Hey Ya’ll
What are your favourite train makers. Mine are Williams, Lionel, And MTH.
Tell me about yours
Nicholas Parker
Lionel, K-line, and the A.C. Gilbert Company(American Flyer).
Mine would have to be Lionel strictly for nastalgic reason, MTH for kicking in the innovation and Williams for just some cool ole’ fashioned trains. The rest are cool too but these are my tops.
Santa’s elves!
Atlas O. Great customser service and scale products.
3rd Rail. Another great customer service, and modestly priced Brass locos
Ives, Marx, and Lionel, in that order. Dorfan will probably take #1 or #2 on the list if I can ever find any to buy. I’ll also buy pre-1945 American Flyer if the price is right.
Customer service is zilch but rarely needed. 
Mine would have to be Marx,Lionel,and Gilbert Flyer!
Lionel, Postwar and Modern !
Lionel, K-Line, Märklin (Z), LGB, Micro-Trains (N), Atlas (N and O)
I have a special fondness for the freight cars and locomotives of American Model Toys (AMT) and their decendants. Also, the older Atlas and AHM/Pola full-scale cars They have a nice period look about them.
I like the way Williams locos pull quietly and dependably.
And, I have a goodly share of Lionel MPC rolling stock.
Carl
Bing, Ives, Bub… Just love the rattle and creak of tinplate as it rolls by…and that odor of hot grease and ozone as the mill thunders past cannot be beat.
Pre-war Lionel and Marx
MTH, Ives, Lionel, and Pre-war Flyer!
Hey Ya’ll
I hate to attack Lionel as much as I like them, but, my granfather’s friend told me some stories. This man was making prewar stuff for lionel and then Lionel cheated them out of their money. So they stopped with Lionel and his son married a woman who’s father owned a factory in Korea. He started making trains again and today, his company is known as Mikes Trains House. Another, I have found truth in. MTH sued lionel for some reason or another for 40 million dollars. I have heard much of this. Then, his friend wanted to buy a train set again. He told his freind to go with MTH, K-Line, or Williams, but his friend insisted on buying a lionel. So he did, and a month or two later, it broke and he tried to get Lionel to fix it. They refused, and he sold it on e-bay and bought mth’s N&W J passenger train set. I have seen it, And I am pleased with the quality of it and my friend’s mth stuff. I also read about Lionels new Camelback. Nice product, but one flaw that hasen’t been neglegted for years in mth, williams, and k-line trains. Speed Control. However, I am taken with a few lionel things and I plan to buy them. I love Lionel’s stuff (their cheap stuff).
Nick
Would you care to elaborate on how Lionel “cheate d them out of their money”? The “Mike Wolf Story”, as I have always heard it, was that Mike started making the Lionel Classics line in the late '80s and early '90s under contract with Lionel. After a couple of years, their relationship soured, and Mike branched off to form his own train company, still making reproductions of Lionel’s original tinplate trains. He also started making his own line of relatively high quality scale O gauge trains.
The Lawsuit is a hot debate around here, and on several other O gauge forums. Many, myself included, feel that MTH shouldn’t have been awarded the $40, but that’s a totally different topic, and I hate to turn a thread the wrong way by bringing it up.
I also find it hard to believe that Lionel would refuse to service his train. Lionel has traditionally excellent service, provided that the product has not changed hands from the original owner in the year of the warranty, and that it hasn’t been modified. Could it be possible that your friend bought this set used, or altered it in some way? These same two stipulations apply to, as far as I know, every O gauge train currently on the market.
In order of importance to me:
- MTH
- Lionel Postwar
- K-Line
- Marx
- Williams
BillFromWayne
www.modeltrainjournal.com
Williams, K-Line and Lionel in O gauge.
Gilbert American Flyer, SHS, and American Models in S gauge.
“one flaw that hasen’t been neglegted for years in mth, williams, and k-line trains. Speed Control.”
I believe that you must be mistaken on this fact as well. Lionel was the first 3 rail O gauge manufacturer to advertise speed control, although MTH beat them to the market with it by a couple of months. K-line has been shipping engines with speed control for only about 6 months now, and Williams has never had speed control. Most Lionel engines have speed control. I don’t know why the camelbacks didn’t.
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postwar Lionel for its look, simplicity, reliability, and nostalgia.
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Atlas O for its crisp detail and graphics, realism, and silky operation.
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Newly tooled Lionel for the same reasons as Atlas.
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Williams for its look, simplicity, and value
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postwar American Flyer S gauge for the same reasons as postwar.
“his man was making prewar stuff for lionel and then Lionel cheated them out of their money. So they stopped with Lionel and his son married a woman who’s father owned a factory in Korea. He started making trains again and today, his company is known as Mikes Trains House”
I regret to inform you that your grandfather’s friend is misinformed. About the only correct fact is that Mike Wolf, after his falling out with Lionel, did begin importing trains and changed the name of his company to MTH.
(1) Samhongsa, a long time Korean maker of imported model trains (including brass locomotives made for Williams) manufactured the Lionel Classics series for them in the late 1980s early 1990s. When initially approached Samhongsa informed Lionel that they only dealt through Mike Wolf, thus Lionel contracted with Mike Wolf to work with them and Samhongsa.
(2) Mike Wolf’s wife is, as far as anyone knows, no relation to the owner or operator of Samhongsa.
(3) No one cheated anyone out of any money per se. Mike Wolf allegedly elected to import, on his own, without discussing the issue with Richard Kughn, a Samhongsa locomotive he and Lionel had been discussing that Lionel declined to put into production. Richard Kughn, the owner of Lionel, allegedly took exception to this happening without his knowledge and terminated not only Lionel’s arrangement with Mike Wolf, but Mike Wolf’s Lionel dealership. This latter event led to a lawsuit, whose content and terms of settlement have never been publicly revealed. Both Lionel and Mike Wolf went their separate ways from that point in the early 1990s.