I found this manuscript from the late John Grams in our manuscript files. There was no date on the envelope but it’s likely from the early 1990s. The article discusses 12 Lionel products that, while great inventions, were fraught with problems or didn’t work exactly as advertised. He included the following disclaimer:
Lionel trains were sold as toys. They were fun, fairly reliable and expensive playthings, manufactured with no thought beyond that purpose.They were not supposed to be precision scale models. That was an entirely different thing. While they were durably constructed, the trains were not intended to outlast the interest span of their young owners. No one considered them to be objects of popular art or future collectibles.
The toy business has always been a fickle one, trendy and highly competitive. J. L. Cowen not only had fine quality imports to worry about as he built his business, the domestic competition from Ives, American Flyer, and Marx must have contributed significantly to his stress. While Lionel was eventually able to absorb Ives and Flyer, Marx was still there gobbling up the low price, high volume end of the market.
The trains were not designed and produced by Santa’s helpers at the North Pole, but by flesh and blood human beings on an assembly line in New Jersey. Mistakes happened. Flaws and defects were sometimes overlooked.
I will be sharing these items over the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy them. –Rene Schweitzer, Editor of Classic Toy Trains
No. 3656 Operating Stock Car
Produced as a follow-up to the Automatic Milk Car, which operated very well, the stock car was a disappointment. Cataloged from 1949 to 1955, it was a cute accessory, complete with a corral platform and little rubber cows that were supposed to move in and out of the car.
Despite several improvements in the mechanism, the accessory didn’t work satisfactorily, even when new. Critical adjustments were always going out of whack. The track and platform had to be perfectly level, and the car had to be precisely in line with the platform bridge. This usually required several attempts by the junior engineer to position his train.
Even then, the cows often would not cross over the bridge, and had to be coaxed into the car by the operator’s index finger. This did much to shatter the illusion of realism. Perhaps Lionel should have included a miniature twelve-volt cattle prod in the package.
