March 21, 2024 • 54 mins
What is it about model trains that so captivates people, young and old alike? How did they start as an icon of innovation, and then become such a treasured piece of nostalgia over time? In today's episode, the gang explores the history of model trains from centuries past to the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give a big shout out to
our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Would you guys call me the conductor.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I've thought about it, but I don't want you to
get power man.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Like I haven't already gotten there.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
No, I think you're okay. You're on the edge. You're
just on the edge of your power. Lukewarm power, curious power,
curious your nol. I bet this is Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We're we're on the road for a couple of different
adventures right now, so you may you may hear us
doing some guest spots on some friends shows. We are
coming to you two thirds of the way from New York.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh, yes, I see, I see. I got the calculation there.
And yeah, you also might hear the thrum of a
heating unit that I can't figure out how to turn off.
But I'm doing my best. I've got the mic pointed
away from it. And Maxwell, I'm calling you that for
this episode for reasons. By the way, usually it's pretty
good at magicking that stuff away.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And actual James. Maybe maybe yes, see, I don't.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Know old m J. Also know, if you're comfortable with
us doing this on air, I can tell you what
the fan is. Background, folks, we're in the same hotel,
recording remotely.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I've seen each other yet in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Okay, So I was trying to figure this out while
I was doing some research this morning, because I flew
into an ungodly hour. If you I kid you not,
I bet I know what this is. You know, if
you go to your door and then you see the
light switch by the front door, you're going to see
a little plaque that says, uh like sound cancelation or other.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Okay, it's like a little knob. Yeah, let me go,
let go, uh caress the knob. Wait, not what you get?
You get it?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
You get it, get it? And so uh while we're
doing that, I hope that works a bit of background, folks,
today's episode is all about model trains. Hints our banter
at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
What black magic is this?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Did it works? It works? And it's weird because this hotel.
I guess the building is old because it's one of
those places where it has no convenient outlets and the
outlets that it does have don't like to grip a
modern plug very well. They just kind of slide right out.
And yet it has this new fangled noise masking system
(02:59):
for the heating.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It's because it's an open air like atrium inside and
they have that live band.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That's right, that's what I see what you're saying. So,
so the noise I was hearing was the feature, not
the bug.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Right, not yet.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's it's white noise. It's just being generated. It wasn't
being generated. But wow, we're all learning so much about
this hotel. I'm not going to dock us and say
which one it is. But I like it here. We
like it here, and we haven't been in a while,
and I'm excited to be back in New York. And
I know we'll see each other in person very soon
been but in the meantime, we can just pretend like
it's business as usual, right.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, Yeah, And that big aspiration and putting on my
vision board is I hope next time we're on the
road we can bring super producer maxwells with us.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
For a second, I thought you were saying and right
now I'm putting on my vision pro uh goggles. So
that I can experience this from the moon.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right there, we go, and we will podcast on the
moon one day.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
We'll be the first. We'll be the first mark our words.
We said it here folks speaking of aspiration provision boards.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, so that might sound like a crazy ambition. Why
would you guys do that kind of thing? But you
know what, once upon a time people said the same
thing about toys like model trains.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Bro Once upon a time before that, people said the
same thing about trains. That's a very good point.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yes, if God had wanted us to use railroads, we
would have tracks and wheels instead of feet whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I thought.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So this is something that has been on our minds
for a while. I think, you know, like a lot
of kids I grew up with, I would say a dabbling,
a dabblement in the world of model trains, because these
things can get super ornate and super expensive pretty quickly.
(04:57):
I don't know, if you have ever had the chance
to go over to a friend's house, or maybe a
museum or an exhibit, you see someone who's gone all in,
like they have sacrificed their basement to have a little
town with a train.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, no I haven't, But if there is ever one
that I want to experience. It belongs to the seminal
nineteen seventies and on into our sixties even and on
into the present. Singer songwriter, artist extraordinary Neil Young, who
has apparently a one thousand foot square foot model train
(05:35):
situation on his ranch in northern California, and he's so
into classic trains, including a Lionel number seven fifty two
w Union specific, not specific, but Pacific Streamliner from the thirties,
as well as a wireless control system. All of this
like early model train stuff we're going to get into.
That'd be the one I want to hang out with.
(05:57):
Neil His in his model train dungeon whatever it is,
sounds more like a barn situation.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
One thousand square feet. That's quite humbling because that's larger
than some of like one of my old apartments. But
I think this These things are really fascinating because they
also tell us a bit about the time in which
they were created. They're a way to view society. And
we also know we're just gonna go ahead and say this.
(06:24):
We're going to lean on Max at a couple points
in our conversation today because Max is a mad man
for model trains.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Mad Man Max the Conductor, Mad Max the mad Conductor.
Really like that. I like that.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And so these early trains, the first ones like they
date back to I guess like model railroading. The actual
ones that work and aren't just carved things. These date
back to the early nineteenth century tinplate toys were first manufactured,
and they were by clockwork mechanisms, so they were pretty complicated.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Very complicated, very expensive to produce, not really in the
realm of like mass manufactured objects, right.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I would say, you know, in the beginning, probably not
because they hadn't quite become popular right when they started.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It was.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
It was by the end of the nineteenth century, the
end of the eighteen hundreds that the first commercial model
trains were made. So I'd say you're correct on that,
And well let's get into it. Let's start with this
great article by Barry Coulter from O Gauge Train Repair,
and you'll if you re listen to this episode, then
(07:43):
the title of that website will make much more.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Sense to you for sure. And by the way, Neil
Young's at least one of his you know, largest model
train setups is an O gauge which is a larger
scale model train. So before we we'll get into some
of these terms. But yeah, according to culture, model trains
is quote from this article have been the Christmas delight
(08:07):
of youngsters for many generations, from the most primitive replicas
of the Iron Horse in the eighteen hundreds the most
sophisticated railroad sets of today. Trains have remained atop the
Christmas lists of both the young and the old.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Because, as we're finding, they're also hacking nostalgia, right, because
kids have this vision often associated with holidays, Birthday, Christmas
in particular for the practitioners of Christmas. So when it
reminds me so much of what happens with legos, because
(08:42):
legos are kind of pricey, and one of the biggest
Lego markets is it children. It's adults who can finally
afford all the cool spaceships their parents wouldn't buy you Bulins.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, yeah, exactly. Isn't that funny though, I mean, it's
I'm stating the obvious here, but nostalgia obviously works in cycles, right,
because you can't have nostalgia for something until it's old
and kind of been forgotten and fallen out of fashion,
and then all of a sudden, you know, before you
know it, it sort of has this resurgence that can
(09:16):
kind of you know, wax and wane a little bit
on its own. And you know, Lego of course and
Model trains as well as we'll see really capitalize on that,
not only because of the you know, the medium itself,
but all the tie ins. Like you mentioned spaceships, right,
a lot of the big, really expensive Lego sets are
tied in with things like Star Wars, and they'll be
(09:37):
the classic Star Wars designs like the Death Star, the
Millennium Falcon or what have you.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, one hundred percent, and I love all of those.
In fact, I had a dark night of the soul
a few months back where I got very close to
buy just a cartoonishly expensive Lego set that I had
no room to put it anywhere, and add no business buying.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Uh. We've been doing the Lego set like floral arrangements,
and we've got so many of them now and have
actually very recently started growing our own actual facts flowers.
So the Lego flowers are sort of starting to be
a little bit in the way, so I've had to
I've had to relegate them to my basement studio situation,
(10:23):
which is fine because I love them and they never died.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, I've got I've got a couple of the Lego
architecture sets. People kept giving those to me for Christmas
because I said, anything but socks to my friends.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
They celebrate Christmas also socks. As an adult, I love
a good sock.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I feel like I'm always almost out of socks. It's weird,
but all right, today's story about model trains. We have
to talk about trains, the actual trains people, you know,
normal sized people rioted And this concept is modern in
the grand scheme of things, I guess, but it dates back.
(10:59):
Surprise icingly, Long time Culture points out the concept of
steam engine trains and locomotives. Yes, doesn't come around till
the eighteen hundreds, but the idea of making a train
dates all the way back to you know, ancient Rome.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Oh man, I mean, it's really just a practical way
of moving stuff. You know, if you'll if if one
bucket full of stuff is good, then why not link
ten or twenty buckets full of stuff? And then you
have to do the calculation of how much pull do
I need to get these things moving? In the Roman times,
they actually created these paved sort of precursor railway systems
(11:37):
for these wagons that were drawn by of course animals.
And then later in England we started to see horse
drawn wagons that were built out of the same kind
of idea in order to carry coals from the mines
where they were you know, mined to loading sites onto
boats where they could then be shipped and used for trade,
(11:59):
you know, to all parts of the United Kingdom. So
it is a pretty And then of course in the
early days of trains we start seeing you know, the
iron horse. That's the term that's being used because it's
replacing the actual horse, much like horsepower in cars is
used as the sort of amorphous measurement for you know,
how fast and how much torque you know, a vehicle
(12:21):
can produce.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, and that's kind of a skewmrph almost right, the
concept of horsepower.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, remind us again, I think we talked about it
on our episode with Morocco. But the skew morph is
sort of a familiar thing that's built into a new
thing to make people not scared of the new thing.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, that's a pretty that's a pretty good definition there.
The roots of model trains go back to when steam
powered locomotives are first introduced. And this is a common
thing because you know, you see it now in twenty
twenty four as we record, a lot of young kids,
like very young children, go through these phases where they're
(13:03):
fascinated with machinery, right like construction equipment, et cetera, tru
sump trucks, space shuttles. So when the steam powered locomotive
comes out, it's like on the level of a space
shuttle and it's launching the world into industrialization. It becomes
this symbol of progress of innovation and James Maxwell no
(13:25):
relation to our pale Max Williams. He cites that I
had to get that one in for you.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Max.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
He cites that they become this iconic thing. Originally they
weren't made for kids. They were made for engineers and
people working in the railroad industry so that they could
understand how actual full scale trains would work. Absolutely is
what you do in engineering.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
You still do it. Have you ever you know, seen
like city planners or urban planners and say that you'll
always see, you know, these kind of little miniaturized versions
of a city or like of a development or whatever uh.
And and with prototyping with cars and that level of engineering,
especially when it comes to design, you'll see these very
(14:13):
elaborately kind of like uh crafted, hand crafted off in
clay models of the ultimate design.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Such a sucker for that. I used to hang out
at our the building where old office was. They had
a yes, exact model. And it also reminds, you know,
it's one of the best parts of Hereditary is the
building of those models at dioramas, the best parts.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
That movie is such a soul crushing bummer, but it's excellent.
It's very very good. It's a classic buddy comedy. Yeah right,
not for the faint of heart. Yeah, it's true. And
and and a lot of these techniques, you know, have
been largely replaced by digital modeling now. But you know,
much like the nostalgia boom that goes along with the
(15:00):
you know, resurgence and popularity of model trains and Lego's.
Like we were talking, there's a lot of sort of
classicist sort of ideas behind design where they're like, no,
we don't, we don't do the digital version, you know,
we only do it by hand.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah, exactly, And speaking making things by hand, it should
be no surprise than that model trains, like a lot
of toys, to be honest, come from this sort of
high faluting I'm always say not quite high falluting, mid flute,
a mid foalute artisanal background. If you want to see
(15:41):
the origin the first trained toys model trains, you're going
to look into Germany in the eighteen thirties. Now when
they're making these initial trains. And I know some people
don't want to be called toy trains. So when they're
making these model trains the.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
First your dad said, this isn't a toy, you know,
don't touch my.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Stuff, or like Hank and breaking bad is like they're minerals.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, exactly, don't call it rocks.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
But anyway, so these these German craftsmen, their crafts folk,
they pour molten brass or maybe ten into a into
a mold, the same way that they earlier made ten soldiers,
and then they judge it up with wooden fittings like
you were talking about handcarved stuff. It makes it look
like a miniature version of a train. But these things
(16:30):
are fragile. They don't have any moving parts. You manually
push them along a track.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, not quite as cool. And not quite as indicative
of the like true logistics of locomotion, right, which is
ultimately I think what really attracts people to the stuff
is like that makes them like go all out and
buy the conductor's hat and stand in the middle of
their giant ring of train trav model train tracks in
(16:57):
their city that they are both you know, engineer mayor
and god of exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And this gets us to the more elaborate early model trains.
The crafts folk over in France are already great tinsmiths
and they become known for making very ornate designs on
their toy trains, tall chimneys just so spoke to wheels,
(17:25):
and these trains are I would say, like if you
look at them, you would think the French ones are
almost more like art pieces. The German trains had the tracks,
but the French trains didn't. You just pushed them along
the floor. And unfortunately, it's kind of like when you
look at the Pyramids today, when you look at those
(17:46):
old original French model trains, you have to realize they
used to look a lot different because they were painted
and paint does not stick to tin very well.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
That's a good point. Yeah, those do those classic tens
unless they've been you know, sort of preserved or sort
of re painted, I guess they do tend to lose
that luster and look a little bit decrepit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, that's a good point too. Like we see other
European forces making model trains. There was a designer in England,
Sir Henry Wood. Yeah, he's the one who took it
up a notch and he said, how cool would it
be if these trains actually worked like real trains. So
he built the first steam powered toys and they've got
(18:35):
some famous names.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
That's right. Well, these are more like I guess colloquial nicknames, right,
the dribblers and the piddlers because of this sort of
snail trail they kind of leave behind them with the
excess moisture that gets produced from the steam. But still
super cool. Again, this is like a like a like
a scale model kind of situation, and it's operating largely
(19:01):
in the similar manner to the real thing.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, which is endlessly fascinating. They also have, as you
point out the research ear Max, they also have some
of the same annoyances for parents that other toys had,
like stepping on the lego piece you know, now you've
slipped on a snail trail of water, yeap, and and
you can't you can't break the toy training because you're
(19:25):
probably paid so much for it.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
So these are largely in the realm of the let's
say it privileged at this point, right, I mean not always.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Again, I think mid Fillutin is good. It was definitely
a toy that well to do children would have, but
I think also at this time a lot of families
were still making their own toys.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Oh that's a good point, especially, and you know European
toys have a rich history of craftsmanship, you know, and
wooden toys, and then the idea of like making your
own that comes from this similar type of design, you know, ethos, Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And we also want to point out that the craftsmen
who were making these toy trains previously they were making
other toy trains, but they were also making musical instruments,
so they had the manufacturing prowess to make the the
small clockwork mechanisms you needed for these working toy trains,
(20:27):
and their clockwork approach eliminated the design flaw of the
first steam powered toys, and.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
These definitely would have been Oh yeah, yeah, largely reigated
to the to the rich, the riches of the riches.
The company Newton and Co. Which already sounds like a
mega bespoke old timey company. Yeah, this is this is
the company that was making these much more elaborate brass models. However,
(20:57):
they still weren't particularly accurate, try as they might, nor
were they you know, scaled correctly. And again, you know,
maybe we haven't gone through this exactly, but I think
people can probably put it together. Scaling really refers to
just like how you know, like not one to one,
but like you know, if you have like a part
(21:18):
that is a certain size compared to the large thing,
then that smaller version is going to have that same
part be in proportion to a smaller thing.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Right, Yeah, Just like with any other kind of hobbyist model,
whether that's a car or whether that's a you know,
an airplane or something, the scale is a representation of
the proportion of the accuracy of the proportions. And I
think it's like you said, one to one, so one
(21:49):
to one scale is life size.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It's the real thing, right, And we're going to get
into the various different types of scale in a little
bit yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, and like you said with the European craftsman with
the clockwork trains, these are for the well to do families.
They don't really catch on in the United States though,
at this point, and that's because it's seen as like
kind of a fancy pants European thing until Uncle Sam's
(22:19):
folks start making their own trains.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Leave it to the Americans to take something fancy and
bespoken European and turn it into trash. I'm kidding. They're cool,
they're more accessible. It's a big deal that they do this,
but it is sort of the reputation I think of
American design compared to say European design and manufacturing to
(22:41):
be a little less concerned with the details and a
little more concerned with the quantity perhaps sober quality. Yeah,
economy of scale.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So it's the mid eighteen hundreds. This is where we
start to see the US market of toy trains come
into the four Matthias Baldwin, founder of the Baltimore Locomotive Works,
makes a trade model in the eighteen thirties, and then
if you get to like the late eighteen thirties to
eighteen forty, then you'll see several other toy makers start
(23:14):
making their own toy trains, and for one reason or another,
Americans prefer buying these to the European what's probably affordability
is a huge part of it.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Absolutely, and I am being grossly general in my description
of American manufacturer. America obviously makes some really great products,
and there are incredible crafts folk here in the United
States and have been for a generations. So please do
not take my tongue in cheek statement there as a
total condemnation of American toy makers and or manufactured while
(23:49):
good to come for us. Yeah, please don't mind. I'm
scared of you. Sebastian Bach of skid Row another massive
model train enthusiast, and Neil Young please don't come for
me together gang up on me. But to that point,
this is what is considered. From from eighteen sixty two
around eighteen ninety, the golden age of American ten train making.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah, a lot of famous train makers come into the game,
especially after George Brown and Co. From Connecticut makes the
first self propelled American model train. It was clockwork nuts
steam powered, and so you get companies that might be
familiar to model train buffs ives Holland Stafford, auth of
(24:35):
Bergman and Co. Francis Field and Francis James follows they
sound a lot like watch companies, you know, like a
classy yeah, watch company. But still they didn't have the
they didn't have all them we associate with model trains today.
They just their designs were simple. They sold the train.
(24:58):
The rest of the world old you might build around
the train was.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Up to you, exactly, And that's part of the fun
of it, really is the modular nature of the whole thing, right,
which we'll get into more of the accessory options in
a little bit. So train travel has now become a
bit more of a thing that you know, everyone can afford.
It's not just used for industry. It's used for you know,
(25:23):
moving moving people and for kind of you know, taking
more kind of pleasure trips. Right. So James Maxwell, as
we mentioned in that Medium article, writes that with the
increasing popularity of rail travel and the advent of mass
production techniques, the toy train industry really starts to take
shape in the late nineteenth century. This is when we
(25:44):
start to see Lionel, just an American company, and Merklen,
which is a German company, start to really emerge as
kind of the main players in the game, especially in
terms of quality and affordability, kind of the balance between
those two right.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Right, right, So they're taking different approaches, like Mirklan focuses
on these really accurate, highly detailed replicas of locomotives and
what's called rolling stock. Rolling stock is the term for
things like cargo units. Rolling stock just describes anything attached
or part of the train that is not the locomotive. Right,
(26:28):
so your caboose sleeper car.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Percent think about getting stopped at a railroad crossing and
just seeing the line of you know, shipping containers blasting pass.
That's rolling stock. That's rolling stock.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And so Miriklin appeals to collectors who are really about
high quality and authenticity, and Lionel gets more of a
reputation for these are fun model trains for kids and
for serious hobbyists. And this history proves that this approach
works very well for Lionel. It was founded in nineteen
(27:03):
hundred by Joshua Lionel Cowen Cohen, and this company would
go on to become one of the most influential manufacturers
in all of the United States.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
And it's interesting too, because initially they weren't even manufacturing
these as a toy or as you know, a solution
for these hobbyists. We can totally picture this if we
think of the classic toy store, you know, department store
kind of window dressing operation with the train, the model
(27:34):
train going around and around a track. It's maybe you know,
elevated up in the ceiling, right, and that is what
the original Lionel designs were meant to do. The Electric
Express was designed to be a particularly fetching window display
for toy stores.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, and it worked by golly by gum because you know,
at this point when they designed their first train, Electric
Express and show it in toy stores, they're working in
a world where most people are not going to have
electricity in their house. So that's this huge appeal. And
by the time we hit nineteen oh six, they're moving
(28:14):
so quickly. They start companies start selling pre assembled tracks,
you can get different rolling stock and engines, and this
is where the modern Lionel train company really begins to
take shape, because look, yeah, it might not be fancy,
it might not be the locomotive equivalent of a Philip
(28:34):
Ptek or something, but we we know people were saying, hey,
these are really good toys. They do have a lot
of quality, and then Lionel does something that's even smarter.
They introduce all these cool little bells and whistles sometimes
literally cool little bells and whistles, but like smoke generators,
(28:55):
remote control systems, all the fun stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Well it's neat too, because you know, these early Lionel
trains were powered by batteries, early kind of versions of
batteries known as wet cells, which are you know, these
little things that are filled with corrosive acid, which of
course were replaced largely by I believe dry cell batteries,
although I do you know, certain batteries you get to
(29:17):
this day, like energizer or whatever. If you leave them
in something for long enough, they do start to corrode,
similar to the kind of you know, corrosion you'll see
on your car battery. So there is still some kind
of nasty chemical inside these batteries today, right, Yeah, there's
still some.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Weird stuff going on, but'll you run into that with
a lot of batter But I.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Think the early wet cell batteries were real nasty, and
then they were eventually replaced by transformers, the electric transformer,
the one ten volt and in the early nineteen hundreds,
of course, electricity was still not a sure thing to
be in everybody's home, and there was a lot of
fascination around that. And as we mentioned, trains were already
(29:58):
steam powered. Trains were already kind of representative of this
idea of the future and innovation, and so electricity was
of course as well. And to incorporate that into a
toy that had this aspirational quality already and already represented
something that was already kind of considered this image of
you know, productivity and ingenuity and the American spirit and
(30:22):
all that stuff, it makes sense that they would have
taken off.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
And there's one thing that they didn't predict amid all
their smart business plans, the Great Depression, which again I
think is just a terrible name. So the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties, or this real Halcyon era, we'll get
to that later too, Halcion era for model trains, it's
golden age.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's very popular amid the populace.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
They would go popular by the populace, popular with the people,
and the model train layouts. There's kind of like an
arms race of who can make the most allowed apparate
expanse of ones, put your buildings in there, maybe have
lifelike scenes, you know, look at that it's a little
painted mailman. And people dedicated. Some people got really into
(31:12):
it and dedicated like the entirety of their free time
to perfecting every detail about this the way you know,
the way we play Skyrim.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Right, But really, would you consider the Great Depression to
be an oxymoron?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I guess technically not really, because I know that you know,
great can just mean.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
That's I guess jumbo shrimp or something.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
You know, you're right, right, so, But but I do
I think they could have.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
I don't know, they had a lot going on when
they're trying to.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Come up with that.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
You really think there was a committee meeting to name it.
I think it probably, much like you know, the Great War,
just sort of sort of came up on its own organically. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
And liontel O, their own website, points out that because
there was the crazy Gill did age boom in the twenties,
model trains became much more affordable. People were kind of
getting into escapism. They wanted to forget World War One,
or as they just called it, World the World war,
(32:14):
and now the credit system is rolling out so more
and more people can afford luxuries that once upon a
time would not have been feasible for them.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
American dream aka debt for Life, debt for life. So
Lionel has ads in every imaginable medium. They're in boys magazines,
they're in a Saturday evening post, they're in all the newspapers.
They get celebrities to endorse them. They even have branded advertising.
There's a Lionel radio show, and they had slogans that
(32:50):
were like, real enough for a man to enjoy, simple
enough for a boy to operate.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Also, guys jumping real quick.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
I got the Tampa Bay Times up and they say
one of the people who named the Great Depression was
actually Herbert Hoover. He would refer to it as a
depression when he was still in office because it sounded
less worrisome to him than a panic. But it was
also a guy by the name of Lionel Robbins no relation,
(33:19):
who was a British economist who would name it the
Great Depression in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Well, they could both stand to take some crowdsourcing the
next time they name stuff. But yes, the Great depression.
If you're listening to the show, you are very familiar
with it.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Terrible time for the United States and indeed globally. Right
before the Great Depression hits, these Lionel catalogs are becoming
their own kind of annual publication for kids, you know,
like like the when Lego releases a catalog, or when
(33:56):
Sears or Aikia does, it's something aspiration, and so it
seems like the model train is part of or it's
indicative of a successful family. You hang out with your
family and play with the trains together, you look through
the catalog together and pick your favorites.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
During the entirely depressing Depression, Lionel, along with a lot
of other toy companies, of course, struggled because this was
no longer a necessity. You know, people probably went back
to the old European ways of whittling toys for their children,
you know, making the flute out of some reds or something.
I'm not trying to be dismissive, but it definitely was
(34:43):
not something that was in the budget, right, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Staving off financial ruin quickly became the primary concern for
the majority of the United States and Lionel, like many
other companies, was also struggling. They entered receivership, which is
sort of a way to keep yourself from the precipice
of bankruptcy, and they were going to go under completely.
(35:11):
They would have been a thing of the past were
it not for a partnership they made with none other
than Walt Disney. They debuted the Mickey and Many hand car.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It's a one dollar wind up, which would have been
like one of those classic mining carts, right where like
a seesaw kind of situation with Many on one side,
Mickey on the other. And if you ever are lucky
enough to be in San Francisco, I highly recommend checking
out the Walt Disney Family Museum where they have a
(35:44):
display of all of this kind of stuff and Disneyland,
disney World, anything affiliated with the actual Walt Disney Company
probably wouldn't because some of these toys, you know, and
this era of stuff could have even ventured into the
realm of problematic times. Oh yeah, but you do see
(36:05):
the Mickey mini hand car again, like to your point
a buck which was a lot of money back then
but was still more affordable than some and Lionel saw
the success of this, and they decided to follow up
with similar designs, the Union Pacific, the Hiawatha, and the
(36:25):
Flying Yankee, and by around nineteen thirty five they were
able to get out of that receivership because they were
once again profitable.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And just for perspective here too, one of the brilliant
things about the Mickey and Minni toy is that a
dollar was a lot more than it is now, but
it was still very affordable, more so than a lot
of fancy locomotives. So if we could inflation calculate a
little bit due one dollar nineteen thirty four is.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Drum roll please backs, can we guess?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Maybe twelve ninety nine ish.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Not too far. It's it's uh drum roll again, were
killing the drum rolls. It is twenty three dollars in
sixteen cents, which is surprisingly affordable. You know, that's like
a Lego kit.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
It's a Lego kit or maybe eight circa of the
nineteen nineties Ninja Turtle vehicle, remember those. I remember the
figures more expensive. The figures were roughly five bucks, I
remember that, Yeah, and then the vehicles would have been
roughly four x that. I would say, oh, man, the
one that flung pizzas. Remember that it was like a
(37:38):
like a hum v that had like a catapult on
the back that would fling pizzas. That was cool.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
And I remember I had the van where the door
would open up and the top right.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, aside a machine gun almost things that does not
exist in the show.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
No, maybe in the comics. So Lionel becomes profitable again
in nineteen thirty, as we said, And there is another
thing that they did not predict, which was World War two.
So World War two has a huge effect on every
single manufacturing industry. It's really interesting. We did an episode
(38:14):
of Car Stuff about this year's back. Automobile production went
down to pretty much zero actually too literally zero because
people were busy making weapons of war. The world shifted
to wartime production, and everything was everything was prioritizing that.
So the production of toy trains also starts to decrease
(38:38):
because of the materials you need to make them.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
It's so funny too, because you know, we just did
a couple of episodes on Candy and we talked a
good bit about how some of the companies that they
sort of repurposed wartime manufacturing equipment to make their weird
pill shaped candies. So once the war was over, they
had to pivot back. Some companies are set up just
(39:02):
for that kind of manufacturing, and the war end is what
do we do with all of this gear. Maybe let's
make some weird flavorless sugar tablets. But yeah, so they
you know, again, they pivoted to doing wartime manufacturing, and
then once the war ended, and then that changed.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, and look, make no mistake, after surviving the Great Depression,
when they become a defense company, they make a lot
of money from it because the wallet is open. They
just don't make toy trains. And then they said, we're
not going to give up on this. They're better times ahead.
Let's try to be prescient, let's get in front of it.
(39:39):
And what they did next was somewhat kixotic. They they
weren't able to make trains, so they started making They
kept making their magazine, and they started telling sons and
fathers in particular, like go ahead, plan your post war railroad,
you know, like think about the better days and talk
(40:01):
about weaponizing aspiration. That's brilliant, and that takes them well
into the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
So are they are They basically saying like, you can't
get this stuff yet, but like you plan ahead and
then then you'll be ready to go once production resumes. Yes,
that's smart.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I think it's it's a gamble, but it's really it's
so smart that their competitors probably thought they were a
little bit idealistic, or maybe they weren't thinking things all
the way through, or they were being foolish, but their
gamble paid off. In the nineteen fifties were the halcyon
(40:40):
days of Liodel, and the company itself says this. They
had record profits, some of their most successful model trains ever.
They had a television show for a second. But when
they had that television show, that's when the public, like
the zeitgeist began to shift because now people have a
new piece of technology that they're fascinated.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Well, and it can be anything, right television, you want
to watch trains? There it is. I mean you got
to think about it. Man Like people were largely doing
this stuff because in order to experience this kind of thing,
you had to have it physically. You had to be
able to touch it and move it around and build it.
And you know, we know that television has certainly had
(41:24):
various negative impacts on productivity individuals, you know, and kids,
perhaps the idea of brain rot and all of that
and being a little bit just overly commercialized and sort
of reducing people's imaginations. But of course all of that
stuff comes in cycles as well. So while initially TV
(41:44):
offered people this escapism that model trains just couldn't really
compete with, and of course, a little bit later video games,
and then of course they were cheaper plastic toys that
were advertised on TV, and you know, game magazines and
action figures and things like that. Nostalgia comes back around.
It always does.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Also, I just got to take a second and share
condolences with all our fellow ridiculous historians who have lived
long enough to see an era of time familiar to
them become nostalgia, like the nineteen nineties or the early
two thousands.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
You know that that one stings man. The two thousands.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
It hits weird, It hits you when when you hear
our radio colleagues playing these things on the oldie station.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah. Also, you're starting to see anniversaries for records that
you remember, like that came out yesterday and it's the
twenty or thirty year anniversary. Oh my god. I mean
it's cool, you guys.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Know, Like in just a few weeks, I'm going to
see Transatlanticism and give Up by post Service and death
Cab for the second time.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Twentieth anniversary.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
That's like ten year out in five twenty years one.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
I'm more of a postal service than death Cappers, And
I'm going to see that show as well in Atlanta
later this year. But I just remember clearly where I was,
what was going on when that give Up record came out.
But yeah, no, I'm with you, Ben, I think we've
all experienced this. Anyone of a certain age, we'll understand
what this help.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Like. Yeah, it'll happen to you too. If your teacher
is having you listen to this episode on model Trains
for a school thing, just think about it. Twenty twenty
four is going to be an oldies era one day,
sooner than you think, folks.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
So anyway, the.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Hobby again, it kind of loses out to this new
fascination with television, but there are always going to be
these very dedicated enthusiast and collectors and they keep the
hobby alive. In the late twentieth century model trains actually
experience a revival thanks to that nostalgia. And now you
(44:03):
can have you can leverage new technology tracks right right
your train systems, even cooler digital control systems. You know,
you can you can replicate if you want to spend
the time and money, you can replicate a full scale
railroad pretty accurately.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
I may have mentioned this a time or two on
the podcast, but like i'm I have recently in the
last year gotten really into modular synthesizers and modular synthesizers
a very similar money pit of perfectly customizable nerdy you know,
sound creation toys, and that is also what you get
with modern model trains. You can pick every aspect of
(44:42):
it down to like you said, the painted figures, you know,
the trees, the buildings, what kind of lead you know,
engine you might have, and you can have multiples and
all these switchers and lights and it's it's pretty endless,
you know, if you want to go down that particular
rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
And what I think I think is also fascinating with
the model trains here is that there's still there are
a lot of adults who are super into them, but
there are so many crazy facts about model trains right there.
I'd love to just share a few of these that
I got from the Charles Rowse Supply Company, America's largest
(45:20):
train store. The most pricey model train ever sold was
a Lionel train sold in two thousand and six for
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Neil young Byett.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
We don't know, but my I wouldn't be surprised if
it were a very well to do I would assume
it's a very well to do person after me. The largest,
the largest train set on the world right now, per
the Guinness Book of World Records is Minnie Attila Vonderland
in Hamburg. It has thirteen hundred trains, ten thousand, more
(45:56):
than ten thousand carriages, one hundred thousand moving vehicles like trees.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
You name it. I want to go. We can get
work to pay for that trip. It might be a
forgiveness view permissioning fair. We have to we have to
really sell it out. Yeah, so and you have.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
To get Max and there question, well, Pepper, it's wre things.
I think one thing we do have to deliver on
here is uh, you know we mentioned previously the games
of Model the scales, the ratios.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
So maybe let's yeah, let's for anybody's interested in getting
into the model train hobby or the world of model trains,
what kind of what should they know about scales?
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Well, it's a couple of terms, and we've already kind
of discussed this. The scale of a model train is
its size relative to the proportion of the real thing.
If you want to sound like you're in the know
and model training communities, the real thing is referred to
as the prototype, which is pretty cool. We start off
with something called g scale, which is I believe the
(46:59):
law largest of the standard scales.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
This comes from Layman Big Trains or Lehman Gross bat
and they have a lot of variation in scale, but
like you could get one that's one to twenty or
one to thirty two. But generally those scales, or even
if they're different scales, the trains themselves will run on
(47:25):
the same gauge track.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
That makes sense, it would get too comple. You have
to have some standardization in order for it to all
kind of gel together. And again, sorry not to get
you nerdy into the modular sense stuff, but even though
there are all different sizes and fill up different spaces
in Iraq. They all use many of most of them
use the same size screw holes to affix them into
these racks. Even though there's tons of different manufacturers that
(47:47):
make all kinds of different stuff, there should be some
basic standardization in order for these companies to be able
to kind of play together in the same space.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Sure, and then we've got other things like the.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
The o's we talked about.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
I believe the earlier os some of the bigger ones
right right right, And Lionel still makes O scale trains
and accessories along with a couple of other well, a
couple of other companies. Shout out to uh, the Payter
familius of our pals, Max and Alex. Uh, mister Williams
would have an O scale train around the Christmas tree
(48:24):
every year.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
You haven't even invoked that image. That's another wonderful kind
of classic Golden Age image, you know, very similar to
like the Fao Schwartz kind of window dressing stuff. That
that model train going around and around the Christmas tree.
That's pretty nostalgic stuff right there. Yeah. And when I
say biggest, by the way for OSK, I think I'm
more referring to more most popular. Ah, yes, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
And then of course there's h O scale, there's in
scale Z scale.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Look, what we're saying is if you are remotely interested
in model trains, there is a wide world of stuff
to choose from, and there are a ton of people
who want to experience that with you. Noel Max sent
us something that I'm surprised I didn't know about because
I love these kinds of specific events. There is a
model train and rail Rodiana show that comes to Atlanta,
(49:17):
was here in January.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Awesome, Okay, I.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Want to go see a model train show.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
I do choill you not being lucky? We got another
one May fourth, nine am to two pm and it is.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
In akwardly busy doing Star Wars stuff. I'm just joking.
I don't. I don't do that, you know, May the
fourth with you. Oh, that's right, it's a thing now.
That sounds cool. I would love to go to that.
And by the way, when I mentioned Sebastian Bach earlier,
largely from from skid Row, I largely know about his
love of model trains because of a particular season of
the Canadian kind of sitcom Trailer Park Boys that involves
(49:55):
the heist of a particularly expensive model train from a
Canadian model train expo, and it sort of follows the
trailer park boys around throughout the entire season and it's
a lot of fun. Want to throw one more thing?
Speaker 1 (50:10):
We just have to say it because, you know, being
an American based show, we love some hyperbole, we love
some superlatives. You might ask yourself, well, guys, what is
the largest single model train engine? The answer is the
Thomas the tank engine that was built for a special
tour by BBC Visual Effects. It weighs one and a
(50:34):
half ton.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
What.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
I don't know if you can still call that a
model train, So I you know what, we'll have to
write to get US world records.
Speaker 4 (50:44):
If it's smaller than a train though, and it works
the same way, it's a miniature, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
I guess so, yeah, miniature can be anything smaller.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
And last thing for me because this is something that
maybe we should have mentioned earlier on. But if you're
wondering how model trains are powered today we talked about
the early steamy ones and the battery ones and then
replaced by the transformer. It's interesting because they're actually powered
largely the way subways are powered through a current that
is carried and transmitted into the engine for all intents
(51:17):
and purposes, or the transformer through a powered rail that
has like you know, either soldered or clipped power current
running through it that comes from a power supply. So
part of the modular nature of model trains also comes
down to like wiring up the power and if you're
not careful, I don't know what you're doing, you could
accidentally give yourself a zapp, right.
Speaker 4 (51:38):
Max, Oh, absolutely, And that had me thinking it's the
future spoiler. I was researching something else that is on
tracks and that's called third track. The third track me
in the power track, and there was something else that
is now a two track, but they did with a
third track and had very bad const questions.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
So before that episode coming up, guys.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Yeah, and if you find yourself in Molden, Massachusetts, do
stop by the Charles Rose Supply Company. They are the
world's largest dealer of Lionel trains and I think they're
one of the biggest just model trains stores in general around.
So if you ever have a specific a need for
(52:20):
a weird, specific trip or adventure, please folks come to
us because we can help you out. Monster cars, what
else model trains. We're getting into this weird things modular sense,
all of the legos.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
We had an entire episo, We had two episodes to
complain about fonts.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
Oh gosh. Yeah. We also have an episode that's sort
of been in the kiddy for a while about the
history of women in electronic music and sound design and
film scoring and things like that. And maybe we can
sneak a little bit of nerdy modular synth stuff and
history into that one, if you guys would indulge me.
But yeah, really excited about all this stuff that we've got
(52:59):
coming up. Great tea for a future episode there, Max
and boy, I never knew there was this much to
know about model trains.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
Thanks as always to our super producer and research associate
for this episode, mister Max Williams. Thanks to Alex Williams
who composed this slam and track you're here in. Thanks
to Eve's jeff Coat Jonathan Strickland ak the Quizz who
one hundred.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Percent digs model trains.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
I know it, I just I know the man well,
he is a He's a model train head. Huge.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Thanks to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs, who is as as
all kind. He's ahead of all kinds is his head
is full of all kinds of esoteric and fascinating knowledge.
Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yes, Eve's Jeffcoat who maybe returning soon. I just want
to give her a shout out twice. Gabe, Lucy a
lionel themselves, and thanks to you.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
And you as well, Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give a big shout out to
our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Would you guys call me the conductor.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I've thought about it, but I don't want you to
get power man.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Like I haven't already gotten there.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
No, I think you're okay. You're on the edge. You're
just on the edge of your power. Lukewarm power, curious power,
curious your nol. I bet this is Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We're we're on the road for a couple of different
adventures right now, so you may you may hear us
doing some guest spots on some friends shows. We are
coming to you two thirds of the way from New York.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh, yes, I see, I see. I got the calculation there.
And yeah, you also might hear the thrum of a
heating unit that I can't figure out how to turn off.
But I'm doing my best. I've got the mic pointed
away from it. And Maxwell, I'm calling you that for
this episode for reasons. By the way, usually it's pretty
good at magicking that stuff away.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And actual James. Maybe maybe yes, see, I don't.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Know old m J. Also know, if you're comfortable with
us doing this on air, I can tell you what
the fan is. Background, folks, we're in the same hotel,
recording remotely.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I've seen each other yet in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Okay, So I was trying to figure this out while
I was doing some research this morning, because I flew
into an ungodly hour. If you I kid you not,
I bet I know what this is. You know, if
you go to your door and then you see the
light switch by the front door, you're going to see
a little plaque that says, uh like sound cancelation or other.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Okay, it's like a little knob. Yeah, let me go,
let go, uh caress the knob. Wait, not what you get?
You get it?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
You get it, get it? And so uh while we're
doing that, I hope that works a bit of background, folks,
today's episode is all about model trains. Hints our banter
at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
What black magic is this?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Did it works? It works? And it's weird because this hotel.
I guess the building is old because it's one of
those places where it has no convenient outlets and the
outlets that it does have don't like to grip a
modern plug very well. They just kind of slide right out.
And yet it has this new fangled noise masking system
(02:59):
for the heating.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It's because it's an open air like atrium inside and
they have that live band.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That's right, that's what I see what you're saying. So,
so the noise I was hearing was the feature, not
the bug.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Right, not yet.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's it's white noise. It's just being generated. It wasn't
being generated. But wow, we're all learning so much about
this hotel. I'm not going to dock us and say
which one it is. But I like it here. We
like it here, and we haven't been in a while,
and I'm excited to be back in New York. And
I know we'll see each other in person very soon
been but in the meantime, we can just pretend like
it's business as usual, right.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, Yeah, And that big aspiration and putting on my
vision board is I hope next time we're on the
road we can bring super producer maxwells with us.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
For a second, I thought you were saying and right
now I'm putting on my vision pro uh goggles. So
that I can experience this from the moon.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right there, we go, and we will podcast on the
moon one day.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
We'll be the first. We'll be the first mark our words.
We said it here folks speaking of aspiration provision boards.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, so that might sound like a crazy ambition. Why
would you guys do that kind of thing? But you
know what, once upon a time people said the same
thing about toys like model trains.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Bro Once upon a time before that, people said the
same thing about trains. That's a very good point.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yes, if God had wanted us to use railroads, we
would have tracks and wheels instead of feet whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I thought.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So this is something that has been on our minds
for a while. I think, you know, like a lot
of kids I grew up with, I would say a dabbling,
a dabblement in the world of model trains, because these
things can get super ornate and super expensive pretty quickly.
(04:57):
I don't know, if you have ever had the chance
to go over to a friend's house, or maybe a
museum or an exhibit, you see someone who's gone all in,
like they have sacrificed their basement to have a little
town with a train.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, no I haven't, But if there is ever one
that I want to experience. It belongs to the seminal
nineteen seventies and on into our sixties even and on
into the present. Singer songwriter, artist extraordinary Neil Young, who
has apparently a one thousand foot square foot model train
(05:35):
situation on his ranch in northern California, and he's so
into classic trains, including a Lionel number seven fifty two
w Union specific, not specific, but Pacific Streamliner from the thirties,
as well as a wireless control system. All of this
like early model train stuff we're going to get into.
That'd be the one I want to hang out with.
(05:57):
Neil His in his model train dungeon whatever it is,
sounds more like a barn situation.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
One thousand square feet. That's quite humbling because that's larger
than some of like one of my old apartments. But
I think this These things are really fascinating because they
also tell us a bit about the time in which
they were created. They're a way to view society. And
we also know we're just gonna go ahead and say this.
(06:24):
We're going to lean on Max at a couple points
in our conversation today because Max is a mad man
for model trains.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Mad Man Max the Conductor, Mad Max the mad Conductor.
Really like that. I like that.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And so these early trains, the first ones like they
date back to I guess like model railroading. The actual
ones that work and aren't just carved things. These date
back to the early nineteenth century tinplate toys were first manufactured,
and they were by clockwork mechanisms, so they were pretty complicated.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Very complicated, very expensive to produce, not really in the
realm of like mass manufactured objects, right.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I would say, you know, in the beginning, probably not
because they hadn't quite become popular right when they started.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It was.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
It was by the end of the nineteenth century, the
end of the eighteen hundreds that the first commercial model
trains were made. So I'd say you're correct on that,
And well let's get into it. Let's start with this
great article by Barry Coulter from O Gauge Train Repair,
and you'll if you re listen to this episode, then
(07:43):
the title of that website will make much more.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Sense to you for sure. And by the way, Neil
Young's at least one of his you know, largest model
train setups is an O gauge which is a larger
scale model train. So before we we'll get into some
of these terms. But yeah, according to culture, model trains
is quote from this article have been the Christmas delight
(08:07):
of youngsters for many generations, from the most primitive replicas
of the Iron Horse in the eighteen hundreds the most
sophisticated railroad sets of today. Trains have remained atop the
Christmas lists of both the young and the old.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Because, as we're finding, they're also hacking nostalgia, right, because
kids have this vision often associated with holidays, Birthday, Christmas
in particular for the practitioners of Christmas. So when it
reminds me so much of what happens with legos, because
(08:42):
legos are kind of pricey, and one of the biggest
Lego markets is it children. It's adults who can finally
afford all the cool spaceships their parents wouldn't buy you Bulins.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, yeah, exactly. Isn't that funny though, I mean, it's
I'm stating the obvious here, but nostalgia obviously works in cycles, right,
because you can't have nostalgia for something until it's old
and kind of been forgotten and fallen out of fashion,
and then all of a sudden, you know, before you
know it, it sort of has this resurgence that can
(09:16):
kind of you know, wax and wane a little bit
on its own. And you know, Lego of course and
Model trains as well as we'll see really capitalize on that,
not only because of the you know, the medium itself,
but all the tie ins. Like you mentioned spaceships, right,
a lot of the big, really expensive Lego sets are
tied in with things like Star Wars, and they'll be
(09:37):
the classic Star Wars designs like the Death Star, the
Millennium Falcon or what have you.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, one hundred percent, and I love all of those.
In fact, I had a dark night of the soul
a few months back where I got very close to
buy just a cartoonishly expensive Lego set that I had
no room to put it anywhere, and add no business buying.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Uh. We've been doing the Lego set like floral arrangements,
and we've got so many of them now and have
actually very recently started growing our own actual facts flowers.
So the Lego flowers are sort of starting to be
a little bit in the way, so I've had to
I've had to relegate them to my basement studio situation,
(10:23):
which is fine because I love them and they never died.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, I've got I've got a couple of the Lego
architecture sets. People kept giving those to me for Christmas
because I said, anything but socks to my friends.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
They celebrate Christmas also socks. As an adult, I love
a good sock.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I feel like I'm always almost out of socks. It's weird,
but all right, today's story about model trains. We have
to talk about trains, the actual trains people, you know,
normal sized people rioted And this concept is modern in
the grand scheme of things, I guess, but it dates back.
(10:59):
Surprise icingly, Long time Culture points out the concept of
steam engine trains and locomotives. Yes, doesn't come around till
the eighteen hundreds, but the idea of making a train
dates all the way back to you know, ancient Rome.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Oh man, I mean, it's really just a practical way
of moving stuff. You know, if you'll if if one
bucket full of stuff is good, then why not link
ten or twenty buckets full of stuff? And then you
have to do the calculation of how much pull do
I need to get these things moving? In the Roman times,
they actually created these paved sort of precursor railway systems
(11:37):
for these wagons that were drawn by of course animals.
And then later in England we started to see horse
drawn wagons that were built out of the same kind
of idea in order to carry coals from the mines
where they were you know, mined to loading sites onto
boats where they could then be shipped and used for trade,
(11:59):
you know, to all parts of the United Kingdom. So
it is a pretty And then of course in the
early days of trains we start seeing you know, the
iron horse. That's the term that's being used because it's
replacing the actual horse, much like horsepower in cars is
used as the sort of amorphous measurement for you know,
how fast and how much torque you know, a vehicle
(12:21):
can produce.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, and that's kind of a skewmrph almost right, the
concept of horsepower.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, remind us again, I think we talked about it
on our episode with Morocco. But the skew morph is
sort of a familiar thing that's built into a new
thing to make people not scared of the new thing.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, that's a pretty that's a pretty good definition there.
The roots of model trains go back to when steam
powered locomotives are first introduced. And this is a common
thing because you know, you see it now in twenty
twenty four as we record, a lot of young kids,
like very young children, go through these phases where they're
(13:03):
fascinated with machinery, right like construction equipment, et cetera, tru
sump trucks, space shuttles. So when the steam powered locomotive
comes out, it's like on the level of a space
shuttle and it's launching the world into industrialization. It becomes
this symbol of progress of innovation and James Maxwell no
(13:25):
relation to our pale Max Williams. He cites that I
had to get that one in for you.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Max.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
He cites that they become this iconic thing. Originally they
weren't made for kids. They were made for engineers and
people working in the railroad industry so that they could
understand how actual full scale trains would work. Absolutely is
what you do in engineering.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
You still do it. Have you ever you know, seen
like city planners or urban planners and say that you'll
always see, you know, these kind of little miniaturized versions
of a city or like of a development or whatever uh.
And and with prototyping with cars and that level of engineering,
especially when it comes to design, you'll see these very
(14:13):
elaborately kind of like uh crafted, hand crafted off in
clay models of the ultimate design.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Such a sucker for that. I used to hang out
at our the building where old office was. They had
a yes, exact model. And it also reminds, you know,
it's one of the best parts of Hereditary is the
building of those models at dioramas, the best parts.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
That movie is such a soul crushing bummer, but it's excellent.
It's very very good. It's a classic buddy comedy. Yeah right,
not for the faint of heart. Yeah, it's true. And
and and a lot of these techniques, you know, have
been largely replaced by digital modeling now. But you know,
much like the nostalgia boom that goes along with the
(15:00):
you know, resurgence and popularity of model trains and Lego's.
Like we were talking, there's a lot of sort of
classicist sort of ideas behind design where they're like, no,
we don't, we don't do the digital version, you know,
we only do it by hand.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah, exactly, And speaking making things by hand, it should
be no surprise than that model trains, like a lot
of toys, to be honest, come from this sort of
high faluting I'm always say not quite high falluting, mid flute,
a mid foalute artisanal background. If you want to see
(15:41):
the origin the first trained toys model trains, you're going
to look into Germany in the eighteen thirties. Now when
they're making these initial trains. And I know some people
don't want to be called toy trains. So when they're
making these model trains the.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
First your dad said, this isn't a toy, you know,
don't touch my.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Stuff, or like Hank and breaking bad is like they're minerals.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, exactly, don't call it rocks.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
But anyway, so these these German craftsmen, their crafts folk,
they pour molten brass or maybe ten into a into
a mold, the same way that they earlier made ten soldiers,
and then they judge it up with wooden fittings like
you were talking about handcarved stuff. It makes it look
like a miniature version of a train. But these things
(16:30):
are fragile. They don't have any moving parts. You manually
push them along a track.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, not quite as cool. And not quite as indicative
of the like true logistics of locomotion, right, which is
ultimately I think what really attracts people to the stuff
is like that makes them like go all out and
buy the conductor's hat and stand in the middle of
their giant ring of train trav model train tracks in
(16:57):
their city that they are both you know, engineer mayor
and god of exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And this gets us to the more elaborate early model trains.
The crafts folk over in France are already great tinsmiths
and they become known for making very ornate designs on
their toy trains, tall chimneys just so spoke to wheels,
(17:25):
and these trains are I would say, like if you
look at them, you would think the French ones are
almost more like art pieces. The German trains had the tracks,
but the French trains didn't. You just pushed them along
the floor. And unfortunately, it's kind of like when you
look at the Pyramids today, when you look at those
(17:46):
old original French model trains, you have to realize they
used to look a lot different because they were painted
and paint does not stick to tin very well.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
That's a good point. Yeah, those do those classic tens
unless they've been you know, sort of preserved or sort
of re painted, I guess they do tend to lose
that luster and look a little bit decrepit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, that's a good point too. Like we see other
European forces making model trains. There was a designer in England,
Sir Henry Wood. Yeah, he's the one who took it
up a notch and he said, how cool would it
be if these trains actually worked like real trains. So
he built the first steam powered toys and they've got
(18:35):
some famous names.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
That's right. Well, these are more like I guess colloquial nicknames, right,
the dribblers and the piddlers because of this sort of
snail trail they kind of leave behind them with the
excess moisture that gets produced from the steam. But still
super cool. Again, this is like a like a like
a scale model kind of situation, and it's operating largely
(19:01):
in the similar manner to the real thing.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, which is endlessly fascinating. They also have, as you
point out the research ear Max, they also have some
of the same annoyances for parents that other toys had,
like stepping on the lego piece you know, now you've
slipped on a snail trail of water, yeap, and and
you can't you can't break the toy training because you're
(19:25):
probably paid so much for it.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
So these are largely in the realm of the let's
say it privileged at this point, right, I mean not always.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Again, I think mid Fillutin is good. It was definitely
a toy that well to do children would have, but
I think also at this time a lot of families
were still making their own toys.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Oh that's a good point, especially, and you know European
toys have a rich history of craftsmanship, you know, and
wooden toys, and then the idea of like making your
own that comes from this similar type of design, you know, ethos, Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And we also want to point out that the craftsmen
who were making these toy trains previously they were making
other toy trains, but they were also making musical instruments,
so they had the manufacturing prowess to make the the
small clockwork mechanisms you needed for these working toy trains,
(20:27):
and their clockwork approach eliminated the design flaw of the
first steam powered toys, and.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
These definitely would have been Oh yeah, yeah, largely reigated
to the to the rich, the riches of the riches.
The company Newton and Co. Which already sounds like a
mega bespoke old timey company. Yeah, this is this is
the company that was making these much more elaborate brass models. However,
(20:57):
they still weren't particularly accurate, try as they might, nor
were they you know, scaled correctly. And again, you know,
maybe we haven't gone through this exactly, but I think
people can probably put it together. Scaling really refers to
just like how you know, like not one to one,
but like you know, if you have like a part
(21:18):
that is a certain size compared to the large thing,
then that smaller version is going to have that same
part be in proportion to a smaller thing.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Right, Yeah, Just like with any other kind of hobbyist model,
whether that's a car or whether that's a you know,
an airplane or something, the scale is a representation of
the proportion of the accuracy of the proportions. And I
think it's like you said, one to one, so one
(21:49):
to one scale is life size.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It's the real thing, right, And we're going to get
into the various different types of scale in a little
bit yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, and like you said with the European craftsman with
the clockwork trains, these are for the well to do families.
They don't really catch on in the United States though,
at this point, and that's because it's seen as like
kind of a fancy pants European thing until Uncle Sam's
(22:19):
folks start making their own trains.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Leave it to the Americans to take something fancy and
bespoken European and turn it into trash. I'm kidding. They're cool,
they're more accessible. It's a big deal that they do this,
but it is sort of the reputation I think of
American design compared to say European design and manufacturing to
(22:41):
be a little less concerned with the details and a
little more concerned with the quantity perhaps sober quality. Yeah,
economy of scale.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So it's the mid eighteen hundreds. This is where we
start to see the US market of toy trains come
into the four Matthias Baldwin, founder of the Baltimore Locomotive Works,
makes a trade model in the eighteen thirties, and then
if you get to like the late eighteen thirties to
eighteen forty, then you'll see several other toy makers start
(23:14):
making their own toy trains, and for one reason or another,
Americans prefer buying these to the European what's probably affordability
is a huge part of it.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Absolutely, and I am being grossly general in my description
of American manufacturer. America obviously makes some really great products,
and there are incredible crafts folk here in the United
States and have been for a generations. So please do
not take my tongue in cheek statement there as a
total condemnation of American toy makers and or manufactured while
(23:49):
good to come for us. Yeah, please don't mind. I'm
scared of you. Sebastian Bach of skid Row another massive
model train enthusiast, and Neil Young please don't come for
me together gang up on me. But to that point,
this is what is considered. From from eighteen sixty two
around eighteen ninety, the golden age of American ten train making.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah, a lot of famous train makers come into the game,
especially after George Brown and Co. From Connecticut makes the
first self propelled American model train. It was clockwork nuts
steam powered, and so you get companies that might be
familiar to model train buffs ives Holland Stafford, auth of
(24:35):
Bergman and Co. Francis Field and Francis James follows they
sound a lot like watch companies, you know, like a
classy yeah, watch company. But still they didn't have the
they didn't have all them we associate with model trains today.
They just their designs were simple. They sold the train.
(24:58):
The rest of the world old you might build around
the train was.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Up to you, exactly, And that's part of the fun
of it, really is the modular nature of the whole thing, right,
which we'll get into more of the accessory options in
a little bit. So train travel has now become a
bit more of a thing that you know, everyone can afford.
It's not just used for industry. It's used for you know,
(25:23):
moving moving people and for kind of you know, taking
more kind of pleasure trips. Right. So James Maxwell, as
we mentioned in that Medium article, writes that with the
increasing popularity of rail travel and the advent of mass
production techniques, the toy train industry really starts to take
shape in the late nineteenth century. This is when we
(25:44):
start to see Lionel, just an American company, and Merklen,
which is a German company, start to really emerge as
kind of the main players in the game, especially in
terms of quality and affordability, kind of the balance between
those two right.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Right, right, So they're taking different approaches, like Mirklan focuses
on these really accurate, highly detailed replicas of locomotives and
what's called rolling stock. Rolling stock is the term for
things like cargo units. Rolling stock just describes anything attached
or part of the train that is not the locomotive. Right,
(26:28):
so your caboose sleeper car.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Percent think about getting stopped at a railroad crossing and
just seeing the line of you know, shipping containers blasting pass.
That's rolling stock. That's rolling stock.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And so Miriklin appeals to collectors who are really about
high quality and authenticity, and Lionel gets more of a
reputation for these are fun model trains for kids and
for serious hobbyists. And this history proves that this approach
works very well for Lionel. It was founded in nineteen
(27:03):
hundred by Joshua Lionel Cowen Cohen, and this company would
go on to become one of the most influential manufacturers
in all of the United States.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
And it's interesting too, because initially they weren't even manufacturing
these as a toy or as you know, a solution
for these hobbyists. We can totally picture this if we
think of the classic toy store, you know, department store
kind of window dressing operation with the train, the model
(27:34):
train going around and around a track. It's maybe you know,
elevated up in the ceiling, right, and that is what
the original Lionel designs were meant to do. The Electric
Express was designed to be a particularly fetching window display
for toy stores.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, and it worked by golly by gum because you know,
at this point when they designed their first train, Electric
Express and show it in toy stores, they're working in
a world where most people are not going to have
electricity in their house. So that's this huge appeal. And
by the time we hit nineteen oh six, they're moving
(28:14):
so quickly. They start companies start selling pre assembled tracks,
you can get different rolling stock and engines, and this
is where the modern Lionel train company really begins to
take shape, because look, yeah, it might not be fancy,
it might not be the locomotive equivalent of a Philip
(28:34):
Ptek or something, but we we know people were saying, hey,
these are really good toys. They do have a lot
of quality, and then Lionel does something that's even smarter.
They introduce all these cool little bells and whistles sometimes
literally cool little bells and whistles, but like smoke generators,
(28:55):
remote control systems, all the fun stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Well it's neat too, because you know, these early Lionel
trains were powered by batteries, early kind of versions of
batteries known as wet cells, which are you know, these
little things that are filled with corrosive acid, which of
course were replaced largely by I believe dry cell batteries,
although I do you know, certain batteries you get to
(29:17):
this day, like energizer or whatever. If you leave them
in something for long enough, they do start to corrode,
similar to the kind of you know, corrosion you'll see
on your car battery. So there is still some kind
of nasty chemical inside these batteries today, right, Yeah, there's
still some.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Weird stuff going on, but'll you run into that with
a lot of batter But I.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Think the early wet cell batteries were real nasty, and
then they were eventually replaced by transformers, the electric transformer,
the one ten volt and in the early nineteen hundreds,
of course, electricity was still not a sure thing to
be in everybody's home, and there was a lot of
fascination around that. And as we mentioned, trains were already
(29:58):
steam powered. Trains were already kind of representative of this
idea of the future and innovation, and so electricity was
of course as well. And to incorporate that into a
toy that had this aspirational quality already and already represented
something that was already kind of considered this image of
you know, productivity and ingenuity and the American spirit and
(30:22):
all that stuff, it makes sense that they would have
taken off.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
And there's one thing that they didn't predict amid all
their smart business plans, the Great Depression, which again I
think is just a terrible name. So the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties, or this real Halcyon era, we'll get
to that later too, Halcion era for model trains, it's
golden age.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's very popular amid the populace.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
They would go popular by the populace, popular with the people,
and the model train layouts. There's kind of like an
arms race of who can make the most allowed apparate
expanse of ones, put your buildings in there, maybe have
lifelike scenes, you know, look at that it's a little
painted mailman. And people dedicated. Some people got really into
(31:12):
it and dedicated like the entirety of their free time
to perfecting every detail about this the way you know,
the way we play Skyrim.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Right, But really, would you consider the Great Depression to
be an oxymoron?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I guess technically not really, because I know that you know,
great can just mean.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
That's I guess jumbo shrimp or something.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
You know, you're right, right, so, But but I do
I think they could have.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
I don't know, they had a lot going on when
they're trying to.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Come up with that.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
You really think there was a committee meeting to name it.
I think it probably, much like you know, the Great War,
just sort of sort of came up on its own organically. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
And liontel O, their own website, points out that because
there was the crazy Gill did age boom in the twenties,
model trains became much more affordable. People were kind of
getting into escapism. They wanted to forget World War One,
or as they just called it, World the World war,
(32:14):
and now the credit system is rolling out so more
and more people can afford luxuries that once upon a
time would not have been feasible for them.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
American dream aka debt for Life, debt for life. So
Lionel has ads in every imaginable medium. They're in boys magazines,
they're in a Saturday evening post, they're in all the newspapers.
They get celebrities to endorse them. They even have branded advertising.
There's a Lionel radio show, and they had slogans that
(32:50):
were like, real enough for a man to enjoy, simple
enough for a boy to operate.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Also, guys jumping real quick.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
I got the Tampa Bay Times up and they say
one of the people who named the Great Depression was
actually Herbert Hoover. He would refer to it as a
depression when he was still in office because it sounded
less worrisome to him than a panic. But it was
also a guy by the name of Lionel Robbins no relation,
(33:19):
who was a British economist who would name it the
Great Depression in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Well, they could both stand to take some crowdsourcing the
next time they name stuff. But yes, the Great depression.
If you're listening to the show, you are very familiar
with it.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Terrible time for the United States and indeed globally. Right
before the Great Depression hits, these Lionel catalogs are becoming
their own kind of annual publication for kids, you know,
like like the when Lego releases a catalog, or when
(33:56):
Sears or Aikia does, it's something aspiration, and so it
seems like the model train is part of or it's
indicative of a successful family. You hang out with your
family and play with the trains together, you look through
the catalog together and pick your favorites.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
During the entirely depressing Depression, Lionel, along with a lot
of other toy companies, of course, struggled because this was
no longer a necessity. You know, people probably went back
to the old European ways of whittling toys for their children,
you know, making the flute out of some reds or something.
I'm not trying to be dismissive, but it definitely was
(34:43):
not something that was in the budget, right, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Staving off financial ruin quickly became the primary concern for
the majority of the United States and Lionel, like many
other companies, was also struggling. They entered receivership, which is
sort of a way to keep yourself from the precipice
of bankruptcy, and they were going to go under completely.
(35:11):
They would have been a thing of the past were
it not for a partnership they made with none other
than Walt Disney. They debuted the Mickey and Many hand car.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It's a one dollar wind up, which would have been
like one of those classic mining carts, right where like
a seesaw kind of situation with Many on one side,
Mickey on the other. And if you ever are lucky
enough to be in San Francisco, I highly recommend checking
out the Walt Disney Family Museum where they have a
(35:44):
display of all of this kind of stuff and Disneyland,
disney World, anything affiliated with the actual Walt Disney Company
probably wouldn't because some of these toys, you know, and
this era of stuff could have even ventured into the
realm of problematic times. Oh yeah, but you do see
(36:05):
the Mickey mini hand car again, like to your point
a buck which was a lot of money back then
but was still more affordable than some and Lionel saw
the success of this, and they decided to follow up
with similar designs, the Union Pacific, the Hiawatha, and the
(36:25):
Flying Yankee, and by around nineteen thirty five they were
able to get out of that receivership because they were
once again profitable.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And just for perspective here too, one of the brilliant
things about the Mickey and Minni toy is that a
dollar was a lot more than it is now, but
it was still very affordable, more so than a lot
of fancy locomotives. So if we could inflation calculate a
little bit due one dollar nineteen thirty four is.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Drum roll please backs, can we guess?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Maybe twelve ninety nine ish.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Not too far. It's it's uh drum roll again, were
killing the drum rolls. It is twenty three dollars in
sixteen cents, which is surprisingly affordable. You know, that's like
a Lego kit.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
It's a Lego kit or maybe eight circa of the
nineteen nineties Ninja Turtle vehicle, remember those. I remember the
figures more expensive. The figures were roughly five bucks, I
remember that, Yeah, and then the vehicles would have been
roughly four x that. I would say, oh, man, the
one that flung pizzas. Remember that it was like a
(37:38):
like a hum v that had like a catapult on
the back that would fling pizzas. That was cool.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
And I remember I had the van where the door
would open up and the top right.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, aside a machine gun almost things that does not
exist in the show.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
No, maybe in the comics. So Lionel becomes profitable again
in nineteen thirty, as we said, And there is another
thing that they did not predict, which was World War two.
So World War two has a huge effect on every
single manufacturing industry. It's really interesting. We did an episode
(38:14):
of Car Stuff about this year's back. Automobile production went
down to pretty much zero actually too literally zero because
people were busy making weapons of war. The world shifted
to wartime production, and everything was everything was prioritizing that.
So the production of toy trains also starts to decrease
(38:38):
because of the materials you need to make them.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
It's so funny too, because you know, we just did
a couple of episodes on Candy and we talked a
good bit about how some of the companies that they
sort of repurposed wartime manufacturing equipment to make their weird
pill shaped candies. So once the war was over, they
had to pivot back. Some companies are set up just
(39:02):
for that kind of manufacturing, and the war end is what
do we do with all of this gear. Maybe let's
make some weird flavorless sugar tablets. But yeah, so they
you know, again, they pivoted to doing wartime manufacturing, and
then once the war ended, and then that changed.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, and look, make no mistake, after surviving the Great Depression,
when they become a defense company, they make a lot
of money from it because the wallet is open. They
just don't make toy trains. And then they said, we're
not going to give up on this. They're better times ahead.
Let's try to be prescient, let's get in front of it.
(39:39):
And what they did next was somewhat kixotic. They they
weren't able to make trains, so they started making They
kept making their magazine, and they started telling sons and
fathers in particular, like go ahead, plan your post war railroad,
you know, like think about the better days and talk
(40:01):
about weaponizing aspiration. That's brilliant, and that takes them well
into the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
So are they are They basically saying like, you can't
get this stuff yet, but like you plan ahead and
then then you'll be ready to go once production resumes. Yes,
that's smart.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I think it's it's a gamble, but it's really it's
so smart that their competitors probably thought they were a
little bit idealistic, or maybe they weren't thinking things all
the way through, or they were being foolish, but their
gamble paid off. In the nineteen fifties were the halcyon
(40:40):
days of Liodel, and the company itself says this. They
had record profits, some of their most successful model trains ever.
They had a television show for a second. But when
they had that television show, that's when the public, like
the zeitgeist began to shift because now people have a
new piece of technology that they're fascinated.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Well, and it can be anything, right television, you want
to watch trains? There it is. I mean you got
to think about it. Man Like people were largely doing
this stuff because in order to experience this kind of thing,
you had to have it physically. You had to be
able to touch it and move it around and build it.
And you know, we know that television has certainly had
(41:24):
various negative impacts on productivity individuals, you know, and kids,
perhaps the idea of brain rot and all of that
and being a little bit just overly commercialized and sort
of reducing people's imaginations. But of course all of that
stuff comes in cycles as well. So while initially TV
(41:44):
offered people this escapism that model trains just couldn't really
compete with, and of course, a little bit later video games,
and then of course they were cheaper plastic toys that
were advertised on TV, and you know, game magazines and
action figures and things like that. Nostalgia comes back around.
It always does.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Also, I just got to take a second and share
condolences with all our fellow ridiculous historians who have lived
long enough to see an era of time familiar to
them become nostalgia, like the nineteen nineties or the early
two thousands.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
You know that that one stings man. The two thousands.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
It hits weird, It hits you when when you hear
our radio colleagues playing these things on the oldie station.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah. Also, you're starting to see anniversaries for records that
you remember, like that came out yesterday and it's the
twenty or thirty year anniversary. Oh my god. I mean
it's cool, you guys.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Know, Like in just a few weeks, I'm going to
see Transatlanticism and give Up by post Service and death
Cab for the second time.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Twentieth anniversary.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
That's like ten year out in five twenty years one.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
I'm more of a postal service than death Cappers, And
I'm going to see that show as well in Atlanta
later this year. But I just remember clearly where I was,
what was going on when that give Up record came out.
But yeah, no, I'm with you, Ben, I think we've
all experienced this. Anyone of a certain age, we'll understand
what this help.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Like. Yeah, it'll happen to you too. If your teacher
is having you listen to this episode on model Trains
for a school thing, just think about it. Twenty twenty
four is going to be an oldies era one day,
sooner than you think, folks.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
So anyway, the.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Hobby again, it kind of loses out to this new
fascination with television, but there are always going to be
these very dedicated enthusiast and collectors and they keep the
hobby alive. In the late twentieth century model trains actually
experience a revival thanks to that nostalgia. And now you
(44:03):
can have you can leverage new technology tracks right right
your train systems, even cooler digital control systems. You know,
you can you can replicate if you want to spend
the time and money, you can replicate a full scale
railroad pretty accurately.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
I may have mentioned this a time or two on
the podcast, but like i'm I have recently in the
last year gotten really into modular synthesizers and modular synthesizers
a very similar money pit of perfectly customizable nerdy you know,
sound creation toys, and that is also what you get
with modern model trains. You can pick every aspect of
(44:42):
it down to like you said, the painted figures, you know,
the trees, the buildings, what kind of lead you know,
engine you might have, and you can have multiples and
all these switchers and lights and it's it's pretty endless,
you know, if you want to go down that particular
rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
And what I think I think is also fascinating with
the model trains here is that there's still there are
a lot of adults who are super into them, but
there are so many crazy facts about model trains right there.
I'd love to just share a few of these that
I got from the Charles Rowse Supply Company, America's largest
(45:20):
train store. The most pricey model train ever sold was
a Lionel train sold in two thousand and six for
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Neil young Byett.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
We don't know, but my I wouldn't be surprised if
it were a very well to do I would assume
it's a very well to do person after me. The largest,
the largest train set on the world right now, per
the Guinness Book of World Records is Minnie Attila Vonderland
in Hamburg. It has thirteen hundred trains, ten thousand, more
(45:56):
than ten thousand carriages, one hundred thousand moving vehicles like trees.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
You name it. I want to go. We can get
work to pay for that trip. It might be a
forgiveness view permissioning fair. We have to we have to
really sell it out. Yeah, so and you have.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
To get Max and there question, well, Pepper, it's wre things.
I think one thing we do have to deliver on
here is uh, you know we mentioned previously the games
of Model the scales, the ratios.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
So maybe let's yeah, let's for anybody's interested in getting
into the model train hobby or the world of model trains,
what kind of what should they know about scales?
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Well, it's a couple of terms, and we've already kind
of discussed this. The scale of a model train is
its size relative to the proportion of the real thing.
If you want to sound like you're in the know
and model training communities, the real thing is referred to
as the prototype, which is pretty cool. We start off
with something called g scale, which is I believe the
(46:59):
law largest of the standard scales.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
This comes from Layman Big Trains or Lehman Gross bat
and they have a lot of variation in scale, but
like you could get one that's one to twenty or
one to thirty two. But generally those scales, or even
if they're different scales, the trains themselves will run on
(47:25):
the same gauge track.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
That makes sense, it would get too comple. You have
to have some standardization in order for it to all
kind of gel together. And again, sorry not to get
you nerdy into the modular sense stuff, but even though
there are all different sizes and fill up different spaces
in Iraq. They all use many of most of them
use the same size screw holes to affix them into
these racks. Even though there's tons of different manufacturers that
(47:47):
make all kinds of different stuff, there should be some
basic standardization in order for these companies to be able
to kind of play together in the same space.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Sure, and then we've got other things like the.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
The o's we talked about.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
I believe the earlier os some of the bigger ones
right right right, And Lionel still makes O scale trains
and accessories along with a couple of other well, a
couple of other companies. Shout out to uh, the Payter
familius of our pals, Max and Alex. Uh, mister Williams
would have an O scale train around the Christmas tree
(48:24):
every year.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
You haven't even invoked that image. That's another wonderful kind
of classic Golden Age image, you know, very similar to
like the Fao Schwartz kind of window dressing stuff. That
that model train going around and around the Christmas tree.
That's pretty nostalgic stuff right there. Yeah. And when I
say biggest, by the way for OSK, I think I'm
more referring to more most popular. Ah, yes, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
And then of course there's h O scale, there's in
scale Z scale.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Look, what we're saying is if you are remotely interested
in model trains, there is a wide world of stuff
to choose from, and there are a ton of people
who want to experience that with you. Noel Max sent
us something that I'm surprised I didn't know about because
I love these kinds of specific events. There is a
model train and rail Rodiana show that comes to Atlanta,
(49:17):
was here in January.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Awesome, Okay, I.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Want to go see a model train show.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
I do choill you not being lucky? We got another
one May fourth, nine am to two pm and it is.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
In akwardly busy doing Star Wars stuff. I'm just joking.
I don't. I don't do that, you know, May the
fourth with you. Oh, that's right, it's a thing now.
That sounds cool. I would love to go to that.
And by the way, when I mentioned Sebastian Bach earlier,
largely from from skid Row, I largely know about his
love of model trains because of a particular season of
the Canadian kind of sitcom Trailer Park Boys that involves
(49:55):
the heist of a particularly expensive model train from a
Canadian model train expo, and it sort of follows the
trailer park boys around throughout the entire season and it's
a lot of fun. Want to throw one more thing?
Speaker 1 (50:10):
We just have to say it because, you know, being
an American based show, we love some hyperbole, we love
some superlatives. You might ask yourself, well, guys, what is
the largest single model train engine? The answer is the
Thomas the tank engine that was built for a special
tour by BBC Visual Effects. It weighs one and a
(50:34):
half ton.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
What.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
I don't know if you can still call that a
model train, So I you know what, we'll have to
write to get US world records.
Speaker 4 (50:44):
If it's smaller than a train though, and it works
the same way, it's a miniature, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
I guess so, yeah, miniature can be anything smaller.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
And last thing for me because this is something that
maybe we should have mentioned earlier on. But if you're
wondering how model trains are powered today we talked about
the early steamy ones and the battery ones and then
replaced by the transformer. It's interesting because they're actually powered
largely the way subways are powered through a current that
is carried and transmitted into the engine for all intents
(51:17):
and purposes, or the transformer through a powered rail that
has like you know, either soldered or clipped power current
running through it that comes from a power supply. So
part of the modular nature of model trains also comes
down to like wiring up the power and if you're
not careful, I don't know what you're doing, you could
accidentally give yourself a zapp, right.
Speaker 4 (51:38):
Max, Oh, absolutely, And that had me thinking it's the
future spoiler. I was researching something else that is on
tracks and that's called third track. The third track me
in the power track, and there was something else that
is now a two track, but they did with a
third track and had very bad const questions.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
So before that episode coming up, guys.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Yeah, and if you find yourself in Molden, Massachusetts, do
stop by the Charles Rose Supply Company. They are the
world's largest dealer of Lionel trains and I think they're
one of the biggest just model trains stores in general around.
So if you ever have a specific a need for
(52:20):
a weird, specific trip or adventure, please folks come to
us because we can help you out. Monster cars, what
else model trains. We're getting into this weird things modular sense,
all of the legos.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
We had an entire episo, We had two episodes to
complain about fonts.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
Oh gosh. Yeah. We also have an episode that's sort
of been in the kiddy for a while about the
history of women in electronic music and sound design and
film scoring and things like that. And maybe we can
sneak a little bit of nerdy modular synth stuff and
history into that one, if you guys would indulge me.
But yeah, really excited about all this stuff that we've got
(52:59):
coming up. Great tea for a future episode there, Max
and boy, I never knew there was this much to
know about model trains.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
Thanks as always to our super producer and research associate
for this episode, mister Max Williams. Thanks to Alex Williams
who composed this slam and track you're here in. Thanks
to Eve's jeff Coat Jonathan Strickland ak the Quizz who
one hundred.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Percent digs model trains.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
I know it, I just I know the man well,
he is a He's a model train head. Huge.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Thanks to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs, who is as as
all kind. He's ahead of all kinds is his head
is full of all kinds of esoteric and fascinating knowledge.
Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yes, Eve's Jeffcoat who maybe returning soon. I just want
to give her a shout out twice. Gabe, Lucy a
lionel themselves, and thanks to you.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
And you as well, Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
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