This article discusses the hobby started by Joshua Lionel Cowen. He built a fan powered by dry cells then made a miniature train car.
Every year near Christmas we set up the platform in the basement on a sheet of plywood. Many of us did that but a few had the space to keep it up year round and had more elaborate displays. Some very large too.
My brother and I each had a track and our train and of course we raced them.
When my wife was born it was an excuse for her father to buy a train set too. I recently donated them to our local railroad museum.
I had a slot car track in my early teens, but the first was a Lionel O gauge train set. O is 1:48 scale, run on an electrified track, with a variable transformer to control the speed. There were pellets you could drop into the smokestack where they would produce puffs of smoke as they melted on a hot plate.
HO is more popular since 1:87 scale doesn't require as much real estate. There is a local toy train club that has some elaborate dioramas that they keep adding to. It's adults, not kids.
I don't remember anyone having a model train setup. Toy farm machinery was the thing when I was a kid. And BB guns. Most of the little towns in south central/eastern Nebraska had train tracks to the local coops. A good share of those tracks have been pulled up. Towns are shrinking, farms growing, and schools are consolidating. Covid sped things up a little. The little bars/restaurants were forced to close. I graduated in a high school class of 83 back in the early 70s. The largest class now in the same district has less than half that.
I had a friend that was a big gun collector but in his late 60's switched to model trains. Had a big setup in one of his garages and recall him traveling 600 miles to see a model train show.
My brother had a Lionel train, set up in the attic on two pieces of plytwood sitting on 2" edges. 3 pieces after we got a set of switches. When he left for college, he gave me almost all the stuff he left behind, except the train.
But it ended up being mine anyhow. EVentually when my mother moved again while I was in college, the tracks were taken off the wood and the wood left behind. It hasn't been set up since, but it's sitting in a big box in a closet about 15 feet from where I am now.
When I was 10, we took parts of it to the YMCA to race against other kids'. But my engine fell over on a turn. I should have thought in advance to tell them I didn't have Magne-traction, and maybe I could have competed against others who also didn't. Do you remember Magne-traction.
Life is swell with Lionel. That was either their slogan or one my brother made up
There are eleborate trains set up in at least 2 of the nearby fire stations, during December and maybe some others farther away. Many people go see them, inclding sometimes me.
Yes, you're right. It was Jackie Gleason who came up with the saying I atributed to my borther or Lionel.
He had a train that went through a hole in the wall to another room, and came back with a drink on it.
That was probably Reggie van Gleason III. He may have gotten his money from his father, like trump, but he didn't have the other bad habits.
They show The Honeymooners, which I think they extracted from his one-hour show, but you never see Reggie or the Poor Soul (who I didn't really like) or the June Taylor Dancers anymore. They would film them from above so you could see the clever patterns they made.
Well, it's not a scheduled broadcast but they do have
I will watch these later.
The Honeymooners. My goodness you're getting old. Rawhide? Gunsmoke? Lucy and Desi? My parents had to listen to Lawrence Welk on Saturday evenings.
Our PBS station still has some of the Welk shows. In the 50's he was sponsored by Dodge. Not sure of the connection but there was something where you could win a new Dodge every year for life.
OK, here it is
You can usually snip everything after the actual search terms, so start at the ampersand and remove everything to the end.
Your long link becomes
I remember the pellets in the stack. If I recall correctly, they were in a tiny glass amber jar.
I wouldn't swear what color the jar was but amber is a possibility.
I'm still playing with toys but I've moved on:
I wonder why I remember amber. The ebay listings ring true.
Unfortunately the eBay listing didn't have dates for the round amber bottles versus the square clear. I really don't remember but I'm thinking clear. I do remember the 1033 transformer rather than the later 1044 and found the video amusing where the guy thinks it was the best ever made. There is another video where it was modified with a full wave rectifier. According to him with DC you can run the train slowly and it will pull through the curves where it will stall out on AC at a slow speed.
A long ways from Lawrence W. but these gals are fun.
Rev. Gibbons... Okay. I liked his cameos on Bones as Angela's rather protective father.
Somehow 'Baby Got Back' came to mind.
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