1905 Cagney Model D Locomotive 1943-1945 4-8-4 Pocono (Northern) Lackawanna

Learn more about early Lionels and model trains (include about ours!) by watching our Behind the Steam virtual program.

Behind the Steam: Model Trains

Want to see some of our trains in motion? Check out this video from the official Marshall Steam Museum YouTube channel

1930s Lionel Electric Trains

General History

A lay-out such as the one in the Marshall Steam Museum would have been the dream of any boy of the early 1930s, though very few would have had the room to set it up! Before the days of scale models and permanent basement lay-outs, the big Lionels usually occupied the middle of the living room and therefore were in use for short periods each Christmas. Some of the F.A.H.P. Lionel train collection was delivered by Santa Claus to a young Tommy Marshall at Auburn Heights between 1926 and 1936. The size of the standard gauge caused its demise, and it was phased out in the late 1930s.

The museum layout is not professional grade but would have resembled displays at Wannamakers toy department of that period—the ultimate in a boy’s imagination.