Not to hijack the thread, but I would be interested in hearing from anyone who visited Madison Hardware ‘back in the day’. I’ve heard that it had an amazing array of Lionel products back to almost the start of the company, but was staffed by folks who were a bit let’s say ‘surly’?
That’s incredible!!! About a four hour drive from here though. I bet they are rare and far between. Too bad my 1/32 cars are long gone. I had one where the front tires turned with the slot guide. Spare motors, tires, brushes and other parts. It was a once a week enjoyment my brother and I shared with my dad.
Thank you.
Pete.
P.S. sorry for the tangent to the thread.
I have been to a few NY City hobby shops, but never Madison Hardware. I was shocked at the photo of how small it was. The had full page ads in MR back in the day, but I guess they were mostly mail order.
Apparently the store was narrow but very deep, and (literally) filled to the rafters with Lionel stuff. I read someone who had been there saying an employee had to get a rolling ladder to climb up to get something for a customer that was stored near ceiling level.
Seems they had warehouses:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32905861-the-madison-hardware-story
An old Twilight Zone, “Night of the Meek” (with Art Carney as a drunken department store Santa who literally stumbles onto a magic bag of gifts) features a Lionel Christmas layout.
It’s season 2, episode 11. One of my favorite Christmas stories…
I remember that episode! I think a local station used to do a Twilight Zone binge on New Year’s Eve. That was always there, along with the old woman with the flying saucer in her attic. The Willowby story was there too.
As they say, Rod Sterling never died. He just got tired of commuting.
The Twilight Zone I remember was where a couple wakes up in a deserted strange town. They think everyone must be looking at them behind window curtains. They find the train station and hop on the train as it’s leaving. They are glad to leave the strange town, but are horrified when the train stops at the next station which turns out to be the same station. You see them running around the town, as the camera pans out, to see that the couple is actually running on a giant model train layout. Then you hear a mother ask her son if he likes the little humans his father brought back from earth.
During the week of Christmas 1956, I was 5 years old and my Grandpa ran the roofing and hardware department of Sears and Roebuck in Ft Wayne Indiana.
He took me work with him one day and put me with the guy running the Lionel trains layout in the display windows of the store which were huge windows.
It was quite a train setup, I remember about 6 trains running at once, with lots of accessories and scale buildings!
I tremember the big Lionel"Z" transformers of which there were 3 or 4 of them.
I dind’t want to go with Grandpa after work, but stay there and help run the trains!
This is how I originally got hooked on model trains!
Dad always setup his Lionel trains around our Christmas tree at Christmas time. He got them as a birthday present on his 12th birthday in 1935.
I now have those trains and they still run!
A red freight steam engie pulling several freight cars and a caboose and the other one is a Commodore Vanderbilt steam engine pulling three passenger cars.
I now have an HO scale train layout in my basement I am working on. It is 6 feet wide and 24 feet long using both DC and DCC power.
Lucky kid!
Great story, thanks.
Ed
That was 66 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday!!![:D][:D]