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PreWar Tinplate Vintage Trains

PreWar Tinplate Vintage Trains

Selection of Lionel Standard Gauge and O Gauge scale trains. Although the concept of model-train sets sounds modern, it actually goes back at least to 1910, when the Edmonds-Metzel Manufacturing Company produced a line of passenger-train sets known as “Chicago Cars.” During the “train wars” of the mid-1910s, when the import of German train brands such as Märklin and Bing were interrupted by World War One, U.S. manufacturers such as Ives, American Flyer, Dorfan, and Lionel all used train sets to differentiate themselves from their competitors, although sometimes this differentiation was only partial. For example, in 1925, American Flyer offered a premium line of “Wonder” train sets, whose locomotives and cars were designed to run on Lionel’s standard-gauge tracks—American Flyer simply rebranded its copy as “Wide Gauge.”

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