In Miniature by Simon Garfield

Author:Simon Garfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

“I don’t wear a little hat!”: Rod Stewart enjoys his layout in Beverly Hills.

Before anyone knew it, model railroading had become the new rock ’n’ roll. Once Rod was out, they were all out. Roger Daltrey had a nice middle-aged layout in the attic, as did the late Davy Jones of the Monkees. But no one loved a painted gasometer or an uncoupled bogie more than Neil Young. Young’s association with small trains began at the age of four, when his dad laid out a Marx Santa Fe diesel at their home in Ontario, and he thought it was the finest thing ever. A few years later his ambitions broadened, and he learned that the train to have was not a Marx but a Lionel, the aficionado’s favorite. He got his first Lionel loco in his early teens and constructed his first solo track in the basement. He told Classic Toy Trains magazine about frequent floods and occasional electric shocks as his Lionels battled through regardless.

• • • • •

The Lionel Manufacturing Company was founded in 1902. Joshua Lionel Cowen, one of nine children born to Jewish New York immigrants from Eastern Europe, had already tried his hand with other patented inventions—a snazzy new torch, a portable electric fan—when he began to wonder about the small tin-plate trains he had seen running around circular tracks in shop windows. These were probably of German origin, made either by Märklin or its rival Bing. (The German toy industry, which was centered in Nuremberg since the end of the fourteenth century, dominated the early world of model trains—first with clockwork models, and then primitive electric versions; the dominance lasted until the First World War. The first documented model railway, however, was not German but French, laid out, or at least paid for, by Napoleon III for his three-year-old son, Prince Imperial. A photograph from 1859 suggests a single clockwork train running over a viaduct on a figure-eight formation in a private park in Saint-Cloud.)

Cowen copied what he could from the Germans, and grasped two opportunities. He marketed his Lionel trains specifically for Christmas; and he improved the system of propulsion—promoting an elaborate way of hooking his trains into the burgeoning urban mains electricity system by means of a transformer: “What real-live wide-awake boy is not interested in electricity?” he wondered. “Is there any better way than to have a perfect model as an instructor?” (Electricity for Lionel trains was supplied by a central third rail, a popular system now largely abandoned by other manufacturers.) Cowen also realized that his initial sales could soon be supplemented by additional trains and track and bridges, enabling the construction of “a wholly equipped miniature road.” And thus was material desire established in the head of young male American society.

The train and starter track was only the first step toward a proper layout, and the proper layout guaranteed lucrative long-term brand loyalty. There were so many gauges and standards to choose from (from the Germans initially, and then

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