what did Lionel do during the war

They made compasses for Navy ships.  Every now and then, one will show up on

Ebay.

I saw Lionel compasses on the battleship North Carolina last year.

I know you asked about what they made for the war effort, but another aspect of Lionel’s WW2  experience is that the restrictions on production of metal items led them to produce a paper train kit. I remember reading in the Hollander book about how these were very hard to assemble, especially for younger kids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...artime_Freight_Train

There a now fairly hard to find.  NIB one went for $270 earlier this month on ebay

I remember seeing a Lionel waist gunner machine gun mount at an airshow some years back.  I think it was in the Movie Memphis Belle B-17, which is still making airshow appearances and offering flight experiences.  

I got to see a Lionel Gyrocompass awhile back that a friend of my dad have.  Pretty cool device.

Lionel made "sound powered phones", a head phone and mic worn around the neck for shipboard communication. They were still in common use when I served in vietam.

They also made telegraph keys, I have one. 

"LIONEL" MILITARY GENERAL PURPOSE KEY J-38: This is the straight key which was manufactured for the military by the Lionel Toy Company during WWII. It has a solid black cast metal base which carries the (L) symbol and is marked "The Lionel Corporation, New York, N.Y. in the center of the top. Most examples have brass hardware and shorting levers and a steel lever and are mounted on a black bakelite base which is inscribed J-38 and includes "Line" and "Tel" terminals. The bottom of the base usually has a large letter "L" cast into it.

73 Scott NI0L

They also had a subsidiary named "Lion-Ed" that made wooden toys for pre-schoolers. In the aforementioned "All Aboard", there are photos of things made. My wife and I found a #D5 Girl's Puppy Rocker in an antique shop some years ago. If I hadn't read the book, I'd've walked right past it.

Why do telegraph keys have a "shorting bar"?  BTW, Houston Tinplate does have a Lionel key in a display case.

Dom, N5TCB

I was stationed at the Army base Fort Kobbe, CZ in the mid 70's.  Our unit had several TA-1 Field Phones that were built by Lionel.  "Built by" was either molded into the bakelite handle or it was on a metal label held on with rivets.

I've since looked for one at various military surplus stores but without success.

The Lionel Corp made taffrail logs, binnacles and other navigational items. You can see them for sale in the Blue Hall every 6 months.  During the Cold War, Lionel's Brooklyn, NY subsidiary made radiological monitors ("Geiger counters") and radiation dosimeters.

Why do telegraph keys have a "shorting bar"?

Telegraph circuits that ran between a line of RR stations used one wire and an earth return, with all the keys and sounders in series.  A battery was installed at each end with the positive grounded at one end and the negative grounded at the other. Each station had two wires coming into the office, an East wire and a West wire.

The shorting bar on a telegraph key, which is a normally-open switch, closes the line through from one wire to the other. The key was left in the "shorted" position so that the line (East and West legs) remained continuous for all the users. If you wanted to send a message, you opened your shorting bar and started transmitting.  The sounders at all the stations in both directions would respond to your keying.

If the message was intended for you, and you got behind in copying the dots and dashes, you could momentarily open your shorting bar, which would have the effect of making the sender's sounder stop operating.  That would alert the sender to stop keying and put his shorting bar across the line, allowing you to tell him where you lost your place in the message.

In the event that the line got broken, everyone's sounder would click once and then not receive any messages. The operators would then do a check either with a meter or another method to determine in which direction the fault was.  The method was to place the meter on each of the wires, one at a time, with respect to the ground connection. In one direction, they would see voltage, and in the other direction, they would not.  They would then send a message on the usable portion of the line saying that they did/did not have power from a certain direction.  By process of elimination, the repairman could figure out roughly where the fault was.

In the absence of a meter, they could simply run a wire to the ground stake (lightning protector) and test the two incoming wires, and then send the test message as described above.

Using one iron wire and a ground return was cheaper but less efficient than using a pair of wires.  Later in the evolution of the industry, when telephone connections used a pair of wires with some copper in the metallic composition, telegraph companies used a method that superimposed their circuit over the telephone pair, called a phantom circuit. This reduced the resistance in the circuit and made the system more reliable.

The voltage, by the way, was supplied by wet cells and could reach anywhere from 200 to 300 volts to overcome the resistances in very long line wires.  Since handling and splicing wires with that much juice was extremely dangerous, once the repairman found the fault, he would use a field telegraph test set and have the operators at the stations to either side of the fault open the main wire connections and put a lower-voltage battery on the line, so he could verify the continuity of the wire and make his splice safely. Then, using the field set, he would transmit a message that told the two stations involved to restore the main circuit voltage.

See chapters 11 through 14 in this book, for more detailed info:

http://long-lines.net/sources/att_principles_ocr.pdf

I met both brothers at Madison Hardware back in the early 80's, they repaired my #50 Gang Car. That place off Madison Square Park was a train buffs "candyland", now when I pass by I sigh.

There are also Lionel compasses on the battleship USS New Jersey BB62 which is in Camden NJ. Given the fact that the USS New Jersey was refurbished, modernized, and recommissioned in 1982 and the Lionel compasses that were installed when she was built and first commissioned in 1943 were left and used right were they were first installed says something about the quality of these compasses. If it ain't broke don't fix it. The compasses looked great and were still fully functional and serviceable when my family and I visited the ship several years ago. An outstanding product built by Lionel 

Enjoy

Frank       

During my Army service, I served as the battalion CBR NCO, and I had a gray-enameled Lionel Geiger counter with the model number ANPDR27-J. 

Anyone know why Lionel raised chickens? this is a test. Don

There must be some fowl reason for it.  Matt

Fresh egg albumin was a paint ingredient. (I think it was the paint, anyway.)

My guess is they wanted to be able to say they were manufacturing shells (as well as compasses) for the Navy.  If true, they certainly hatched quite a scheme.

Seriously, though, enough poultry attempts at humor.  I'm sure they had an eggcellent reason for raising chickens.

They used the fresh egg Whites in compass dial marking paint and cooked the yellows for in the cafeteria.The egg whites needed to be fresh.

Bob C.

Let's not foget the electric cattle fence guard

Did anybody mention field (pocket) compasses?

I don't know when they were made, it could have been after WWII.

Below are some photos I lifted from Ebay:

Apparently the brown "stain" on the face of the compass belongs there. Every Lionel compass I've seen has it.

Of all the Lensetic Compasses I went through in my 37 Army years I never knew Lionel made some.  I never looked, now I wish I would have.  I have a new one upstairs.  Gonna check it now.