O Model Railroad

An O toy railroad just seems perfect, doesn’t it? You can pick up the trains and really take a look at them.  They’re not little locomotives; no one is going to carry one in his pocket.  And you can really see the detail.  You’ll never accidentally  step on this train. I don’t know about you but I could just stare at it for hours.  Why does it seem so right?  Here’s why:

Nostalgia: 

If you’re of a certain level of maturity these are the model trains you first saw.  They’re the toy trains from the holiday displays you remember as a kid.  Many of us placed these locomotives on our holiday lists in the hope that we might wake up to their whistle on Christmas morning.  And they’re also likely to be the model trains that you didn’t get because they were too expensive.  Because of this they are also the trains that remained always in the realm of the wished for. Now that you are an adult they can be your trains.

O model railroads are usually Lionel train railroads:  

The name Lionel probably rings a bell for you, even if you don’t recall why.  Lionel is probably the archetypal toy train making company in the United States.  They have survived more adversity than any other locomotive maker and had more face lifts than Elizabeth Taylor’s had husbands. Lionel’s aggressive adversiting in the pre-WWII era is the reason why you associate toy locomotives with holiday.  It was these tactics that made them the top dogs of the model training world in the first half of the previous century.  It was mainly because Lionel started to corner themselves at the higher strata of the market that the prestigious train maker opened themselves up to usurpers.  Lionel became the high end train that no one could afford and eventually filed for bankruptcy and was purchased in the the late 60’s. But Lionel has been re-invented as Lionel LLC and, though still hand cuffed by revenue problems, remains one of the central toy locomotive producers around.  The Lionel brand still carries a certain allure that other long standing locomotive manufacturers like Bachmann don’t.

Weathering and detailing are a breeze with O scale locomotives:  

smaller locomotives just can’t match the ease and joy of O scale trains.  O gauge locomotives are a lot larger than HO gauge locomotives.  O scale is one 48^th the size of actual locomotives.  It is a train that is easy to color, decal and weather.  You don’t require fantastically fine motor skills so even the clumsiest of kids or most palsied of old folks can work with these trains.  Trust me, even when I’ve had one too many lattés and my hands are shaking like leaves in a storm I still have no problems with these locomotives.  Also, because of its size, you can really see the detail of these locomotives.  You can really individualize your model training experience with O gauge since everything is on a scale that you could do them yourself. O gauges reputation is well deserved.

Hobbyists appreciate O gauge because of its varied tradition:  

Mostly because of Lionel’s long history in American toy training O gauge is one of the favorite collector’s items.  Classic Lionel locomotives of bygone eras often fetch high prices on e-bay and many model train fans like to collect Lionel trains from different time periods so that they can have a sort of vibrant history of the development of toy locomotives. 

Even if this were a brand new gauge with no fans, it would soon draw trainers solely because it just seems like the ideal scale for a hobby train. It really does seem like the ideal size for a toy locomotive and it is well worth the larger area that it takes up.  Lionel, because of its strong brand identification, is unlikely to give in to its debt woes.  Even if it did, the extensive history of Lionel will keep O scale lovers stocked up for a great deal of time to come.  Just ask the rocker Neal Young who loved O gauge trains so greatly that he was at one point part owner in Lionel and is still kept on 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.