About Athearn Trains

Superior quality. High dependability. Tremendous value. This is what you think of whenever you hear the name “Athearn .” It’s also quite likely that you know of the man who ensured that the models bearing his name reflected his high standards and his status as an industry leader.

Irv Athearn began his life-long affair with model railroading in 1938, when he filled his mother’s house with an elaborate O-scale layout that he was constantly modifying. A few years later, Irv valued his O collection at $10,000 and placed an advertisement selling it in Model Railroader. Response to his ad was rabidly favorable, giving Irv the idea that perhaps selling model railroads would be a good living.

He continued to sell train products out of his mother’s house through most of the 1940’s, eventually becoming a full-time railroad retailer in 1946 and opening a separate facility in Hawthorne, California in 1948, the same year he branched out into HO kits for the first time.

Early on, Irv recognized the importance of time and value to his customers. He introduced “an entirely new principle in HO car construction,” a reefer kit with a preassembled body and spot-welded underframe—a precursor to the popular Ready To Roll line. Athearn continued to shake up the model train industry through the years, consistently marketing their products as innovations in quality, workmanship and excellent value. Irv’s ability to recognize new trends and change with the times allowed Athearn to strike with a flaming iron. For instance, in 1956, he released the EMD F7 diesel utilizing the revolutionary “Hi-F” drive, and, in 1973, he introduced the F45 and FP45, among the first model locomotives to include flywheels on the motor shaft.

Irv Athearn passed away in 1991, but the company he founded lives on as one of the greatest forces in model railroading history. New owners took control of Athearn in 1994, but wisely continued Irv’s pledge of offering high-quality products at reasonable prices. The addition of the Genesis line of premium models, the licensing of John Deere kits and tractors, the acquisition of Rail Power Products, Inc., the entry into the N-scale market and the development of the Ready To Roll line further enhanced the company’s reputation.

In 2004, Horizon Hobby, Inc. purchased Athearn and moved it into a state-of-the-art new facility in Carson, California. With the purchase of Model Die Casting, the launches of 1:50-scale precision die-cast products, the 4-6-6-4 Challenger with sound and other exciting new models, Athearn remains the railroad industry leader in quality and value.

About Bachmann Trains
Bachmann Industries (Bachmann Brothers, Inc.) is a Bermuda registered Chinese owned company, globally head quartered in Hong Kong; specializing in model railroading.

Founded and with its North American headquarters based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bachmann is today part of the Kader group, who model products are made at a Chinese Government joint-venture plant in Dongguan, China. Bachmann's brand is the largest seller, in terms of volume, of model trains in the world. Bachmann primarily specializes in inexpensive high quality entry-level train sets sold in the mass market. The turnover for Bachmann model trains for the year ended December 31, 2006 was approximately $46.87 million, a slight increase of 3.36% as compared to 2005.

History
Founded in 1833 by Henry Carlisle, the company originally specialized in vanity products such as Paresol Handles and Spanish Combs made of ivory horns. Its target market was aristocracy in the American South and Louisiana. After the Civil War it continued to make other types of hair ornaments and handles for walking canes. In 1899 Carlisle's firm, now run by Henry E. Bachmann, merged with a competing firm being run by Henry E. Bachmann's father, Henry G. Bachmann, and the younger Bachmann's brother, Walter J. Bachmann, and changed its name to Bachmann Bros. It was not until this point that they started to shift from Ivory to Celluloid. By 1902 Bachmann Bros. started to use celluloid for its products and by 1912 introduced optical frames that were made from it. Bachmann's famed contribution to optical frames was celluloid tortoise Shell. It was around this time that Bachmann Bros. began experimenting in plastic. In 1927, Shortly before they moved to their final Philadelphia Address (1400 Erie avenue), they became the first American manufacturer of sunglasses. The line, "Solarex" would become very popular worldwide and would later be purchased by the US Army and United States Army Air Force for their personnel during WWII. It was during WWII when it was passed from the Bachmann Brothers to their nephews, Joeseph Chester Sharpless Crowther and B. H. "Bud" Crowther (sons of Laura Bachmann Crowther and Franklin Sharpless Crowther). During WWII Bachmann Bros. was awarded the coveted Army-Navy "E" Award for outstanding contribution to the war effort by an American company. The Crowther brothers ran the business until 1962 when Joseph C. S. Crowther died. At this time Joseph's twin sons, Arthur H. Crowther(Treasurer) and Chester W. Crowther(President) along with their Uncle B. F."Bud" Crowther(Chairman), W. F. Newby(Vice Preisident), and Al Redles(secretary) ran the Company. The young Crowther Brothers were the last of the family to own Bachmann Bros. Other notable products include Birds of the World Model kits, Plasticville U.S.A., shooting glasses for Winchester Repeating Arms Company (now the U.S. Repeating Arms), and Stein Eriksen ski goggles.

Fascinating facts about the invention of
Lionel Trains by Joshua Lionel Cowen in 1901.
LIONEL TRAINS
AT A GLANCE:
Joshua Lionel Cowen was an inventive guy and had always been very interested in trains. In 1901, he fitted a small motor under a model of a railroad flatcar, powered by a battery on 30 inches of track and the Lionel electric train was born. The first Lionel train was designed to attract window-shopping New Yorkers using the power of animated display. Since its humble beginning Lionel has sold more than 50 million train sets and today produces more than 300 miles of track each year. THE STORY
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Invention: Lionel trains in 1901

Function: noun / trademark / named after the inventor
Definition: Electric trains to be used for both simple playing or by hobbyists in miniature rail road operation. Many collectors believe the trains and accessories that Lionel made in the two decades following World War II were the firm's best.

Inventor: Joshua Lionel Cowen (aka Joshua Lionel Cohen)

Criteria: First practical. Entrepreneur.
Birth: August 25, 1877 in New York, New York
Death: September 8, 1965 in Palm Beach, Florida.
Nationality: American

Milestones:
1893 entered the College of the City of New York
1896 joins Henner & Anderson, an early dry cell battery manufacturer
1897 he took a job at the Acme Lamp Company in New York as a battery lamp assembler
1899 Cowen received his first patent for a device that ignited a photographer's flash
1899 Cowen received a defense contract from the United States Navy to produce mine fuses
1900 Cowen and Harry C. Grant founded Lionel Manufacturing Company in New York City
1900 he filed his second patent which improved on the first design of his flash igniter
1901 Lionel Manufacturing Company begins selling electric fans, battery operated with a small motor
1901 Cowen developed the first Lionel train—a battery-powered “Electric Express.”
1904 Cowen married Cecelia Liberman
1909 Cowen was calling his model trains "The Standard of the World."
1910 Joshua changes is last name from Cohen to Cowan
1915 O-Gauge was introduced, which eventually became the most popular scale of train
1918 Lionel Manufacturing Company renamed Lionel Corporation
1947 In a interview with The New Yorker magazine, Cowan claims he invented the flashlight
1953 Lionel became was the largest toy manufacturer in the world
1959 Joshua sold all of his stock to his nephew, the infamous attorney, Roy Cohn
1959 Retired from Lionel Corporation
1999 Lionel trains were selected as one of the top 10 toys of the 20th century
toy train, model train, Lionel train, electric train, Joshua Lionel Cowen, Lionel, Harry C Grant, Lionel Manufacturing Company, Lionel Corporation, Lionel, LLC, invention, history, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of, fascinating facts.

The Story:
Joshua Lionel Cowen was an inventive guy and had always been very interested in trains. When he was seven, he whittled a miniature locomotive from wood. It exploded, however, when he tried to fit it with a tiny steam engine. Joshua had never forgotten his childhood experiment. In 1901, he fitted a small motor under a model of a railroad flatcar, a battery and 30 inches of track and the Lionel electric train was born.
Joshua was born on Henry St. in Manhattan’s Lower East Side on August 25, 1877. He preferred playing ball, bicycling, hiking and tinkering with mechanical toys to formal education, and soon became fascinated with electricity, its transmission and its storage in batteries.

Cowen did so well in school that in 1893 he entered the College of the City of New York. But, he could not adjust to the confines of a formal education. In short order he dropped out, returned, again dropped out, enrolled at Columbia University, and dropped out there to become an apprentice to Henner & Anderson, an early dry cell battery manufacturer. Then he took a job at the Acme Lamp Company in New York as a battery lamp assembler. During his spare time he liked experimenting, one of many mechanically inclined young men who liked to tinker with things. These jobs gave Cowen the experience he needed to launch Lionel.

In 1899, he patented a device for igniting photographers’ flash powder by using dry cell batteries to heat a wire fuse. Cowen than parlayed this into a defense contract to equip 24,000 Navy mines with detonators. His ignorance of armament manufacture did not stop him. He used mercuric fulminate, a sensitive and powerful explosive (his supplier’s deliveryman told him, "The company said you should always keep a good deal around. It’s better to be dead than maimed"), and delivered the fuses to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on time by horse-drawn wagon at a gallop. In January 1900, he filed his second patent which improved on the his first design but again failed to give details.

On September 5, 1900, Cowen and a colleague from Acme, Harry C. Grant, started a business in lower Manhattan called the Lionel Manufacturing Company, but they had nothing to manufacture. One hot day when Cowen was sitting in his office waiting for a cool breeze he got the idea of an electric fan. He quickly assembled and marketed the electric fan, but the weather soon cooled and so did public interest. Soon after, Cowen was walking through lower Manhattan when he stopped at a toy store window where he saw, among the toys, a push train. He then had the vision of it going around a circle of track without needing attention. This was the vision which started a legend.

Cowen designed his first train, the Electric Express, not as a toy, but as an eye-catching display for toy stores. During Lionel's early days, Americans were captivated by the railroads and awed by electricity, still a rarity in many homes.

Cowen and Grants first customer was Ingersoll, the owner of the shop where Cowen saw the push train. Their first product was a large but simple, open gondola, called the "Electric Express", propelled by the previous fan motor. The track was merely two steel strips inserted into slotted ties with a 2 7/8 inch width between the rails, and was powered by a battery. Lionel's first trains were powered by a battery, soon replaced by the 110-volt electric transformer. Customers became curious about the Electric Express and, eventually, twelve of the showpieces Lionel trains were sold.

In June 1902 they decided to add something more interesting to the line with a "City Hall Park" trolley and a two foot suspension bridge. In 1903 they brought out an electric B & O locomotive and a motorized derrick car, and the original gondola was changed from wood to metal.

Several changes occurred in 1904. Cowen married Cecelia Liberman, the Lionel workshop was moved nine blocks to the north, and Cowen hired an Italian Immigrant, Mario Caruso. In future years it would be Caruso who did the dirtier job of keeping the factory running smoothly while Cowen managed sales.

In 1906 a great change took place in the line. In that year Lionel added a third rail which carried the current and the outer rails, which were the ground rails, were only 2 1/8 inches apart. This was the system adopted by most other manufacturers. They were rigidly pre-assembled. Three trolleys, two steam engines, two passenger cars, seven freight cars and a wall transformer were offered. Cowen's son, Lawrence, was born in 1907, and became the company's emblem on boxes and in catalogs and was later to become its President.

Lionel trains proved to be very popular, and before long Joshua Cowen was manufacturing cattle cars, coal cars, passenger cars, train stations, and tunnels. By 1909 Cowen was calling his trains "The Standard of the World." As more and more American homes were wired for electrical power, Lionel really took off. No toy benefited more from electricity than trains. It was 1910. Electric trains had become a big business.

In 1915, O-Gauge was introduced, which eventually became the most popular scale of train. Whatever the scale, Lionel Trains have become an active part of every child's beginning throughout the ages.

In 1929, Cowen unveiled the Transcontinental Limited, which stretched nine feet from its massive headlight to its ornate observation platform, complete with brass rail. It cost $110–more than a used Model T. The company was able to weather the Depression, when there was little money to spend on toys, and World War II, when there were no metals available to build toys with. Many collectors believe the trains and accessories that Lionel made in the two decades following World War II were the firm's best, and they focus on the products from those years.

An often repeated story in both book form and on the Web credits Cowan with inventing the flashlight. We have been told the story stems from an interview printed in The New Yorker magazine in 1947. Cowen stated he accidentally invented the flashlight in 1898, attaching small canisters containing batteries and light bulbs to a flower pot for the purpose of illuminating the plant. The invention was a flop, and Cowen sold the rights to the invention to Conrad Hubert, who decided to try selling the lights without the flower pot, the flashlight. Although the story could be true, they were both in New York at the same time, Cowan had worked for both a battery and a lamp manufacture, Hubert (having newly arrived in America from Russia) was looking for work and at the time of the article Cowan was already rich and famous and therefore did not need to remake history. But the only solid evidence is the New Yorker article. You can decide if the story is true.

The good times didn’t last. They never do. From 1953, Lionel’s best year, to 1959, sales dropped by more than half. In 1958, the company lost money for the first time since the Depression. In September 1959, the Cowen family members including Joshua sold their shares of stock to a group of businessmen led by Cowen’s great-nephew, Roy Cohn. Cohn paid $15 for each of his Lionel shares in 1959. Four years later, he sold them for $5.25. Lionel survives, having passed through numerous hands before falling into a group of investors including Neil Young, the singer and songwriter.

Youthful inventor Joshua Lionel Cowen wasn't the first to manufacture toy trains and he did not lack for competition. Carlisle & Finch Co., of Cincinnati, OH, first made electric trains in 1896 and German toy manufacturers such as Bing and Marklin were producing electric and steam-powered toy trains. The first electric train was exhibited at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The Ives Co., of Bridgeport, CT, had manufactured wind-up trains as early as 1874. Cowen beat them because he produced a reliable product, with an expanding line of accessories, while being an audacious promoter, selling his toys as educational because he knew parents needed a rationalization for their purchase: His talents as an engineer and salesman soon put Lionel ahead of its competitors. Lionel trains are unquestionably the greatest name in the history of toy trains.

  ABOUT MARKLIN AND RIVAROSSI TRAINS HISTORY GO HERE