41 Facts About Lionel Corporation

Lionel Corporation was an American toy manufacturer and holding company of retailers that had been in business for over 120 years.

Lionel Corporation trains have been produced since 1900, and their trains drew admiration from model railroaders around the world for the solidity of their construction and the authenticity of their detail.

Original Lionel Corporation was founded in 1900 by Joshua Lionel Cowen and Harry C Grant in New York City.

Lionel Corporation ended up selling 12 examples of the Electric Express.

In 1906, Lionel Corporation began offering a three-rail track that simplified wiring of reverse loops and accessories.

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Whether this was an accidental misreading of Marklin's 2 gauge specifications or an intentional incompatibility is unclear, but Lionel Corporation marketed this non-standard track as "The Standard of the World, " and soon adopted the name in its catalogs as Standard Gauge and trademarked the name.

Lionel Corporation responded by targeting advertising at children, telling them its products were the most realistic toy trains.

Additionally, Lionel Corporation criticised the durability of competitors' products in ads targeted at parents.

William Walthers, a large seller of model railroads, asked Cowen in 1929 why Lionel Corporation painted its trains in bright and unrealistic colors.

In 1929, Lionel Corporation opened a factory in Hillside, New Jersey where it produced trains until 1974.

Lionel Corporation avoided bankruptcy and emerged from receivership the next year.

Lionel Corporation ceased toy production in 1942 to produce nautical items for the United States Navy during World War II.

Lionel Corporation began to promote ads aimed at American teenagers, to begin planning their post-War layouts.

Lionel Corporation introduced the so-called paper train, a detailed set of cut-and-fold models of Lionel Corporation trains printed on cardstock which was notoriously difficult to put together.

Lionel Corporation made many models, including scale models, of actual trains.

In 1934, Lionel Corporation made a 1:45 scale model of Union Pacific's M10000 diesel streamliner that runs on O gauge track.

In 1938, Lionel Corporation made a model of Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad's Burlington Zephyr streamliner called the flying yankee.

Lionel Corporation resumed producing toy trains in late 1945, replacing their original product line with less-colourful, but more realistic, trains and concentrating exclusively on O-gauge trains.

Lionel Corporation attempted to keep the pace with the changing trends by offering space and military-themed train sets and coming out with their own HO line of trains.

Lionel Corporation started the postwar period in 1945 with a train set introducing remote-control uncoupling.

In 1947, Lionel Corporation produced a model of the Pennsylvania Railroad's GG1.

Lionel Corporation declined rapidly after 1956, because Hobbyists preferred the smaller but more realistic HO scale trains, and children's interest shifted from toy trains to toy cars.

The business direction of the Lionel Corporation company changed: it added subsidiary companies unrelated to toy train sets — among them were Dale Electronics, Sterling Electric Motors, and Telerad Manufacturing.

Cohn's unsuccessful tenure of Lionel Corporation lost the company more than US$13 million in his four years of running the company.

In 1969, Lionel Corporation's sales had declined to just over $1 million per year.

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Lionel Corporation sold the product die tooling for its struggling train line and leased the rights to the Lionel Corporation brand name to the cereal company General Mills.

Lionel Corporation began to offer trains in a wider variety of roadnames and colors and with improved graphics that were not previously available during the postwar period.

In 1971, Lionel Corporation debuted a new electronic sound system in their engines, called "Mighty Sound of Steam, " to replace the electro-mechanical air whistles of the pre-war and post-war eras.

An internal reorganization in 1973 caused Lionel Corporation to become part of General Mills' Fundimensions group, and a new line of scale-sized freight cars, called "Standard O", was introduced that same year.

Lionel Corporation integrated several features into the locomotive, including a working headlight and a smoke unit.

In 1974, Lionel Corporation began to offer trains in HO scale for the first time since the postwar period, where they were last cataloged in 1966.

In 1975, Lionel Corporation introduced a 75th anniversary freight set that consisted of their U36B diesel engine and rolling stock that included images of catalog covers and logos from Lionel Corporation's past.

One year later, Lionel Corporation released a model of the American Freedom Train to celebrate the nation's bicentennial.

In 1979, Lionel Corporation re-issued the Fairbanks-Morse Train Master diesel locomotive and re-introduced the American Flyer S gauge line of trains, both of which had not been produced since 1966.

In 1986, Lionel was sold again, this time to toy train collector and real estate developer Richard P Kughn of Detroit, Michigan; it became Lionel Trains Inc .

In 1989, Lionel Corporation phased out the Mighty Sound of Steam and replaced it with what would eventually be called "RailSounds, " beginning with their re-issue of the pre-war B6 Pennsylvania switcher.

Lionel Corporation entered financial troubles during the early 1980s recession and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 1982.

Lionel Corporation resisted and the fight drained the company of cash.

Additionally, Lionel Corporation found it difficult to compete on price with the larger Toys "R" Us, and it attempted to expand too rapidly in a weakened economy.

Lionel Corporation trademarks were purchased by Richard Kughn, a Detroit real estate magnate who had bought the Lionel Corporation product line from General Mills in 1986.

Lionel Corporation trains were manufactured from 1920 to 1929 in a factory at 605 21st Street in Irvington, New Jersey.