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I caught "The Night of the Meek" yesterday. A Twilight Zone Christmas episode featuring Art Carney of The Honeymooners among a few other faces from the past.

The opening scene is a toystore with post war Lionel layout and only lasts a few seconds.

  That prop/ layout eventually becomes Gomez Addams's layout on the Addams Family 

One of the kids shows in Minneapolis in the fifties was called "lunch with Casey" starring Roger Awsumb and several co-stars.

The first few years started out with a American Flyer steam engine pulling heavyweight cars. In later years the intro was replaced by Casey climbing down from a real steam engine.

It's unfortunate that so few of those kids shows were recorded and saved.

It seems like every metropolitan area had kids shows based on a clown, or some sort of space explorer/soldier of fortune.

An episode of "Banacek", an NBC Mystery Movie had an episode where an Experimental Safety Vehicle was stolen in shipping -- flat car and all -- from the middle of a moving train. When Banacek figured out how they pulled it off, he demonstrated it using  a Lionel train. Kudos to the prop department for the execution. If I can find a clip, I'll post it. The Episode was "Project Phoenix" and aired in 1972.

Last edited by AGHRMatt
@Mill City posted:

That's the very show, Mike. I enjoyed many peanut butter sandwiches with Casey. Another more recent train centric children's show produced locally is Choo Choo Bob...

I can't edit it short...

I don't watch tv much, but do watch Choo Choo Bob on a broadcast network w/Qubo shows if I catch it. (surprised? )

 Sometimes engines and cars pull me through a few of those in a row, but there yardlimits near that big of a cornfield  So slow, I sometimes fall asleep before the trip ends 

I 1st saw Bob long ago, about the time I first saw ShinyTimeStation reruns or whatever it was called. A Ringo hosted epsisode... and then I saw a face on a train and heard George Carlin's distinct rasp....and then...

..then I knew what I was doing between "first lunch"&"last lunch" for a while; eating second lunch in front of the TV.... Gotta go; hungry.

Two episodes of "Leave it to Beaver" featured model trains. (Yeah, I'm old.) In one, a girl lured Wally over to her house to see her father's American Flyer layout. ("My Brother's Girl", S 1, E 27, 1958) The other one had Beaver being pressured by his mother to donate his Lionel set to a younger kid, because he was "too old" to play with it. (He was probably twelve.) ("Beaver's Electric Trains, S 5, E 17, 1962).

One episode of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" has the parents pressuring Ricky to get rid of his old trains, and yet Ozzie and his neighbor regain interest when he brings them out and runs them. The old guys even go to a train store to buy more stuff. The store itself is a typical 1950's train store featuring Lionel.  ("The Electric Train",  S 3, E 15, 1955).

Last edited by jay jay

I was watching a Christmas show on the Hallmark Channel, I believe it was this morning, they had a Lionel train set-up in a department store display.  The train wasn't running but the very first thing I noticed when I saw it was that they had the tender facing the wrong direction.  I thought to my self, "brother, someone needs to learn something about steam engines and their tenders."

@Mike23 posted:

RoyBoy, I googled minneapolis+lunch with casey

this?  Lunch with casey?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=...gXhGxKlRY-gm0moyFBvm

Yes. That's the fellow I "ate lunch with" in my formative years. This is a later episode and the later intro. I have never seen a recording with the early intro that featured an American Flyer S gauge train, with a steam engine pulling heavyweight cars.

Last edited by RoyBoy
@Adriatic posted:
@Mill City posted:

That's the very show, Mike. I enjoyed many peanut butter sandwiches with Casey. Another more recent train centric children's show produced locally is Choo Choo Bob...

I can't edit it short...

I don't watch tv much, but do watch Choo Choo Bob on a broadcast network w/Qubo shows if I catch it. (surprised? )

Choo-choo Bob graciously donated a DVD of his show to the TTOS club when we had a layout in the Vallco mall in Sunnyvale.

That DVD and a few others played constantly for several years keeping the kids entertained.

@Former Member posted:
This movie clip is from the 1951 film 'People Will Talk' - Cary Grant and two buddies run a huge Lionel train set. When the inevitable collision comes - well, if any of you have been in on post-derailment discussions, it's kind of how they go; been on a couple of these!

I remember seeing this and was totally impressed by the trackage and the floor space Cary Grant's wife let him have for trains

In Dennis The Menace S2 EP30 The Soap Box Derby there's a cool train scene.  The premise of the show is that Dennis and his dad are building a derby car and a snooty neighbor comes by to critique it.  George Wilson is also there when this happens and they end up in a bet for the fastest car, Dennis' car or the other kids.  Bet is $50.00 which is obviously a nice chunk in those days.  The prize for the winner of the competition is a train set (HO).  While Dennis doesn't win the derby (the other kid does) his car is the fastest (leaving out plot spoilers on purpose).  So the snooty neighbor kid comes over with his rather crummy HO train set and won't let Dennis see it.  Dennis is okay with it as the $50.00 prize money bought him a nice Lionel setup which they cut to.

@Former Member posted:
This movie clip is from the 1951 film 'People Will Talk' - Cary Grant and two buddies run a huge Lionel train set. When the inevitable collision comes - well, if any of you have been in on post-derailment discussions, it's kind of how they go; been on a couple of these!

Great scene, found myself giggling over there argument.  Way to bring a big smile to my Monday!

Ellery Queen The Eccentric Engineer. This just popped up on my YouTube feed. Ed McMahon is a supposedly crackpot inventor who is secretly developing a potentially lucrative automation system using a large Lionel layout and is murdered for his secrets.  Lots of train action. Several well known actors in the cast. 

Last edited by MarkVB
@MarkVB posted:

Ellery Queen The Eccentric Engineer. This just popped up on my YouTube feed. Ed McMahon is a supposedly crackpot inventor who is secretly developing a potentially lucrative automation system using a large Lionel layout and is murdered for his secrets.  Lots of train action. Several well known actors in the cast. 

That was a fascinating episode, I wonder where the layout was from as it was very well done and looked more permanent than something setup for a single TV episode.

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