There are many possible concepts to consider for a Hanukkah themed train layout. There can be a Macabees versus Greeks animated car with figures fighting. A live stock car filled with hogs for sacrifice has to be in the train. A tank filled with bubbling oil would be an appropriate accessory. Andrew
Shouldn’t that be a burning bush???[:-,]
…oh all right, going to the back of the room [D)]
I suspect several things are involved. As noted, the manufacturers may feel there wasn’t / isn’t enough of a demand for such an item. As noted, Joshua Lionel Cowan was Jewish (as were many other toy manufacturers of his time). Unfortunately, at that time there was a lot of anti-Jewish discrimination, so someone like Cowan may not have wanted to call attention to the fact that he was Jewish (not that he ever did anything to hide it of course) for fear that some yahoos would decide not to buy Lionel trains for their kids because of that.
BTW, I’ve often wondered if the spelling of his name - “Cowan” - was an attempt by one of his ancestors to make their name sound more English / less Jewish, since I suspect the family name at some point was “Cohen”?? Sadly it wasn’t uncommon generations back for Jews or Irish folks to change or modify their names because of discrimination.
There’s another factor too. Hanukkah as a commercial holiday is still a recent phenomenon. It was always a minor holiday in terms of Judaism. Also for the most part Jews do not decorate the way Christians do for their holidays. I still think it’s too much of a niche market to produce an entire trainset. Maybe a couple of cars though.
He changed the spelling himself in 1910, from “Cohen”. However, strictly speaking, the correct spelling seems to be “kaf-yod-hei-nun”, so we can’t fault any reasonable transliteration from the Hebrew to the Roman alphabet that he may have preferred, for whatever reason.
That being said, there has been a lot of adaptation of names to avoid discrimination. I discovered long after her death that my Irish-born maternal grandmother, who lived with my family throughout my childhood, went from Bridget Mary Murphy to Beatrice Mary Fleming when she immigrated and married my grandfather.
On the other side, my great-grandfather Anders Svenson, whose father was Sven Nilsson, became Andrew S. Nelson. The “S.” presumably memorialized his former patronym, although he seems never to have written it out. And Andrew and Nelson are less-Swedish respellings of his given name and his father’s surname.
Incidentally, having an “S” that doesn’t seem to stand for anything is very American. Two of our presidents have had such middle initials.
Heh. Had some of that on both sides of my family; my father dropped the “stein” from his name in the 50s with a career as a folksinger in mind (so I nearly wound up being Maurice Moses Marmelstein, Jr.!)
As for my mother’s side of the family, one of my ancestors’ bosses got tired of referring to an endless succession of Svensons and Johnssons, so came up with the clever idea of turning Carl Anders into Cahlander… 
-MMM-
(who likes the tea candle idea for a Chanukkah train)
I picked up the cars for the Chanukkah train at the greenberg show Sunday 2 Gondolas and a caboose