An O model railroad just seems to hit the spot, doesn’t it? It’s a nice, big train. They’re not tiny locomotives; no one is going to carry one in his pocket. And you can really see the detail. This is not one of those small little trains you need to go get your microscope for. I don’t know about you but I could easily stare at this train for hours. Why do O trains just seem to come at us from some place deep in ourselves? Here’s why:
These are the locomotives of your past:
If you’re of a certain age these are the model trains you first saw. If you visited a department store during the holiday season as a kid you probably saw one of these trains in an elaborate display. Many of us scribbled these trains on our Christmas lists in the hope that we might wake up to their whistle on Christmas morning. And they’re also likely to be the toy locomotives that you didn’t get because they were too expensive. They are part of the imagined world where all our most outlandish wishes came true. Now that you are an adult they can be your trains.
Lionel:
The name Lionel probably rings a bell for you, even if you don’t remember why. Lionel is still perhaps the most well known brand in the model train business. They have weathered more ups and downs than any other train manufacturer and had more face lifts than Elizabeth Taylor’s had husbands. The reason why you associate toy locomotives with holiday is because of a marketing campaign invented by Lionel in the 1930’s. Lionel took over the model training world in the pre-World War II period by savvy marketing of this kind. It was mainly because Lionel began to corner themselves at the upper strata of the market that they opened themselves up to usurpers. By the sixties when model training was at an all time low in terms of American participation, Lionel’s bargain based, smaller sized fellow train makers pushed it out of business. But Lionel has been resurrected as Lionel LLC and, though still beset by economic woes, is still one of the premier toy train producers around. The Lionel brand still carries a certain majic that other long standing train makers like Bachmann don’t.
O scale is just a great size to work with:
littler locomotives just can’t match the ease and joy of O gauge trains. O scale locomotives are a lot larger than HO gauge locomotives. O gauge is one 48th the size of actual locomotives. You don’t need tiny hands or precise coordination to pigment and decal O scale locomotives. You don’t need to have fantastically fine motor skills so even the clumsiest of children or most palsied of old folks can work with these locomotives. Even if you can’t color the side of a barn you will find O scale a manageable toy to work with. Because these are such big trains people will actually see your artistic efforts. You can really individualize your model training experience with O scale since everything is on a gauge that you could do them from scratch. There is just a lot more that you can do with an O scale toy railroad.
Model train fans love O scale because of its varied tradition:
Fan’s of model trains just love O because of its association with Lionel trains. Vintage Lionel trains of bygone eras consistently fetch high prices on e-bay and many model train fans like to collect Lionel locomotives from different eras so that they can have a sort of vibrant history of the evolution of model locomotives.
But O gauge is also a joy in itself. It really has found the ideal dimensions for a model locomotive and it is well worth the extra space that it takes up. Lionel, because of its great brand recognition, is unlikely to succumb to its economic woes. Even if it did, the extensive tradition of Lionel will keep O gauge lovers stocked up for a great deal of time to come. Just ask the rocker Neal Young who loved O scale trains so much that he was at one point part owner in Lionel and is still retained as an consultant to the company!
Here is more information on Model Train Scale. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Model Trains.
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