I’m a graduate student at the University of St Andrews, UK, currently researching a project that ties the midcentury popularity of model train set in the US to wider issues of scale in media—the arrivals of widescreen cinema, television, and theme parks like Disneyland (based largely on Walt Disney’s model train set).
I am looking to illustrate my research with photographs of model railroads taken during the postwar period (1945-1965) and am writing to request any images that forum contributors may have. Anything at all would be useful—photos of individual trains, complete railroads, people playing with trains, maybe even a photograph of a train set next to a television set.
I initially plan to use any such photographs in my thesis but aim to publish in an academic journal later on (these have limited readerships of film and television scholars). I would ask permission on each occasion if I wished use photographs that have been supplied, although because any such publications are not-for-profit I would not be able to provide any form of payment.
If you are willing and able to help by supplying photographs, please send me a private message on this website.
Some back issues of our hosts magazine and others related to model railroading should provide you with photos of operating model railroads. The 75th year collection may have much of what you need. Old catalogs, Lionel, American Flyer, Plasticville and the like would be good for seeing what was available to the toy train world. Old Sears & Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs had train sets in them, especially the Christmas “Wish Book.”
Sorry, I don’t have photo capability to dig out my old Lionel for a photo session. The only photo I have that I know of, of my layout of that era, wasn’t a shot of the layout, it’s just in the background. Wasn’t much to look at anyhow, Lionel on plywood central and Plasticville.
The following link should lead you to a page with multiple photographs of the 1950’s American Flyer layout featured at the Gilbert Hall of Science in New York City. This, of course, was a professionally built advertising display layout.
I have been preparing family papers and photographs to donate to an archive in Houston city where my parents live and where I grew up, surrounded by trains, real and model.
I have a few pictures of Lionel layouts, and the bridge my dad scratchbuilt for me when I was 5, and which I bombed with bricks when we saw a holiday movie about the brave pilots bombing the bridges.
(note tie-in movies and models!)
Another tie-in: We kids used our backyard kid-propelled railroad, about 8 inch gauge, to recreate scenes from Walt Disney’s Great Locomotive Chase.
Conductor Fuller chases the Union train thieves by handcar until he meets a barricade left by the raiders.
I have several photos of the trove of kid’s Christmas presents, and I have assembled the records my mom made of Christmas presents given and received from 1930-1990, AND every penny spent by the family, classified in 15 categories, for that same time period.
I became a very low-level “producer” in local television and made a number of personal films, often involving models.
Very cool old stuff you have there. I often wanted to build an outdoor railroad in some ride-on form or fashion, but could never accumulate the right junk.[swg]
Gilles,
If you haven’t found Shorpy yet, there are a number of images of model trains there:
I’m finishing my diss right now in history, so know what a project you have on your hands. Your funds are probably limited, too. Keep in mind there are lots of old paper items listed on ebay. You don’t need to buy, but just grabbing the images is useful for cataloging purposes. Copyright is obviously an issue for later publication, but I’ve had pretty good results with simply writing about images found in such a fashion and there’s no copyright issues with that. With some images that are familiar to everyone, simply having it and then explaining the significance is very worthwhile, because people know the image. You need only supply the contextual description and interpretation.
I will also suggest finding old issues of Model Railroader and looking through them. The ads are very useful, if you know your way around a model railroad as there is plenty of cultural and social fodder in them, speaking as a Cold War historian who is familiar with them.
Thanks everyone for so many useful suggestions and generous input. Lots of resources I hadn’t thought of or heard of (I will be using shorpy.com now for several different strands of my research). I look forward to receiving more ideas!
