Lionel 6464 boxcar article notes a big roadname bias

Classic Toy Trains Forum
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In the current issue there is an article about Rare Lionel 6464 boxcars.

There are several prototype boxcars. They are for the railroads of Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic, Louisville & Nashville, and Norfolk Southern. These have very distinct and visually appealing graphics. In real life the box cars with these roadnames would appear on any railroad across the country.

The Top Lionel management of the 1950’s and 1960’s though ended up thinking that only railroads on the coast could possibly interest O gauge train buyers. That is a strangely disconnected bias against roadnames, even though at the time the boxcars with those road names could be seen in trains all over the nation. It sounds like the Top level management of Lionel at the time was not getting out of their offices to see what was happening on the real railroads.

The appealing graphics of the roads like DSS&A, L&N, NS boxcars would have been a welcome contrast to the Southern Pacific and New York Central boxcars available at the time. It looks like they tried to play it too safe and stumbled over their own feet to fall flat on their faces with decreasing sales of the same old thing.

Andrew

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if the 6464 collectors would just take off their blinders and see that the exact same car returned in 1987 as the 19200 series, there are plenty of small roadnames there, … though it was amusing to see that the series started with the Tidewater Southern, a central California subsidiary of the WP (which started the 6464 series). with less than 30 miles of track, you can’t get much smaller than the Lancaster & Chester (19201).

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It is amazing that it took about 30-45 years for there to be enough management changes at Lionel for them to finally produce those roadnames on their O Gauge boxcars.

Andrew

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Ya know, this brings up an interesting idea. In today’s world, marketing is so proliferated you can’t hardly use a toilet without having to look at someone’s corporate logo. But was it that way back in the 1950’s? We all assume that “everybody” knew Lionel back then, but was it really true? Or was there less product recognition in some areas, and more in others? eg rural vs. urban.

It would be interesting to research this idea and produce some maps, charts, etc. that show where the advertising “hot spots” and “dry areas” fall vs. Lionel’s actual sales figures by region and brand recognition stats. That kind of data would answer a lot of questions concerning marketing decisions we now question and would make an interesting article.

Becky

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Becky, I think you are on to something, Just think about this, at the time, not like now, there were a lot more people on the right coast than the left coast and in between so goes the thought process.

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The Lionel Corp. produced the product that they thought would sell, and could manufacture at a reasonable cost.
And sell they did.

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I’m thinking, like CW, they went with road names that had always been good sellers. If there were doubts they probably shelved it. There were also a lot of colorful engines that were never brought to market probably for the same reason.

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Becky, as someone who got their trains back then and who never lost interest in them I can tell you that when I would do show-and-tell with my trains at school no one reacted to the name “Lionel” or even to the idea of running trains. Indeed by the early 1960’s a mention of “Lionel” and “trains” in polite grade school conversation usually resulted in either blank stares or snide remarks about being a “little-boy-still-playing-with-toys”.

Just as a minor correction to the discussion - an NS boxcar in the 1950’s would really have been something out of the ordinary since they didn’t exist at that time.

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You must be about my age; I noticed the same thing in 1960-61.

Another thing I sometimes wonder is: just how pervasive were Lionel trains, even in the Fifties? I know that in my home town, I was the only kid I ever knew who had a Lionel train (or, in fact, any train at all) under the tree at Christmas time. I had one friend who owned a Marx tinplate streamliner, but I never saw any other Lionel sets. Maybe it was just the town itself. How many others out there had friends who ran Lionel trains, as a kid?

That was Lionel Operating Accessory #9999 – the Operating Trackside Time Machine.

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don’t forget that the root of the term postwar is war. i can’t help but think WWII had a lot of influence on young men who may have never ventured far from their backyards before the early 1940’s; the large railroads moved thousands of troops. trains may have taken them off to war, but for the lucky ones, they also brought them safely home. i’ve got to think this had something to do with the postwar popularity of the NYC, PA, UP and Santa Fe roadnames through the 1950’s.

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A lot of this can be explained away by simple marketing strategies. Look at where the mojor population areas were in the 50’s and you’ll see those local railroad names releflected in Lionel’s mechandise. The big population centers are where the money is. New York ( city and state), Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and so on. The smaller 'roads were going to be ignored for practical reasons, not for any prejudice.

In a sense, it’s the same way now. Look at the catalogs of O Gauge manufacturers now and you’ll see pretty much the same thing.

One of the other posters wondered just how pervasive Lionel really was, and now that I think about it I was the only kid on the block with Lionel trains. Hmmm, food for thought.

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I started grade school in the early 1960’s. More kids had slotcar sets than train sets. My neighborhood had two of the larger scale (1/24 or 1/32) rental tracks. Slotcars were the “in” hobby, not trains.
Two of my cousins (they were brothers) built a sceniced slotcar track. It was just like a train layout, only with slotcar track instead of train tracks.

Incidentally, I was told that Andy Kriswalus has a strong business relationship with Lionel, and was very influential in their move towards making boxcars in all sorts of colorful roadnames. Andy was the force behind the Coke set, but thats a different subject.

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I’d have to side with the view of population demographics and sales as the driver for the choices of road names. By way of comparison just consider the choices in road names made by other manufactures in the pre-war period. With only the rarest of exceptions they too chose names that would appeal to the major population centers.

Bing: PRR, IC, NYNH&H, B&O, Santa Fe, Erie, Jersey Central, P&R, Canadian Pacific (woodsided), Canadian Pacific.

Fandor: NYNH&H, IC, PRR

Flyer: NKP, B&O, GN, ART, Canadian Pacific, Southern, SP, NYC, IC

even Ives which had by far the largest variety of heralds went for major roads serving major population centers: PRR, NYC, C&NW, Santa Fe, ACL, NP, B&O, Erie, NYNH&H, Lehigh Valley, Canadian Pacific, IC,Rock Island, UP, CGW, Cotton Belt, PRR Star Union, NYC Merchandise, Salt Lake Route, Frisco, MKT, Wabash

Marx: C&NW, Cotton Belt, B&O, B&LE (and postwar FGEX, NYC Pacemaker, B&A, Pennsy Msd Service)

arkady - With one exception in one neighborhood, I too was the only kid I knew who had trains (because of my Dad’s work we moved a lot). As an aside, shortly after joining TCA I invited my Dad to come with me to the big York meet. As we walked the halls I pointed out trains that were available when he was a kid. I’ll never forget showing him a Lionel Standard Gauge Blue Comet on one of the tables. He stopped and looked at it for the longest time and finally said, “You know, I would have probably died from sheer envy if I had ever even dreamed that such a thing existed and could have been the possession of one of my friends.”

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In our house the first Lionel arrived in 1949, the year before I was born, my older brothers and cousins had a mixture of Lionel and Marx by the time I started to recoginse and get going in the hobby. Lionel was still prevalent, and many of the homes in our neighborhood we all had Lionel. In the early 60s my cousin inherited an AF set. It was also in the mid 60s that one of my friends father started collecting trains in a big way, they were waining as what someone wanted for Christmas, and my older brothers and cousins were moving on to other things. I was lucky to keep my trains as my dad asked me what I wanted to do with them when I went off to college, and I responded I would like to keep them. My parents bought me a number of sets at ridicously low prices at garage sales that I still have today, but after 1968 and up till about the mid 80s, i didn’t know where to get good Lionel Trains. Many of today’s trains are an extension of that, even thou I have a soft spot for postwar. Since i don’t have a permanent layout and most of my trains are in storage, I/we aquire what we like and have fun with that. I have a spackling of pre war and mpc, a good showing of postwar,and a decent amount of new. I don’t consider myself a collector, operator, or any of that, but someone who just likes trains, and has been fortunate enough to keep them around. I have HO too, but have never done much with it. Presently my son and I are building our Christmas layout with Lionel trains, and a mixture of ceramic buildings and lionel. Merry Christmas all.

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I am going to add a PS here…Our, my brother’s, cousins and I, train experience was on my mother’s side of the family. Our grandfather, great grandfather and an uncle were all railroaders. My mother also supported us in the hobby as she believed when we were in the basement working on the trains we weren’t out on the street getting into trouble. I often feel Lionel was one of those things to help spark me in what I do as a vocation.

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There was a Norfolk Southern that existed before the current Norfolk Southern. It was a regional that ran between 1942 and it’s acquisition by the Southern in 1974. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_and_Southern_Railroad

Becky

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Well, that’s interesting - any idea what their boxcars looked like?

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In the glory days of American railroading it was unusual for an extended family NOT to have someone in it who worked for a railroad, they were that big of an industry. One of my mothers uncles worked for the New York Central as a matter of fact. Her grandfather lost a leg working on the New York subway system.

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Well, yeah. There’s a picture of one in the 6464 article we’re discussing. In addition, Norfolk-Southern Corp painted one of their Heritage engines in the same scheme this year, and its out making the rounds.

But most N-S boxcars were standard boxcar red with white graphics. Their diesel engines and cabeese were rather colorful:

Jon [8D]

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Thanks, kooljock - I don’t have the magazine so I didn’t realize that the initial post was making a reference to something that had been published.