I do know that Lionel began to market a line of HO trains beginning in the late 1950’s. Does anyone know all the years when they were produced. Is there a guide with pictures that is available that shows pictures and perhaps a history of Lionel HO?
Thanks in advance for any help.
There are apparently two “Greenburg’s Guides” on this very subject. Volume 1 covers the 50’s and 60’s, while volume 2 covers the 1970’s. You would probably have to go to Ebay to find the older version.
As I recall Lionel got into and out of HO at least twice. The only thing that was not a “Me Too” product was the E33 electric that up until the Bachman version came out was getting some serious prices on E Bay. The first time they got out they tried to market slot cars and then went back to trains when that craze died. There isn’t much if anything that is up to todays standards or quality.
I think they did the HO from about 1956-62, then did HO again in the mid-seventies (their “Freedom Train” was pretty good) and then of course just earlier this decade. Plus they did OO trains before WW2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZh_uSvgMI
http://www.traincollectors.org/
BTW in searching I found out there’s an Australian scientist whose name is Lionel Ho.
[:O]
http://hoseeker.net/lionelhoinformation.html
This website shows all of the Lionel HO catalogs.
I had a few Lionel HO items from their first go-around with the scale circa 1960, all long since gone. Their version of the Athearn Hustler was visually just about identical BUT it came with a decent motor and it was gear driven, not the rubber band drive of the Athearn original. It might even have had a headlight. You could actually do slow speed industrial switching with it.
A hopper car of a paint scheme I can no longer recall (Alaska Railroad?) had nicely sprung metal trucks with an interesting bolster system. It rolled very well although not as well as cars with Lindberg trucks. It was not a badly detailed car as I remember it.
Somewhere I have an HO scale switchman’s shanty with a switchman who pops out when a train is nearby – an HO version of one of their O scale action accessories. It was a Christmas gift from some cousins. The building is not bad looking and I have always had vague thoughts of actually installing the thing somewhere on the layout just to get a laugh. By “vague thoughts” I mean I have not done it and almost certainly never will. My modeling gets enough laughs as it is.
Dave Nelson
Lots of Lionel HO catalogs, and their contents, shown here: http://www.hoseeker.org/lionelhoinformation.html
My first HO train set was a Lionel! The roadname for the loco (a GP9) and the caboose was “American Flyer” with a red, white and blue scheme. And yes it was HO, and not S scale. I believe it was sold through Sears, since there was a Sears boxcar in the set. I also remember a C&O boxcar in there and a white flatcar. This was sometime in the 1970s.
Metro, you are definitely trying to confuse us! Could this have perhaps been a little earlier, say the 1960’s? Because American Flyer also made their own line of HO scale trains, though actually they were manufactured for Flyer by Varney. And Sears was a Flyer trains distributor. But from your descrition of the train, I’m thinking it was one of those garish Tyco sets. I’m simply not sure why Lionel would, in those days, produce a train named the “American Flyer”. These days of course Lionel owns the Flyer brand.
Made that 3 times because in the 90s (?)they made a ho scale turbine that IIRC either didnt sell well or made too many that were heavily discounted atcsome point. But were fetching big ebay prices after a while. I believe these were the tooling that Athearn brought for their turbine and even the U50 might of been a project in the works for Lionel before the got out of HO again
Looks like it was 2004, according to the copyright date on the ad on this page: “The Veranda”. They also apparently offered a HO scale 4-6-6-4 Challenger at the time.
Shortly after Lionel went to HO it went nuclear! They made a ton of money at first, but ultimately lost money and left the nuclear biz in the early 60’s.
Read all about it at.
http://www.orau.org/ptp/pdf/HP%20News%20Lionel%20story.pdf
The famous Lionel “L” logo in a circle was on some of their instruments like the 455 laboratroy counter seen in the article. Even though they made thousands of Civil defense cdv700 counters, not a lot survived or made it to the surplus market and Lionel counters are considered collectors items.
Their HO trains were due to the enormous leap in HO’s popularity after WWII and a fall off in the O scale line. in the 50’s. Ultimately, they would drop the HO as O came back in due to Baby boomers wanting to reclaim a bit of their youth.
http://www.ho-scaletrains.net/ this site has a lot of info on not only Lionel HO, but various other companies during the 50-80s
Made it clickable:
You did realize that site is where I got the Lionel ad I linked to in my post from last Friday (3 or so posts above this)?
Guess in future posts I’ll have to link to the home page of interesting sites in addition to the page in question.
No, I swear!
In fact, I did a little Google-digging around and discovered someone on eBay was selling a mint-condition (unopened) Lionel “American Flyer” HO scale train set. It turns out it was a promotional item sold at Sears, in conjunction with the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. Also, Lionel bought out American Flyer in 1967. Here’s the pic I got off of the eBay ad, and the loco and rolling stock match my recollection perfectly:
Yup, that would be the right time. It’s too bad, both engines got good reviews but weren’t available for very long. For a time there, I think 4 companies were making RTR HO U.P. Challengers.
Well, consider my mind boggled! Lionel produces an American Flyer branded train set in HO instead of S! Makes no sense what so ever.
Why not use the American Flyer name in HO? They were trying to use a well known brand name to sell their trains.
Plus it came out around 1976, the year of the U.S. Bicentennial, and HO was the most popular scale already. S scale was already fading in popularity by then. They wanted to cash in on the event as well by selling a red/white/blue train, especially since they didn’t make any Amtrak models.
