Marx Store Displays

There was an article some years ago in CTT I think, on a 3086 Dealer Display. Also, Tasker had a few of them in his possession. There were a few variations of the display. Base colors varied and the accessories varied. With guidance from Tasker and photo's from that CTT article, I built one years ago. Except for the push buttons I added for the whistle station and the binding posts I mounted on the top, Tasker said I nailed it almost perfectly right down to the color of the splatter paint.

Here is a photo of one of the styles and a video of the one I made.

 Steve

Here is a Marx counter top display.

Steve

I had heard that Tasker Brush had at least one....I assume his have gone on to new

owners....I remember seeing the iconic #333 with gray NYC passenger cars running

on one of these layouts in Sears basement, with Gene Autry's "Rudolph the Rednose

Reindeer" playing in the background.  I also saw another in a sporting goods store that

sold Marx around the holidays, and that was the one place I saw 3/16th cars like the

ATSF stock and L&NE hopper available for separate sale.  I don't remember much about

the displays but think they closely resembled the sample above.

Huh!  So THAT'S what I got!  Very interesting...

Methinks a bit of restoration will be in order...

Mitch

Hey!!! That looks just like the layout that I had in the back of my pickup last Saturday. I didn't know I was hauling around a real Marx display.  We should have tied it down in the back of the pickup, good thing it did not blow out.  Great find Mitch.

Marx was just a lot more popular in the world I lived in back in the '50s.  We had Marx and we saw it at Western Auto and Sears or JC Penny and everywhere.  Lionel was very upscale - good,  but much more expensive.  I recall a store displauy at, I think, a Western Auto or Kress that looked a lot like that above.  I had something similar under my bed for several years before we built our basement layout.

Thankee!  I kinda suspect the guy didn't know exactly what he had... 

And here I was gonna take up the tracks and repaint the board and all.   Good thing a buddy of mine on another forum pointed this thread out to me! 

Now to track down a Marx water tower... 

Mitch

  I only got to see the end of pw stuff, and MPC on display at Sears till Atari. I remember seeing the plastic MARX in boxes at the early Kreesge's/K-marts, but even there Lionel had the static end cap display, Marx nothing. Finding a buried CV woke me up.

That is a cool little layout. It looks like they could have been sent out easily as "kits". Many things like this are, so a back room genius could have assembled them. Some things never get looked at, or thrown away, or used, just stored, and forgotten in a corner for decades.      

Papa,

that's a great looking display

As a young kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 50's, I recall many ma and pa toy stores that sold both Lionel and Marx.   I recall seeing  the train board Louis Marx train display in a toy store that stood on the corner of 86th st. near Bay Parkway. We were of rather modest means back then and since Marx accessories cost about 35% less than Lionel at the time, every Christmas I would find a $2 Marx accessory under the tree which added lighting action and endured heavy use.  Most stores that carried Lionel usually carried Louis Marx toys as well.

My Marx layout was based on that track plan as shown in CTT all those years ago. The main difference is that I added a pair of switches between the sidings to make an S reversing loop.

Here's a shot of the track plan without all the clutter:

J White

J, we've seen shots of your layout after you added all the "clutter", and it looks neat and fun!

Well, here's one with the clutter:

I posted the other one to show the track plan, though I appreciate the compliment.

J White

Interesting idea!  But how do you re-reverse once the train's gone through the loop?

Mitch

Shunting!  or a treacherous reversing through the "S".