American Flyer Trains
Toy trains have been marketed under the name "American Flyer" for nearly a century. American Flyers have run on four different track gauges; they have been manufactured in four different parts of the world; and they have been sold by five different corporate entities.Around the turn of the twentieth century, a Chicago toymaker named William Frederick Hafner developed a clockwork motor, which he used to power toy automobiles. By 1905, Hafner was making wind-up trains that ran on O gauge track (1-1/4" between the rails). Shortly thereafter, he entered into a partnership with William Ogden Coleman, who had recently acquired a controlling interest in the Edmonds-Metzel Hardware Company. Hafner and Coleman started calling their product "American Flyer" in 1908, and they changed the corporate name to American Flyer Manufacturing Company in 1910. All American Flyer trains were clockwork until 1918, when William Ogden Coleman Jr. introduced an electrically-powered model (Hafner left the company in 1913 to start a toy business of his own; Coleman Sr. died in 1918). Early American Flyers were inexpensive toys, designed to undersell IVES and Lionel, their principal competitors.
In 1925, American Flyer began building large, deluxe electric trains (2-1/8" between the rails) that were intended to compete with the best models from Lionel and Ives. Lionel called this size "Standard gauge". Ives and American Flyer trains ran on the same track, but were called "wide gauge" because "Standard gauge" was a registered Lionel trademark.
An electric train set was a major investment. Toy train sales declined during the Great Depression because many families could not afford them. By 1937, American Flyer was losing money, and Coleman wanted out.
At that time, Alfred Carlton Gilbert was one of the most respected names in the toy business. Gilbert had earned a medical degree from Yale University in 1909, but he never practiced medicine. He was also an accomplished magician, and even before graduating from Yale he had organized the Mysto Manufacturing Company to produce magic kits. In 1913, Gilbert introduced the Erector set, a construction kit with steel girders, nuts and bolts. This was followed in 1915 by a line of chemistry sets. In 1916, he changed his corporate name to the A. C. Gilbert Company. That same year, Gilbert helped to organize a trade association called Toy Manufacturers of the USA, which elected him as its first president. One of the purposes of TMUSA was to lobby for protection of American goods against foreign imports. However, during World War I the United States government contemplated banning the sale of Christmas presents in order to channel more financial resources to the war effort. Gilbert, representing TMUSA, talked them out of it! This episode was dramatized in a 2004 made-for-TV movie called "The Man Who Saved Christmas", starring Jason Alexander in the role of A. C. Gilbert.
William Ogden Coleman Jr. visited Gilbert in 1937 and offered to sell him the entire American Flyer line for $600,000. Gilbert declined. Coleman then offered to turn over his company for no money down and a royalty on sales. This time Gilbert accepted. He moved American Flyer to New Haven, Connecticut.
American Flyer trains from the mid-1930's looked similar to Lionel trains of the same era. They were built primarily of sheet metal, they were painted bright colors, and they were toy-like in their proportions. They ran on three-rail track and took their electric power from the center rail. A. C. Gilbert wanted to produce more realistic model trains. He developed a line of steam locomotives, freight cars and passenger cars that were accurately scaled to 1/64 of full size. The new engines and most of the cars were made of die-cast metal, which permitted finer detailing than was possible with sheet metal, but which made the cars ponderously heavy. Gilbert's new trains still ran on three-rail 1 1/4" gauge track - too wide in proportion to the trains, but the compromise allowed his new rolling stock to operate on existing layouts. American Flyer trains manufactured between 1938 and 1941 are referred to as 3/16" O gauge because they were built to a scale of 3/16" per foot but they operated on O gauge track.
A. C. Gilbert Company stopped manufacturing toys from 1942 to 1944, and its plant was converted to wartime production. Among other things, Gilbert made a small DC electric motor that was used to power windshield wipers on the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter plane.
After World War II, A. C. Gilbert made a fateful decision that made sense at the time but which may have sealed his company's fate. Always striving for realism, he decided to develop a new track (7/8" between the rails) that was exactly the correct width to match his 1/64 trains, and that had two rails instead of three. The new track was known as S gauge. Gilbert continued to use the locomotive and car bodies that were designed in 1938, but with the wheels placed closer together. Cars were now made of plastic instead of metal to reduce weight.
Gilbert's S gauge two-rail trains were beautifully proportioned and looked very realistic, but the change of track ultimately hurt sales in two ways. First, it meant that American Flyer trains made after World War II were incompatible with those built before 1942. Thus, the new trains couldn't be used by thousands of loyal Flyer customers who already had elaborate setups of prewar equipment. Second, it meant that American Flyer was no longer compatible with the other leading brands of toy trains, including Lionel, Marx and AMT, all of which ran on three-rail O gauge track.
Around 1946, Gilbert also began selling HO gauge trains, which were about 1/3 smaller than S gauge. HO was a size for serious hobbyists, mostly middle-aged men who liked to assemble model trains from kits and build permanent layouts, in contrast to toy train buyers who usually set up temporary layouts around the Christmas tree using ready-made components. Initially, Gilbert's HO products were described in separate brochures, but after 1960 HO and S trains appeared together in the same catalogs.
In the postwar toy train market, O gauge outsold S gauge three to one, and by 1967 the A. C. Gilbert Company went bankrupt. Lionel bought its S gauge tooling and the rights to the American Flyer name. However, in 1967 Lionel itself was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Fundimensions (a division of General Mills) acquired Lionel in 1970, inherited American Flyer with it, and moved both to the Detroit area. Throughout its first nine years of existence, Fundimensions made only Lionel trains, but beginning in 1979, "American Flyer by Lionel" appeared on the scene. Each year after that, a few freight cars and a diesel locomotive or two were cataloged for those die-hard American Flyer fans who already had layouts. No complete starter sets with track and transformer were offered. Initial "Flyonel" productions utilized Gilbert's carbodies, essentially unchanged from the 1950's, but painted and decorated them in contemporary railroad colors. Later, Lionel began to reissue American Flyer trains in classic Gilbert paint schemes from the 1950's, including diesel passenger trains decorated in yellow-and-gray Union Pacific, blue-and-silver Missouri Pacific, and two-tone green Northern Pacific liveries.
Lionel itself has changed hands twice more, becoming Lionel Trains, Inc. in 1986, and then Lionel LLC in 1996. Each of the new owners continued to offer some S gauge products. Most of the items have been reissues of popular American Flyer engines, cars and accessories from the 1950's. However, in 2004 Lionel LLC announced the release of a completely new S gauge steam locomotive, made in China from new tooling.
S gauge has made a significant resurgence in the twenty-first century. In addition to Lionel's reissues of postwar American Flyer trains, two relatively new companies, S Helper Service and American Models, make a variety of 1/64 scale trains from their own tooling. Gilbert's favorite gauge may yet become the Goldilocks of toy trains. An increasing number of hobbyists have tried O gauge and felt it was too big; then they tried HO gauge and found it too small; finally they came to S gauge, and it was just right.
Reference note by p4A.com Contributing Editor Joseph H. Lechner, Ph.D.