Introduction to Lionel® Standard Gauge
by Ken Morgan
Lionel® trains appeared on the scene rather serendipitously in 1901 in a store window on Cortlandt Street in downtown New York. Lionel’s first railroad model was not really the first electric toy train, nor was it designed as such, nor did it look like one, nor was it even labelled “Lionel.” It was designed as an attention grabber, a marketing device to draw people into the store. And while we all remember Joshua Lionel Cohen, or Cowen, to which he changed his last name – for marketing purposes – as an inventor and a great manufacturer of toy trains, what he truly was, was a marketing genius. Lionel’s first trains were neither user friendly nor representative of what the trains most people saw looked like. The tracks Cowen used for his first trains were a unique 2-7/8 inches gauge and were composed of metal strips forced into slots in separate wood ties, while many contemporary manufacturers were already using tubular sectional track and their trains looked like trains. Some even were electrical, although clockwork was far more common, not to mention some live steams toy trains. Since it turned out that customers wanted to buy Cowen’s little window display, he made a few more and the history of toy trains changed forever. The first known catalog for Lionel trains appeared in 1903, and except for a couple of trolleys, an open-air version and a closed one called a motorized passenger car that sure looked like a trolley and in various combinations was lettered either street railway or rapid transit, none of the 2-7/8 inch rolling stock he made would look familiar to most people. But that all changed a few years later, with the number 5 0-4-0T steam loco, maybe, at least as a prototype, in 1905, but certainly in full glory, in the 1906 catalog, complete with rolling stock and electrical three rail tubular sectional track, not to mention four trolleys, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, and a bigger number 6 4-4-0 loco with tender. But the 5 is generally seen as the first of the line, although a couple of the trolleys probably hit the market at least as soon. Why? Trolleys were common in Lionel’s home market in the northeast and were similar to the 2-7/8 inch trolleys, or at least that motorized passenger car. Trolleys were also easier to build than steam locos. They didn’t need big round boilers. But the 5 could actually be coupled up to freight cars and make up a train. And next, even more importantly, there was Cowen’s marketing genius. His tubular tracks were similar to others on the market, but they were just a bit different gauge from everybody else’s. They were a fraction of an inch wider than the popular contemporary 1 gauge, and smaller than the next larger 2 gauge. While he didn’t call it standard gauge immediately, he did christen his trains as “The Standard of the World” by 1908. And everybody else had to comply with his new track gauge to be in the American market, although they didn’t use Lionel’s term. They referred to it as wide gauge. By 1910, Lionel added three electric prototypes in small, medium, and large, plus a self-propelled interurban passenger car, and the Lionel Manufacturing Company was off to the races. These first-generation trains tended to use muted colors and real railroad lettering. With the exception of some parts on the steam engines, the domes, stack, cylinders, back-head, pilot beam, and boiler front, they were all metal, and all the subsequent trains would be metal. Freight cars were offered in two sizes, but in a plan that would continue throughout the product line, passenger cars were produced in small, medium, and large, and would have more changes made over the years.
Beginning in 1923 and continuing over the next few years, Lionel revised its entire standard gauge and O gauge lines as part of a new marketing strategy that largely did away with prototypical dull colors and real railroad names on most locos and cars. They introduced many more, often bright, enameled trains with copper, brass, or nickel trin, usually lettered “Lionel Lines,” although some were still lettered for such real railroads as New York Central and Illinois
Central, notably in O gauge, but with some rolling stock in standard gauge. This revised line is generally referred to as the classic period of standard gauge. The two sizes for standard gauge freight cars continued, but the sizes and varieties of passenger equipment blossomed. The locomotives also changed drastically, with steam engines disappearing after the last version of the number 5 in 1926 and they did not reappear until the 390 debuted in 1929. All steam engines had four drivers, with all but two being 2-4-2s. The exceptions were the smallest and biggest: the 2-4-0 number 384, and the 4-4-4 number 400, the best-known example of which was a spectacular blue engine. Electric locomotives continued to be based on the NYC S-2 prototype, with three different numbers, but only two sizes medium and large, but two more body types were introduced. The first was based on the Milwaukee Road’s big bi-polar electric used in the mountains in the Pacific northwest, in three sizes, small, medium, and large. Then a basic box cab style in both small and large. All standard gauge locos used four wheeled motors, with the two large S-types having a pair of them, similar to the last of their early ancestors.
Lionel stopped producing standard gauge locomotives in the middle 1930s, although they continued to catalogue them for a few years. This was most likely due to economic factors. The depression was lingering, and O gauge trains were smaller and more affordable. The last standard gauge electric loco to be catalogued was the gray 9E in 1935. The steam locos (385/1635, 392, and 400) were in the catalog through 1939, but there were no significant changes to them after 1936 other than the 385 dropping the chugger in 1937. There would be no more standard gauge production until years later when the train collecting hobby opened up a new market for both reproductions of old standard gauge and some new models to enhance the production by Lionel and many competitors.
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