Toy trains Archives

Does a Lionel train have to run in a circular loop?

Dave Farquhar Toy trains August 23, 2019August 3, 2019

Electrically speaking, there’s no reason a Lionel train has to run in a circular loop. A circular loop is the simplest way to set one up. But if you want another shape, you can do it.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Who owns Lionel Trains?

Dave Farquhar Toy trains August 16, 2019March 10, 2022

Lionel has a storied history, and its ownership has changed several times since 1969. Who owns Lionel Trains now? The answer may surprise you.

Lionel, LLC, manufacturer of Lionel electric trains, is owned by Guggenheim Partners, who also own the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. Rock and roller Neil Young remains affiliated with Lionel but his ownership stake is unclear.

Dave Farquhar

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Lionel CW-40 vs CW-80 transformers

Dave Farquhar Toy trains August 9, 2019August 4, 2019

The Lionel CW-40, also known as the Powermax Plus, looks just like the CW-80, at least if you’re looking from the front. But it has significant differences from its bigger brother. Let’s look at the Lionel CW-40 vs CW-80 and whether those differences matter to you.

Neither the CW-40 or CW-80 are high-end transformers. But if you’re doing anything more ambitious than running a simple loop of track, you’ll probably be happier with a CW-80.

Dave Farquhar

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Windup toy trains

Dave Farquhar Toy trains July 26, 2019July 8, 2019

Windup toy trains were popular at the dawn of the 20th century, when electricity was a luxury. But they remained on the market well into the 1960s as a cheaper and simpler option for young kids who liked trains. They retain a small but devoted following today because of their inherent challenges compared to electric-powered toy trains.

Dave Farquhar

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Lionel vs American Flyer fans

Dave Farquhar Toy trains July 19, 2019September 29, 2019

In 2014, Classic Toy Trains columnist Lou Palumbo wrote an opinion piece titled “Flyer Guys Are Different.” A lot of American Flyer fans took offense at the characterization. There are differences in Lionel vs American Flyer fans, but understanding why the two are different tends to lead to greater understanding than worrying about how they’re different, or what the specific differences are.

Marketers divide consumers into different groups, and the people who favor American Flyer tend to fall into a different group than the people who favor Lionel. That doesn’t make one better than the other, but it does mean they have different values from one another.

Dave Farquhar

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Lionel vs American Flyer wiring

Dave Farquhar Toy trains July 12, 2019June 9, 2022

Enough has been written over the years about Lionel wiring to fill volumes. Not so much for American Flyer, though. Fortunately, when it comes to Lionel vs American Flyer wiring, there’s a lot of similarity. Most of the advice you find about Lionel wiring applies.

Dave Farquhar

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Are all Lionel prewar couplers compatible?

Dave Farquhar Toy trains July 5, 2019January 25, 2023

Lionel changed its coupler designs several times in the prewar era. That leads to a fair question. Are all Lionel prewar coupler types compatible? Can you use the different types together? As always, the answer is, it depends.

The two most common types of Lionel prewar couplers are compatible with each other. But the two later types are not directly compatible with the tab-in-slot coupler, though there are a couple of tricks that can help you.

Dave Farquhar

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Marx 994 locomotive

Dave Farquhar Toy trains June 7, 2019March 8, 2024

The Marx 994 was Marx’s largest tin-bodied locomotive. It dates to 1952. It wasn’t made for very long, but thanks to its size, collectors still like the Marx 994 locomotive.

Marx released the 994 in 1950 to compete with Unique Art, a rival maker of tin toys who had entered the market in 1949. Unique’s trains were priced like Marx’s and ran on the same O gauge track but were slightly larger, which made them appear to be a better value. Marx countered by introducing its own line of trains in a similar size.

Dave Farquhar

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Remove paint from toy trains without chemicals

Dave Farquhar Toy trains May 24, 2019May 12, 2019

Someone asked me the other day how to remove paint from toy trains without chemicals like paint stripper or oven cleaner. It can be done, but there’s a reason a lot of hobbyists like me use chemicals.

Without using chemicals, you have to use abrasive methods to remove paint. That usually means sandblasting or bead blasting.

Dave Farquhar

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New Marx/Ameritrains trains

Dave Farquhar Toy trains May 17, 2019October 30, 2021

Marx Trains, also variously known as New Marx, Modern Marx, and Ameritrains, was originally the brainchild of Jim and Debby Flynn, a husband and wife who collected Marx trains, especially the tin variants. They produced a line of tinplate trains in the same style of vintage Louis Marx tin trains. Marx stopped making trains out of tinplate in 1972. But what happened to Marx Trains, or New Marx?

Marx Trains had a run of about 15 years, from 1992 to around 2007, with a brief resumption in 2012. The trains had a small, dedicated following but did not achieve the market penetration of larger rivals like MTH.

Dave Farquhar

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