The Golden Age of Toy Trains . . . that would be 1940 to 1960, with a few exceptions either way. In the late thirties those guys at Lionel were all about excellent engineering and prototype look as the hobby pulled out of the Depression. Even with the interruption of the War, Lionel was able to unleash the floodgates of great trains in the late forties. But the late fifties and most of the sixties pretty much saw the abandonment of realism in the face of better selling "toy" items and colors. Quality absolutely collapsed. The fifties brought us to the idea that a toy, instead of being a thing of beauty that could be passed down through generations, was something made cheaply and to be thrown away when broken.
The glory days of today consist of being able to find parts for all those pre and postwar locos in a matter of seconds on the Web.
