Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI)

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OT: The Romance of the Rails

DECEMBER 13, 2008

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122877524153989295.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

A generation that grew up with model trains is renewing its love affair with Lionel and others.

When Jay Woodworth was growing up in the early 1950s, he couldn't wait to get the latest Lionel catalog. "I would take it to bed and dream about all those great trains," he says.

Mr. Woodworth doesn't have to dream anymore. Now, the semi-retired former bank executive commands a model-train empire at his house in western New Jersey. As many as a dozen passenger trains race along the tracks. At one end, Mr. Woodworth is building a scale model of New York's old Pennsylvania Station.

As he stands at the bar on the edge of his sprawling train room, he says he enjoys "sipping on a tall frosty and watching trains whizzing around the layout."

Mr. Woodworth is one of many baby boomers renewing their love affair with trains. They have the time and money to build the train layouts they didn't have as kids -- and have access to new and more exotic trains than ever before. These are updated versions of the trains that the 50-plus set remembers from its childhood: the three-rail "O gauge" trains that families set up each year around the Christmas tree, or if they had room, on plywood tables.

Fueling the revival is a big increase in the number and variety of O-gauge trains. Manufacturers are building trains that have never been built before in O gauge, including large steam locomotives and modern diesel engines. And they are making O-gauge trains longer, more detailed and truer to scale than the old, more toy-like Lionel trains, which were compressed to squeeze around tight curves. Part of the appeal of O-gauge trains is that they are easier for older adults to see and handle than smaller models, such as the popular HO-scale trains, says Carl Swanson, editor of Classic Toy Trains magazine.


Daniel Machalaba
PERSONAL TOUCH Carl Chancey and his New England-theme layout


"I couldn't believe my eyes," says Will Allen, a 60-year-old management consultant in Raleigh, N.C., who took his son to a model-train show in 2002. "I was hooked right away." Mr. Allen was so impressed that he enclosed the family's car port to build the Duckunder Terminal Railway, a three-rail O-gauge layout measuring 25 feet by 40 feet that has track on five levels, and three large passenger terminals, one of them an exact replica of Chicago's Dearborn Station. He operates more than 800 passenger cars and 143 locomotives; they are stored on and under the layout and on adjacent shelves.

O gauge has also gotten a technology boost. Manufacturers are now marketing hand-held wireless controllers that enable hobbyists to command each locomotive remotely and individually. And they are outfitting some of their locomotives with digital sound systems that mimic the motor noise, horns and whistles of real trains.

Costly Fun

The hobby has its drawbacks, chief of which is sticker shock. Highly detailed die-cast locomotives sell for $1,000, or more, and some hobbyists have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their layouts. The nation's faltering economy could hit the hobby hard. Lionel, for one, says that for new customers, it must look beyond aging boomers.

Still, the hobby draws on deep-rooted memories and the powerful Lionel name. Joshua Lionel Cowen, who founded Lionel in 1900, targeted returning veterans of World War II who were starting families, and stoked the country's fascination with trains. Lionel catalogs pictured flashy passenger trains, fast freights and smiling boys -- and pitched model trains as good for father-son bonding and child development. Soon a large number of families had electric trains made by Lionel or its chief rival, American Flyer, a manufacturer of the somewhat smaller, two-rail "S gauge" trains.

"Train sets were as ubiquitous in houses as Xboxes are now," says Lionel Chief Executive Jerry Calabrese. Some Lionel trains even became icons of the era, most notably the company's Santa Fe F-unit diesel engine and its Super Chief passenger train.



But Lionel and American Flyer went into a steep decline. Railroads faded from the national consciousness in the 1960s, along with most long-distance passenger trains. Baby boomers went on to cars, college, families and careers. Lionel bought American Flyer, and the Lionel name and products were licensed to food giant General Mills Inc. in 1969. Lionel, now closely held, continues to produce some S gauge trains under the American Flyer name in addition to its broad line of Lionel O gauge trains.

Interest in Lionel trains as collectibles increased in the 1970s and 1980s, says Charles Ro, founder of a large train store in Malden, Mass., that bears his name. Today's buyers tend to be "runners," as Mr. Ro calls them -- people who prefer to operate, or run, model trains, as opposed to collecting them.

The Return of O

Some hobbyists credit O-gauge enthusiast Mike Wolf for re-energizing the production of O gauge. Mr. Wolf launched MTH Electric Trains in 1993 and began making a wide range of realistic O-gauge locomotives and trains. This year, MTH, based in Columbia, Md., introduced the Orient Express locomotive and cars. Atlas Model Railroad Co., of Hillside, N.J., a longtime manufacturer of the smaller "HO" and "N gauge" trains, entered O gauge about 10 years ago with detailed models of trains other companies hadn't produced. A cottage industry cropped up to supply realistic scenery, buildings and accessories.

Meanwhile, Lionel got a boost from rock star Neil Young. Mr. Young had rigged up a remote-control system so his son with cerebral palsy could operate trains on the family's O-gauge layout in California. Mr. Young then worked closely with Lionel to incorporate the technology into Lionel trains.

Now, Lionel is trying to reclaim some of its 1950s mass-market allure. The company, which emerged from bankruptcy protection in May after settling a legal battle with MTH, has opened a New York office and showroom and is reaching beyond hobby shops this holiday season to stores such as FAO Schwarz, Macy's and Target.


Train collection from Jay Woodworth


Lionel's Mr. Calabrese, a veteran of Marvel Comics, says the company will continue to make highly detailed scale model like its Union Pacific Big Boy steam locomotive and Amtrak Acela. But, inspired by the success of its Polar Express trains, the company will ramp up production of starter sets for children. Mr. Calabrese is also launching a series of the kind of Lionel trains that lured boomers after World War II, using some of the same molds and dies left from the 1950s.

Mr. Calabrese is hoping that the remakes will entice more adults in their 50s and 60s to buy Lionel trains for themselves or to give to their grandchildren. "It is something they can set up and do together, or something the kid will remember them by," Mr. Calabrese says.

Memories to Scale

Meanwhile, boomers are already building their dream layouts. Not surprisingly, some of these undertakings evoke the postwar years, when railroads were king and before expressways, shopping malls and sprawl changed America.

"We grew up in the 1950s, when America was at its best," says Jim Steed, 66, who retired from the Georgia Department of Economic Development in 2002. The Blairsville, Ga., resident says he built his O-gauge layout with 19 churches and "lots of factories and smokestacks."

Carl Chancey, 61, is an O-gauge enthusiast who loves to put detailed, personal touches on his layout. Mr. Chancey, who works for a pharmaceutical-industry consulting firm as a senior consultant and lives outside of Boston, tried to capture the flavor of New England railroading with mountains, rivers, mill buildings, an oil depot, scrap yard, skid row and outfitters store.


Train collection from Marty Fitzhenry


He placed a miniature welder at the junkyard. Tiny bulbs flash below the welder to simulate a blue arc welding light. He also added hand-crafted pewter figures of his fellow O-gauge lovers Marty Fitzhenry and Lou Caponi. The figures were created from photos that Mr. Chancey sent to a specialty maker of figures.

Then there is Mr. Woodworth, 65, who is building the large layout near Clinton, N.J. Mr. Woodworth says he remembers riding such famous trains as the Pennsylvania Railroad's Broadway Limited, the New York Central's 20th Century Limited and the Milwaukee Road's Hiawatha in the 1950s and 1960s, and he wanted them on his layout.

He got help from David Shaw, an owner of the Train Station, a Lionel train store in Mountain Lakes, N.J., in rigging up the sophisticated circuitry and signal systems that keep his trains rolling at high speed without colliding. On a recent day the system worked perfectly, stopping the Broadway Limited before it got too close to the Hiawatha. "That is really cool," Mr. Woodworth says.

—Mr. Machalaba is a writer in Woodstock, Vt. He can be reached at [e-mail].