Toy Train Sets – Their Early History
First, let’s define toy train sets. These are toys that are typically low-cost and durable and made to resemble trains. They are not the same as model trains which are the more expensive and highly detailed scaled-down replicas of the real-life version, although they both share the same lineage.
The first toy trains were actually promotional items used by the early railroads. To capitalize on the fascination people had with railroads at the time, many craftsmen started carving trains out of wood which were pulled by a string across the ground.
As their popularity grew, manufacturers started making toy train sets out of metal which made them more realistic as this allowed greater detail to be shown. This leads up to a nice short video which shows some early toy trains and how they evolved.
Running Like Clockwork
Using a string to pull a train around got boring after awhile. As the video showed, the Ives Toy Co. and German clockmakers made them self-propelled by using spring-wound motors (clockworks) that powered them across the floor. Clockworks, or wind-up toys, have actually been around since the 1500s.
The first clockwork train produced in the U.S. was a tinplate model introduced by George W. Brown & Co. in 1856. Many years later, it was used on a much grander scale by the Ives Manufacturing Co. which mass-produced them and became the largest toy train manufacturer in the U.S.
Clockworks, however, were living on borrowed time. In the late 1890s a different method was developed to power toy train sets. It was time for train manufacturers to adjust or bite the dust.
It’s Electrifying
The very first example of an electric train came way back in 1835 when Thomas Davenport invented a battery powered motor which he used to run a train-like device around a track. He received a patent in 1837, not for the electric train but for his DC motor.
Carlisle & Finch are credited with producing the first complete electric train sets back in 1897. It was, however, Murray Bacon who patented the electric toy train 13 years earlier. Unfortunately for Murray, he assigned the patent over to the Novelty Electric Co. who never bothered building it.
At the end of the video, the narrator said the major toy train manufacturers didn’t pay much notice to a 23 year old inventor named Joshua Cowen (big mistake). The name may not be familiar to most people until they find out that his middle name was Lionel.
As the years went by and electricity became more common in households the popularity of electric trains took off. In addition, German companies felt the wrath of the American people after WWI so the American toy companies did not face much foreign competition.
Lionel and American Flyer were big players in the toy train market and eventually they bought up Ives Manufacturing. It wasn’t until after WWII that these manufacturers, along with others, began adding better detail to their model train sets.
That leads us to today where the model train business is filled with passionate hobbyists who spend countless days, months, years creating their own miniature world using highly detailed scale model replicas… just don’t call them toy train sets.