When manufacturers started making toy trains over 100 years ago, they couldn’t have known how popular these toys would become or how they would become a lifelong hobby and obsession for many people. Certainly, Joshua Lionel Cowen did not know when he first put a small engine into a model flat car in 1901 that his name would soon become and remain a household word for millions of people generation after generation. He, too, could not have known that Lionel’s model trains would become one of the biggest names in model railways in the world.
Ironically, Lionel’s first train, known simply as the “Electric Express,” was not designed as a toy, but simply as an animated display to get people’s attention. He certainly did and inquiries began to pour in from people who wanted to buy this amazing little railway as a gift for his children.
Over the years, the popularity of Lionel model trains would wax and wane, the company would change hands many times, but this toy would never completely disappear from American culture. Today, more than 50 million railway sets have been sold and more than 300 miles of track are produced each year.
The Rise of Lionel Trains
The popularity of model train building in general and Lionel trains in particular has its basis in the romanticism of American culture. Railways were the first symbol of modern transportation and people watched real locomotives racing down the tracks with their long line of wagons and imagined what it would be like to climb aboard and be taken somewhere new and different. Later, when the real railroads began to die out, the miniature railroads would become a part of America’s romantic history, much like the old west and mountain men of yesteryear.
One of the things that made Lionel’s model trains so in demand was the quality of their construction and the fine attention to detail that went into every locomotive, every car, and every building, person, and section of track. They all seemed so real that people began to see themselves as conductors, owners and tycoons of their own railways. It became a lifelong hobby that often began when a child discovered the first Lionel Little Train running under the tree on Christmas morning. A prized toy that over the years would become a hobby that would later be shared and passed down from generation to generation.
Clubs would form, and as more and more people began to share an interest in building model railways, lively competitions would arise to see who could build the largest and most realistic toy railway empire. In the 1950s and 1960s it was not uncommon to see parents and children at hobby shops every Saturday looking for the latest locomotive or other building, tree, or utility pole to add to their growing railroad tracks.
Today, adult men are the main buyers of model train tracks, cars and accessories, having rediscovered the joys of building model trains enjoyed by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Model railways have become part of our heritage and Lionel model trains continue to lead the way in quality locomotives, rolling stock and track.