G-Scale and HO Scale

The Baltimore & Ohio RR was incorporated in 1827.  In 1830, the B & O opened its first 13 mile section of track.  From 1830-1860, railroad building boomed in the U.S., and gradually began to replace canals, such as the famed C & O canal along the Potomac river.

In 1860, a young engineer named Theodore Judah identified the Donnor Pass in Northern California as an ideal location to build a railroad through the Sierra Nevada mountains.  In 1861, he had assembled a group of investors in Sacramento, and formed the Central Pacific Railroad Company.  He went to Washington, where he was able to convince congressional leaders and the president that the Transcontinental Railroad was a doable project.   President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act, and the Union Pacific Railroad was formed.  In 1862, the Act chartered the two companies with the task of building the Transcontinental Railroad.

The workforce was hard to maintain due to the difficult labor, so Chinese and Irish immigrants were brought in by the railroads.  The Union Pacific was able to move about four times faster than the Central Pacific, due to the slow advancement through the mountains.  In early 1869, they were only a few miles apart.  President Grant demanded the companies agree on a meeting point, and Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake, was chosen.  On May 10, 1869, the final spike was driven in what is known as the Golden Spike Ceremony.

With the advent of the railroads, along came the models.  Joshua Lionel Cowen was an immigrant who arrived in New York with his family after the Civil War.  Born in 1877, he was a successful inventor before he arrived in the US.  He grew up with real trains and avid expansion of the railroads.  He founded Lionel in 1900, and delivered his first train in December 1900.  It was powered by a battery, and was intended to be used as a storefront display to captivate their customers.  The early Lionel trains were usually found in stores as displays.  In the early 1960’s, as technology advanced, and people travelled by automobile and air, their fascination with model trains dwindled, Joshua L. Cowen had passed, and model railroading declined.

Today, model railroading has rebounded tremendously.  Lionel is strong, and there are various gauges from the small N gauge to the large G scale models, and several gauges in between.  There are also numerous manufacturers of model trains today, but Lionel and Bachmann are the leaders in the USA.

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