's Hobby Shop in Tampa, Florida, for $10 bucks.  I invested that ten spot in HO.  Regrets?  None at all!  Now at 74, I'm a qualified Armchair Model Railroad Tycoon and enjoy the companionship afforded by each and everyone of you who are part of the OGR Family.  Indeed, you are a bunch of fantastic modelers and/or collectors as is the OGR Staff and I'm proud as my late grandmother's cherry pie to have been welcomed into the  OGR Family by Alan!  Thank you Alan, and all of you too!

Godspeed everyone.  Please Pray for Peace.

I love your passion, Trinity, etc. I think we have that in common.

Let's both Pray and Play for Peace. Arnold

I always had Lionel but my friend Larry across the street had Flyer. I always envied his white- walled drivers and the smell of smoke. 
Thanks for reviving this memory.

Brad

It's not whether you had Lionel (as I did) or American Flyer but, rather, how important trains were to boys when I was a youngster (1950s). My friends also had Lionel, and I remember how fascinated I was the first time I saw American Flyer.

MELGAR

I started with Lionel back in the early 1950s (or perhaps even a year or two earlier), but my best friend, Gary, who lived up the street had American Flyer. He had a very nice layout that we both enjoyed playing with. In around 1952, my dad had the guys from Amer's hobby shop build a large Lionel layout for our basement. It was a surprise birthday gift that had been basically assembled off-site; then disassembled and moved to our home. I was away with my dad taking my weekly music lessons and eating lunch in downtown Youngstown at my favorite restaurant (The Brass Rail), and when I returned home the completed layout was up and running. It was the surprise of a lifetime for this then-young lad! But Gary and I enjoyed running trains on both layouts, and regularly engaging in the 2-rail S gauge vs. 3-rail O gauge debate. My best friend in high school was also a Flyer guy, and he also had a nice layout. He later became my brother-in-law, and today still likes trains, although these days it's LGB at Christmas time. He still does have some Flyer though, although it is relegated to display. The ONLY popular scale I have never modeled in is S gauge, but it sure isn't because I don't like the stuff. I have long viewed it as pretty much the ideal size for model railroading.

No.  Not at all.

Allan,

I agree that S gauge seems to be the best size for model railroading. I almost built an S gauge layout last time but stayed with O gauge because I have so much - and don't have any American Flyer.

The headquarters of A. C. Gilbert was in New Haven, Connecticut. Today, train shows around New Haven have lots of American Flyer for sale. The New Haven area appears to have had many "American Flyer kids."

MELGAR

Who says the debate is over? I still enjoy some lively but friendly debate with a friend who is a Flyer fan!

The funny thing is, he loves my Lionel layout and wants me to operate almost every post war locomotives in my collection when he drops by.

I had Lionel, but I always envied Flyer's mail car and choo-choo sound. I had hoped that when Lionel bought Flyer that they would produce both for 0. I finally modified both using parts purchased at York. The mail car mechanism was reworked and placed into a Lionel aluminum combine, and the sound-in-tender choo-choo was added to a scale length Hudson tender.

@Allan Miller posted:

The ONLY popular scale I have never modeled in is S gauge, but it sure isn't because I don't like the stuff. I have long viewed it as pretty much the ideal size for model railroading.

Although I love postwar Flyer (link coupler and all), I tend to be fussy when it comes to scenics on a layout. As far as structures go, O and other gauges has S beat, selection-wise, by far. I have found a few Woodland Scenics Ready-built houses, stores, and gas station that goes quite well next to S automobiles (M2) and Arttista S people. Being a "car nut", the M2 line of S-size cars are very nice, and only $7. each. The only S structures seem to be kits for industrial type buildings. For the most part, forget Plasticville...house too large, barn too small. So, the frustration for me is...scale trains and tracks, but good luck with the layout.

Arnold, I love your prose.  Wish we were next door neighbors.  Despite the fact it will never happen, just being part of this great OGR family is almost as good as "The Real Thing"... oh no, this ditty belongs to another outfit doesn't it, and is also a registered name... sure hope I don't receive a call from Perry Mason now? LOL

I forgot to mention (gads, hope "Oldtimers" isn't taking over...) that when my stepdad moved our family from Florida back to my native Texas in 1961, I met a kid down the street who had Marx O27.  It ran pretty good.  I believe Sears and Western Auto both sold Marx?  Of course, Sears sold Lionel too, even selling Marx under their famous Allstate name as well. 

I don't recall who sold American Flyer in the greater Dallas area, not having had an interest in S gauge at the time.  When the kid who lived across the street from my grandparents received an AF set for his 1957 Christmas I never thought to ask him where it came from...no, no, not Santa......he was older than that by then!  If there was a national department store chain that sold AF back in the 50s, and anyone of you know who, please advise.  Something else to ponder is  why AF continued to market their 0-8-0 for the Nickel Plate Road for so many years w/o ever adding any new road names to this good looking switcher? 

Item: Gilbert's Big Blunder (my choice of words and opinion too) was the mid-50s release of the Alco RSD-7 in HO scale.  If I had operated the company during this period, I would have invested $$$ in an S gauge model in order to compete with Lionel's O gauge Fairbanks-Morse Trainmaster instead!  Though the answer is surely lost in history, I wonder if Gilbert didn't think likewise after the HO line didn't produce the sales it was intended to?

73

Joseph Toth Jr.

My best friend and I both had Lionel layouts in the '50's, and we used to run our locomotives on each other's pikes, since he lived right down the block. The kid next door was a couple years younger, and had a beautiful AF layout in his grandpa's basement. We didn't "look down" on him or AF or the layout....we thought it was cool....white sidewalls and chuff chuff. We just couldn't run our stuff on his layout. They were trains, so they were cool. (The two rails looked weird, however...LOL)

It was more Lionel-Marx in the north side of Hoiston...

The 1952 Sears Christmas catalog listed Happi Time (Sears) and Marx trains in addition to pages of Lionel. Not sure if any "mail orders" offered Flyer. Note the "scale model" claim. 

Montgomery Wards was a mail order seller of American Flyer for their high end train line and Marx for the budget minded; in the mid-fifties they also started selling Lionel as well.

I was a kid of the 50's and a Lionel owner as were most of my friends. We were floor runners. (Only the upper crust had "wall-to-wall" carpeting in those days.)

The one kid that had an American Flyer had his mounted on a 4x8 plywood and his Dad probably drove a Dodge instead of a Ford or Chevy. He usually came over to our house because we had less operating rules.

@MTN posted:

Montgomery Wards was a mail order seller of American Flyer for their high end train line and Marx for the budget minded; in the mid-fifties they also started selling Lionel as well.

The only Wards catalog I could find was 1944. During WWII, you got paper or wooden trains.

There's a couple books from a number of years ago which feature toy trains in the Sears and Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogs from around 1949 to 1969; the Wards catalogs reveal a heavy emphasis on Marx with Flyer well represented up to the mid 50s when Lionel joins the fray. The Sears catalog pages show a number of Lionel mock-ups like the Train Master and 50 gang car (seems like there's also an operating brakeman car done up in B&O Sentinel paint instead of Wabash) - there's plenty of Marx sold under the Allstate name as well.

Yep, and the Lionel vs MTH debates that raged here a few years ago reminded me of those days.

My parents and my indulgent maternal grandmother offered American Flyer trains to me as kid in Peoria IL for birthday and Christmas presents in the late 1940s and early 50s. The trains ran on a basement two-level layout on an un-scenicked plywood platform 4 x 40 feet long -- the entire length the basement wall. Over several years, I received three AF locos: a NH Atlantic with maroon plastic passenger cars and an action mail car, a SF diesel passenger set, and (self-bought with money I earned from doing chores for neighbors), a spiffy PRR O-8-O switcher controlled by a DC rectifier - ultra cool!

My neighbor friend Tommy had a Lionel train set with a SF bell-ringer switcher and some freight cars, but no permanent layout in his finished-attic bedroom.  We put down 3-rail tubular tracks on the floor for operating sessions and then took them up for use next play time. We often visited each other's home to play with our trains and continue the heated the 3 versus 2 rail debate.

When I enrolled in a Christian boarding academy in La Grange IL, I left the trains behind at home. My dad called me and asked if I would sell the trains, tracks, and control gear to Russell, a neighborhood kid who was stricken with Rheumatic Fever, a condition that then required a year of bed rest. Russell's dad asked about the trains as "boredom therapy" for his young son. At that time (1955) I was done with trains and enamored with cars and girls, so I sold all the AF stuff for $335. I applied that money to upgrade and customize my first car -- a 1950 Plymouth.

At age 50 I re-entered the hobby -- that time with a focus on Lionel trains bearing the Rock Island (CRI&P) road name because that railroad served my home town. I rode the PEORIA ROCKET to and from boarding school for several years, which is why I  gathered quite a collection of RI trains over the following decades - 8 inventory pages!  After some medical issues emerged in my 70s, I sold nearly all of the trains, action accessories, and control gear through an auction house. That stuff was sold to other hobbyists in a weekend in 1914.

I saved a few RI trains as mementos, and in recent years I designed and built an L-shaped layout at home. At the time, I justified that venture to my wife as "a project for our great-grandkids." However, they soon developed another interest - dinosaur books, online videos, and toys. So I added a DINOSAUR PARK to the layout. And so it goes ...

Mike Mottler    LCCA 12394
mottlerm@gmail.com 

@Mike H Mottler posted:

My parents and my indulgent maternal grandmother offered American Flyer trains to me as kid in Peoria IL for birthday and Christmas presents in the late 1940s and early 50s. The trains ran on a basement two-level layout on an un-scenicked plywood platform 4 x 40 feet long -- the entire length the basement wall. Over several years, I received three AF locos: a NH Atlantic with maroon plastic passenger cars and an action mail car, a SF diesel passenger set, and (self-bought with money I earned from doing chores for neighbors), a spiffy PRR O-8-O switcher controlled by a DC rectifier - ultra cool!

My neighbor friend Tommy had a Lionel train set with a SF bell-ringer switcher and some freight cars, but no permanent layout in his finished-attic bedroom.  We put down 3-rail tubular tracks on the floor for operating sessions and then took them up for use next play time. We often visited each other's home to play with our trains and continue the heated the 3 versus 2 rail debate.

When I enrolled in a Christian boarding academy in La Grange IL, I left the trains behind at home. My dad called me and asked if I would sell the trains, tracks, and control gear to Russell, a neighborhood kid who was stricken with Rheumatic Fever, a condition that then required a year of bed rest. Russell's dad asked about the trains as "boredom therapy" for his young son. At that time (1955) I was done with trains and enamored with cars and girls, so I sold all the AF stuff for $335. I applied that money to upgrade and customize my first car -- a 1950 Plymouth.

At age 50 I re-entered the hobby -- that time with a focus on Lionel trains bearing the Rock Island (CRI&P) road name because that railroad served my home town. I rode the PEORIA ROCKET to and from boarding school for several years, which is why I  gathered quite a collection of RI trains over the following decades - 8 inventory pages!  After some medical issues emerged in my 70s, I sold nearly all of the trains, action accessories, and control gear through an auction house. That stuff was sold to other hobbyists in a weekend in 1914.

I saved a few RI trains as mementos, and in recent years I designed and built an L-shaped layout at home. At the time, I justified that venture to my wife as "a project for our great-grandkids." However, they soon developed another interest - dinosaur books, online videos, and toys. So I added a DINOSAUR PARK to the layout. And so it goes ...

Mike Mottler    LCCA 12394
mottlerm@gmail.com 

 

 

Mike, I enjoyed reading your above post. Thanks for sharing. Arnold

I grew up on airforce bases and in the mid 50s it seems we all began enamored with control line model airplanes, particularly ring masters with Mccoy 35s. The trains kind of got left behind. Many of us began single channel rc planes like the mambo. Soon after girls ,school sports and real cars. Great time to be young though.

@Allan Miller posted:

1. I was away with my dad taking my weekly music lessons... 

2. My best friend in high school was also a Flyer guy, and he also had a nice layout. He later became my brother-in-law...

3. The ONLY popular scale I have never modeled in is S gauge, but it sure isn't because I don't like the stuff. I have long viewed it as pretty much the ideal size for model railroading.

1: So you opted to enter journalism instead of pursuing a career in music; any particular reason or event?

2: That's a cool story...

3: I think that's a pretty common opinion. There's a fellow up around the Portland area who is, it's safe to say, one of the preeminent builders of N scale steam locomotives. I mean, this guy even builds the drive wheels from scratch. Anyway, we were talking once and he said the same thing about S scale...

Mark in (warm) Oregon

I had a nice 4X8 "Hi-Rail" 027 layout after Xmas 1955 - when I got it. 4 switches, a passing siding and 2 spurs. Buildings, scratch-built by my father. I was 7. No one else in our working/lower-middle-c lass neighborhood was a train guy, really. Glenn had some Kusan 2-rail tinplate (those little FA-2 bodies lived on with K-Line), and a Marx 666 set. He used to run that on my layout. Curtis had an AF Alco PA passenger set, and another David (I'm a David) also had an AF PA set. All of these (not mine) were run on the floor.

But - no one else really gave a hoot about trains in the neighborhood but me, and I had the only layout on the street. There were no arguments. They didn't care. All the trains mentioned above - except mine - almost certainly wound up in the city dump.

We think that "everybody had trains" in the 50's, but not everybody did. I live in an area populated heavily by retirees from the North, especially the Midwest; I think that half my neighborhood is from Michigan. I have never spoken to any of them - except one, an N-scaler - who cared about trains as a kid. The ones who had them ran them under the Xmas tree for a couple of years; then forgot about the whole thing. I am sure that there are exceptions in the neighborhood.

So, no - I do not remember Lionel/Flyer/Marx arguments, yet people had them - the relevant stores carried trains, seasonally or year-round.

My immediate neighborhood buds had Lionel and I had Gilbert American Flyer. Ted had a very impressive Lionel layout with a Berkshire, Lackawanna FM, UP Anniversary set, and a GG1 pulling a set of aluminum passenger cars. Also many nice accessories and operating cars (milk and cattle). John had a turbine set that ran in a oval on the floor with a couple of accessories. I had five engines and 28 cars (passenger, freight and work). Two operating loops and ZW for power. 4 X 16 layout. There were no disagreements, just enjoying each other's trains! We would all go into Manhattan and visit both the Lionel showroom and the Gilbert Hall of Science. Great memories!

Tinplate Art, visiting the Lionel showroom and Gilbert Hall of Science is what one calls Almost Heaven.  When does today's time machine depart so we can all get on board to relive those wonderful days of our youth all over again?