Glory Days of our Hobby

There was good competition back then. And competition breeds innovation. sadly , lacking  today.

The newest items today were only dreams back in the late 70s early 80s. I still like that period as MPC/Lionel came out with new product, one thing at a time. We could buy and sell with ease. Everything was in high demand. Even some of the sets were Hi End for their time with cars and graphics never made by PW Lionel.

@Dave Koehler posted:

There was good competition back then. And competition breeds innovation. sadly , lacking  today.

I was MIA so to speak during the era of which you speak.  I have yet to buy any stuff made in the last 10+ years.  My first brand new purchase is a Lionel Cotton Belt diesel engine from their 2023 catalog, and it should be here in Oct/Nov.  I am anxiously awaiting it to see the quality.  Based on stuff I read on the forum, I'm a bit uneasy but I'm a positive guy.  The one thing that really saddens me is all the manufacturing has been shipped overseas, as far as I can tell.  I go out of my way to buy 'Made in USA' products always, even at twice the price.

I have yet to devise a means of giving myself a good hard kick for not buying sets of K-Line passenger cars for favored roads.  I got some blown-out Heavyweights, including unmarked ones to bash, but miss(ed) a number  of the streamliners in certain sets.  I remember that period with nostalgia and regret.

IMHO, the true Glory Days began shortly after Mike Wolf started MTH.  No so coincidentally the Glory Days started to fade shortly after Mike Wolf walked away.

I have been back into toy trains as an adult  now for 48 years and as far as I am concerned, that has been over 17,520 glorious days and still counting!   Suppliers come and go just like in any other business so maybe we should just enjoy the day.

"Yesterday its history,

Tomorrow is a mystery,

Today is a gift,

That's why they call it the present."

Happy railroading,

Don

There have been peaks and valleys throughout the decades: 1940, 1950, 1990(!?)  The best thing about MTH is that they were perhaps the first real competition Lionel had since American Flyer after WWII.  They knocked Lionel on their duff and woke them up!  I guess I agree that c. 2000-2001 was "peak train"--there was actually a glut- maybe too much product.  Some years later, Legacy and Lionel's Layout Control System (LCS) were important advancements.  Hopefully the best days are yet to come!

Very good point about competition...so many catalogs per year, too.

I tend to view the early 21st century of toy trains as a rennaissance of sorts, although some might say it began in the mid 1990s. From the catalog artwork to the actual items produced, and companies were taking chances with new and innovative items.

Again, I may be bias somewhat, as we had a local and very informal group of guys getting together regularly and enjoying the progress we all were making on our respective layouts. If I ever can afford to retire, I'd very much like to get back into a similar group, just run trains and help each other.

For me the best years of the hobby began in 1988 with Richard Kughn purchasing Lionel. He soon realized that he needed outside consulting in order to restore Lionel to its glory days. Enter a brash young guy from Columbia, Maryland named Mike Wolf. He gave advice to Mr. Kughn especially regarding using a South Korean train maker named Samhongsa. The die cast engines that followed including the Chessie Steam Special, Mikado, Hudson, B-6 switcher were flawless castings which were so much better than the domestic castings Lionel had been getting. When the purchases from South Korea began to decrease from Lionel Mike stepped in and in 1994 brought out his own line of engines from the South Korea train maker. A couple of lawsuits both of which Lionel lost gave Mike the capital to invest in bushels of new tooling. At one point in the late nineties Mike was producing six catalogs a year, three premier and three Railking. Lionel was on the ropes. After two or three changes in leadership Lionel regained some momentum and the two companies competed well into the new century. Meanwhile, other smaller firms were making contributions especially Maury Klein at K-Line. His accessories, aluminum passenger cars and die cast steamers were wonderful and to this day command premium prices. Weaver had brass locomotives and a great variety of rolling stock while Atlas introduced the line of woodside reefers which became instantly collected. Then Lionel sued K-Line and forced him out of business and Bob Weaver passed away. Richard Kughn sold Lionel to a holding company and so the bean counters entered the hobby. The move toward scale while it made for great locomotives and rolling stock it signaled the demise of the toy train aspect of the hobby. No one wanted a #97 coal loader, #164 log loader or the culvert set or the bascule bridge or the magnetic cranes. Instead people collected Woodland Scenic and Menard's buildings.  Through it all one constant has been Ross Custom switches making the best turnouts in the hobby. The shift away from the accessories and the toy like aspect of the hobby is saddening to me. How many engines do you need? How many dozens of rolling stock items are required. So, I currently see the hobby as somewhat static with whistle steam and using an ipad to run your trains the only really new features. No, for me the best years were from 1988 to 2005. Since then there hasn't been much to get excited about

If I were going to wallow in nostalgia, I would pick a time before I was born. When Lionel was selling kits for 700e Hudsons and scale tanks, boxes, and cabooses. When Model Builder was selling dreams to boys AND men. Those were the catalogs I salivated over as a child--circa 1940.

I guess that the golden years will be defined by your age. For me, at 74, I consider the 50’s the golden age  I think that whenever you got infatuated will be your golden era.  The nostalgia of our youth is always gold tinted.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately. I used to visit multiple train stores when we went on vacation. They are all gone now. The train magazines were over 100 pages with advertisements. The forums were quite lively with many great layouts being built by some interesting people. The catalogs were awesome! Lionel, MTH, Weaver, K-line, and Williams, along with all the cottage industries. I remember fondly the Williams fold out golden memories catalog and the great debate that their reproductions caused. I have quite a few of their F3s.

For me, the golden age is over. It's now just memories. They're happy memories, and a little sad, too. I now understand how the postwar crowd felt 20 years ago. The amazing times they lived through and how they enjoyed the hobby changed, possibly too much for many of them. I feel the same way. I haven't even looked at the recent Lionel catalog, maybe I should.

From a pure nostalgia perspective, it would be the mid to late 1970s.  In 1975, after some tough times for our family, my mom took me (12 years old at the time) to a local train store.  I'd saved up some money from mowing yards, etc. over the summer.  I bought two cars (Frisco box car and a N&W three level auto rack) to go with the used/second hand set I got for Christmas a few years earlier, and the owner gave me a Lionel catalog.  I spent hour upon hours going through the catalog and wanting pretty much everything.  Over the next 10 or so years I made more purchases from the shop before getting a job in a different city.  Even with the new scale items that I have, I still have a soft spot for the MPC era trains.

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.

Turning 67 today, "Golden Age" is a mixed term. As a youth I was smitten by the 2900 series freight cars, which I learned about from my father's catalogs. I love my 226E 291W set, to which I have added 2 tanks, hopper, and box--to me the pinnacle of Lionel production. Yet this train runs only around the Christmas tree. My large basement layout is focused on B&O operations, and welcomes Williams, Lionel, MTH, Weaver, K-Line, and unknowns. I'm thankful for what has been made, and optimistic for what still may be made.

I was a youngster getting the catalogs in the era you're talking about and I remember just being amazed at what was coming out. Sadly, I couldn't afford any of it because I was a kid. But I remember the competition being tight! It was awesome!

I still greatly enjoy this era of the hobby. I think every era is enjoyable for its own reasons because none of the eras are really alike. I guess I'm an equal opportunity enjoy-er! Or I just like nostalgia haha

Love "equal opportunity enjoyer"

I have been in this hobby now for close to 50 years continuously and they all have been glory days.  Never mattered to me what scale I was working with, what manufacturers were or were not around, nor did it matter if what I was exactly looking for wasn't out there.  Even as a small child, I was making my trains to match my dreams and visions to the best of my abilities.  Those skills have grown and, in some cases, regressed at times, but I have never lamented times past.  There is always something that catches my interest in this hobby.