The World's Greatest Toy Train Maker: Insiders Remember Lionel [Hardcover]

Roger Carp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

The inside story of the Lionel Corporation as told by former employees. Traces five decades of Lionel train history as people behind the scenes describe Lionel's leaders, products, achievements, and legacy from the 1920s through the 1960s.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Kalmbach Publishing Company (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0897784391
• ISBN-13: 978-0897784399
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #861,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal accounts of workers at the "Old" Lionel Corp., July 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The World's Greatest Toy Train Maker: Insiders Remember Lionel (Hardcover)

Each of 9 chapters is devoted to the quite candid account of a particular worker who describes his experiences while working at Lionel. Areas covered are engineering, sales, and management. The many photos are from Lionel archives, private collections, and taken by the employees themselves. Narratives closely conform to the many extensive, taped interviews conducted by the author over a period of years. Since I am the subject of Chapter 9, I can attest to the authenticity. Many facts are presented for the first time and should be valuable additions to the collections of toy train enthusiasts.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Of Coal Piles, Chickens, and Memories, February 5, 2004

By 

WILLIAM H FULLER (SPEARFISH, SD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The World's Greatest Toy Train Maker: Insiders Remember Lionel (Hardcover)

If one is just starting on the fascinating journey of discovery about the Lionel Corporation and the marvelous electric trains that it made, this is not the book with which to begin. Carp's collection of reminiscences by nine former Lionel employees will not acquaint the reader with a comprehensive or chronological history of the company and will add very little to whatever knowledge the reader may already bring concerning the company's products. Anyone still early in the journey will find Ron Hollander's "All Aboard! The Story of Joshua Lionel Cowen and His Lionel Train Company" the book to read.

Once the reader has the main history of the company under his belt and is familiar with the names of its movers and shakers, then is the time to open Carp's book on "the world's greatest toy train maker" and to appreciate the experiences of the former employees therein. At its economic height, Lionel was quite a large company and employed workers with many diverse skills. In Carp's book, the reader will meet assembly line foremen, tool room supervisors, administrative assistants, illustrators, electrical engineers, salesmen, photographers, publicists, and innovators in electronics-all people whose names went unknown to the children who played with Lionel trains and to most other people outside the industry. Yet these largely unknown and unseen employees all influenced the development, production and marketing of the trains and of Lionel's military products. Without employees such as those in Carp's book, Lionel could never have achieved the market dominance that it enjoyed for many years, nor would the name carry the fiercely loved emotional reactions that it still evokes among thousands of toy train aficionados and hobbyists today. In short, Carp's book shows us the Lionel Corporation from the viewpoint of employees who labored in supporting roles rather than in the limelight of the executive boardroom.

Reading this collection of memory-lane stories did reveal one proposed product that I had not run across before in any of the other company histories that have been published. I certainly would like to see a sample of that steam locomotive tender with the chickens popping out of the coal pile pursued by a would-be chicken-catcher! Reading also revealed one rather significant factual error relative to a Lionel product: Page 99 describes Lionel's Super-O track as having a "darkened center rail and ample wood ties." In reality, the center rail was bright copper, darkening over time only through normal oxidation, and the closely spaced ties were wood-grained plastic. The track used no actual wood whatsoever. While this is only one error, to be sure, it is a very blatant one, immediately obvious to anyone with common knowledge of Lionel's products.

At 112 pages, the book is also a rather thin volume, but it is nonetheless a useful addition to one's library on the Lionel Corporation and is worth the reading-just not as the first book to be read on this topic.