Let me add my [#welcome] to you to the thread. Thanks for posting the information about your father Louis Paeth and his creation of this iconic advertisement and logo for American Flyer Trains.
Mersenne6 has done a great job with his information about catalog art. He posted some photos of the American Flyer Boy a few entries back. This is the photo that I posted a page earler or so.
You have added a wonderful bit of information to the knowledge about the history of American Flyer Trains.
After your post I did a Google search on your father and came across two sites where you posted some information about him and examples of his work. I hope you won’t mind if I post those links here so that folks can see other examples of his work.
Several entries back Mersenne6 posted the covers of the American Flyer Pre War Catalogs. With this entry I am going to play his backup man, or perhaps I should say his back cover man. I went through my catalogs and took photos of the back covers. I’m sure that those back pages fostered as many dreams as the front covers and the inside pages. So this is an homage to the unsung back cover. I am going to edit them into the post that he created.
[quote user=“mersenne6”]
Now all you need is all the goodies between the covers.
Enjoying the World’s Greatest Hobby
Northwoods Flyer
Flyer Catalogs
There’s nothing like an interesting question to make a person go back and take a closer look at reference material…so let’s take a look at the catalog art.
The Greenberg Guide to American Flyer Wide Gauge indicated their listing may not be complete but it is the best list I have access to.
My apologies for the above entry. I have run into this problem before. For some reason the software does not like it when I try to edit in photos or text to my own post or someone elses post. The above entry is almost correct, but I can’t seem to fix it. I will try again by posting only the back covers of the Catalogs.
Wow. The fourth and fifth ( in order) are, in my book, the best looking catalog art… ever.
Superlatives aside, the care that was taken to create that work of art is incomparable to a photograph, which, when I thought about it has a lot in common with vintage trains and the high quality of sturdiness that is evident nearly a hundred years later. Once again, my thanks.
The work you do to send all this information is very well appreciated by all.
What a golden time it was for all these faboulous catalogs to have been created with all the great artwork front to back. A definite compliment to the toy trains of the day.
I’d like to echo the sentiments of the posts above. (Unfortunately, I’ve been away from the forum too long due to work and other events.)
I recently purchased the 1936 AF catalog as my father’s “Pennsylvania” set is one of four featured on the cover. (I’d like to purchase the other three sets someday.) What a treat it must have been to get one of those catalogs and an AF set for Christmas during the Great Depression! Sadly, my father passed away in April before I could show him the 1936 catalog.
As others have said, thanks for sharing your wonderful AF knowledge with those interested in this most classic American hobby!
It does my heart good to know that folks are enjoying the information in this thread. Its a lot of fun for me to take the photos, do the research, and then post the information. Thanks for all of the kind words folks.
Collecting the paper associated with American Flyer trains is another aspect of the hobby. One of the best places to enter is by looking for catalogs. They also provide great resources for research, of course as has been mentioned before the catalogs can be very inaccurate. I too think that the art work from this era is some of the best. It still provides the raw materials for dreams.
O-GaugeOscar its nice to see you back. Here is a little incentive to find those other 1936 sets.
Enjoying the World’s Greatest Hobby
Northwoods Flyer
In 1926 American Flyer introduced the New Haven Style boxcab electric locomotive. The #3014 was used in the top of the line O gauge sets.
The Greenberg guide lists 3 different variations for the #3014. The 2 examples that I have in my collection do not fit the descriptions, but they are close.
I believe that this 3014 is Greenberg’s version (a).
I thought I would stick with a theme here for a while and introduce another of American Flyer’s Midsized BoxCabs. I aquired this example a while ago and haven’t gotten around to posting the photos of it.
It was cataloged in 1930 and 1931.
It uses the same sheet metal frame as the 3107 and the 3109 and it has the same die cast journal boxes. Below is the 3107 that I have in my collection. With its three matching passenger cars it was cataloged as The Frontenac.
Besides the 3105 brass tag it may have the number 3105 rubber stamped on the bottom of the frame.
Inspired by this thread, I just finished the restoration of the AF 3112 orange boxcab by replacing the swollen wheels, missing headlight, bell and couplers, and it has become one of my “pet engines”. The louvers on the side being actually louvers and the countersunk window frames, the brass nameplates, is a step above Marx in tinplate, and I would have never discovered prewar AF O tinplate if it were not for this thread. As far as the mechanical end of things, some light cleaning, a little lubrication…and this 1928 toy ran like a swiss watch ! I could not believe the drive unit was attached to the frame with heavy duty cotter pins, made dis-assembly a breeze. Thanks again !
I recently received an email from a reader of this thread who sent some photos of items in his collection to me. He has given me permission to post them here in the thread. Below you will see photos of the back covers for the 1923 and 1924 catalogs. They are a collection of photos of the American Flyer Factory.
Mr. Otis B. Drinkwater sent a follow up email after reading the above posting. He says that this is the cover used for the catalogs from 1922-1924. Its the artwork identified by Peter Paeth earlier on the thread as being the work of his father Louis Paeth.
He also says:
“One thing you may want to mention to your readers is that the 1922 catalog has “over 3,000,000” printed throughout, the 1923 catalog has “over 3,000,000” printed throughout the inside of the catalog and “Over 3,500,000” on the back cover only, and the 1924 catalog has “Over 4,000,000” printed throughout the catalog.”
He also sent along another photo. This is a framed copy of the sketch of the American Flyer factory that he has in his collection. The print of the photo is approximately 18" x 30".
Thanks Mr. Drinkwater, its great to have you contributing.
Enjoying the World’s Greatest Hobby
Northwoods Flyer
One of the things that I enjoy most about hosting this thread is the contributions made by folks who read it and share photos of items in their collections. The last few entries have been photos of items sent in by Otis B. Drinkwater. He has sent another interesting photo.
One of my favorite catalog covers is from 1930.
I have often thought it would be fun to be the boy on the cover running those Wide Gauge trains. In fact one of my goals is to be able to have a layout replicating Flyer’s Colonial City that appears in several of the catalogs.
In any case Mr. Drinkwater sent a photo of something very unique in the collecting world. This is the original artwork for the 1930 catalog along with an example of the 1930 catalog.
To say the least I’m a little bit in awe of this piece. It makes me wonder where the other pieces of original artwork might be. Thanks Otis for another contribution.
Getting back to midsized electric outline engines for a while. The 3012 appears in American Flyer Catalogs in 1926 and 1927. Here are 3 variations of the 3012 Box Cab
During the years it appears in the catalog it lives up to the advertising approach that Flyer trains rival the colors of the rainbow.
This is Greenberg’s variation (A) from 1926. The body is enameled black.
This is variation (C), which is lithographed orange and has no reverse unit. It was the engine used in the 1927 version of The Oriental. In 1927 the engine and cars for the Oriental had red oulines on the windows.
Thank you Northwoods Flyer for sharing such superb information and color photos. This is accurate data that cannot be found by any other means.
I have an older Greenberg book on O guage Flyer, for the most part it is a really good reference. But alas, there are some mistakes in it which most likely happened when it went to print formatting. Another pitfall is that a lot of the photos are black and white, hard to imagine what the real colors look like.
I had an interesting email from John Holtman not too long ago. Some of you may know of his website and the digital reproductions that he has made of a number of catalogs and difficult to find paper items pertinent to the collecting side of the hobby. I have his digital archive of the old publication Toy Trains. I have most of the issues of that magazine, but having them in digital form is better than subjecting the old paper magazines to additional wear and tear. He has a number of interesting items there including lots of stuff for Lionel fans. If you are interested in taking a look, this is the website http://hslinc.com/.
He sent some scans of difficult to find American Flyer paper from the Pre War era after reading the entries here about catalogs. He says that he is working on a project right now that will make Pre War Flyer paper available.
Thanks for the mention. I hope to have more details available shortly. This archive is based on the extensive American Flyer paper collection of Andrew Jugle. It will contain consumer catalogs, many advance catalogs and price lists, a master catalog from 1927, mailing envelopes, lots of bonus material, etc. from 1907 - 1937 — American Flyer’s Chicago Era. It really should be a lot of fun for American Flyer enthusiasts and toy train fans in general.
As with all HSL digital archive products, the images will be high-quality, digitally re-touched, full-color scans.
The Greenberg guide to American Flyer Pre War O Gauge lists 3 variations of this engine. They were cataloged in 1926 and 1927. After several years of hunting I finally have all three versions that are listed.
You will notice that they don’t look too much different than the 3012 which is listed a few entries back. In general the 3012 has a manual reverse, and the 3011 does not have the reverse. But as with most Flyer equipment there are exceptions to this.
This is the 1926 enameled version (a). It has lost its bell, which shouldn’t be too difficult to replace.
This is version (B) from 1927 It has lithographed sides and a brown roof. It was used to pull the Broadway Limited set of matching cars in that year.
