Sunday, January 11, 2009

Lionel Trains and The American Flyer - History

By Edward Rizzo

Presently to follow with his greatest model trains, Josh came out with a new gauge, and this was a moderate three rail O gauge. He had speedily projected the need for a train that would be more adaptable to home sizes and could generate off the electrical energy. That's precisely what this gauge allowed and is nevertheless a very favourited model today.

Other train manufacturers were fast becoming identified as well. For instance the in 1907, the American Flyer joined the industry. Owned by two friends, William Coleman and William Hafner. They had determined they wanted to experiment with keeping costs down in the lithography region. They tried numerous tin type stuffs but the quality was bad, so they were not favourited. Actually, it was this organisation that originally started making clockwork trains.

Finally the partnership came to an end and Hafner went on his individual constructing the American flyer electric train set. In the beginning, he went with the O gauge, but shortly went into the general gauge that Lionel had set.

Just before the oncoming of the war, Hafner sold the American flyer in 1938. This was to A C Gilbert. Once the war started out, every last model train making had to stop. Every last the attention had to be put on the war. Prior to this though Gilbert had changed the gauge from HO to O. Then in 1946, the S gauge was introduced. The Lionel Firm had the superior edge in the industry and Gilbert was unable to compete. He could not keep up with the mass production and the price of Lionels. Gilbert stopped production in 1966 and simply after this; Lionel took over the ownership of the American Flyer.

The love for model trains exists on today and will no question continue to do so for many years to come. There will never be a toy in the industry that can take the place of the favourited trains in people's heart. - 16887

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