My mother and father always took me to Pittsburgh to see the train layouts at Gimbel's, Kaufman's and Horne's. Also, they would take me to the Penn Traffic dept. store in Johnstown to see their train layouts. Christmas, what a wonderful time of the year.
Dang Jim, ya beat me to it!! Yep the BIG THREE, Kaufman's, Joesph Horne, Gimbel's. I also think Boggs & Buhl had trains but it burned down rather spectacularly as I recall as a wee lad. Then there was Bill & Walt's Hobbies, though they did not have a layout as I recall. Dad always got Lionel through Doubleday-Hill Company, an electrical supply house that sold and repaired Lionel but had no storefront.
Still have every Lionel train and accessory I received growing up (and their pristine boxes).
Jimmy & Sam:
I may have been standing next to you guys looking in those windows back then. My fondest memory is of the disappearing train layout in Kaufmann’s window in 1950 which had a 2035 pulling a string of Lionel Scout gondolas into that very short tunnel and not coming back out for 5 or 10 seconds. And their in-store layouts were fantastic.
Besides the downtown department stores, many neighborhood hardware stores had layouts in their windows at Christmas time. I remember that Burns Hardware on Brownsville Road in Carrick sold Lionel Trains during the Holidays and they had a small layout in their storefront window which I walked past everyday on my way to and from grade school. And Hazelbart’s Hardware across the street sold American Flyer trains during the holidays.
Bill
