(The following story by Martin B. Cassidy appeared on the Stamford Advocate website on November 25.)
NEW YORK — The forest-green model of a New York City R27 subway car chugged through a miniature farmland scene as the realistic rumble and screech of steel rails came from tiny speakers.
Will Finkel picked up a silver and blue Metro-North Railroad M7 train car from the track to highlight the intricate decals and other exterior details.
“These are trains which people who live in this region remember and identify with, and we think they will sell out,” said Finkel, an executive in the Manhattan office of Lionel Trains LLC.
The R27 subway car and an MTA Metro-North Railroad M7 rail car went on sale Monday at hobby and toy stores. They were licensed by Lionel Trains from the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which is selling them at the New York City Transit Museum’s Grand Central Terminal store starting this week.
After some stagnant years, the Michigan company is celebrating its third straight year of growth, said Lionel Chief Executive Officer Jerry Calabrese.
From 2005 to 2007, train set sales increased by 40 percent, Calabrese said. The company sold nearly 200,000 model train sets at licensed retailers such as Toys ‘R’ Us, Target and Linens N’ Things, he said.
“We’ve had a big expansion into the pop culture part of our business,” Calabrese said.
The subway set sells for $700 and the M7 train set costs $280. Lionel designers took pains to capture the features of the original trains, including the green exterior of the subway cars and the seating configurations in the Metro-North rail commuter cars, Finkel said.
“The level of workmanship and detail is indistinguishable from what you’d get with the top-end train,” Finkel said. “Our high-end collectors would get upset if we were putting out an inferior product on the lower price scale.”
Retailers and model train enthusiasts said Lionel and other toy locomotive makers have quietly broadened their popularity by making mid-priced engines for beginners.
Skip Ford, a salesman for Ann’s Hobby Store in Greenwich, is selling the R-27 subway car and awaiting delivery of the M-7 Metro-North set. The subway and Metro-North trains harken back to an era of model railroading in which the toys replicated real trains, Ford said.
“Children can relate to them because their parents take those very trains to work every day,” said Ford, 72, who has collected trains since he was 6.
The introduction of high-tech Lionel trains that use a computerized control system has boosted business among serious model rail enthusiasts, he said.
The system allows more precise control over speed and other operations of model trains, Ford said.
“The product is very sophisticated and allows you to tweak the speed and sounds to a much greater degree,” he said. “It’s a big advance.”
When Calabrese took control of Lionel in 2004, the company’s focus was on hard-core collectors. That was true for almost 40 years, and there wasn’t much effort to reclaim a wider market, Calabrese said.
The company pursued a strategy of licensing mid-priced train sets exclusively to mainstream retailers, including Toys ‘R’ Us, while preserving a relationship with hobby stores that sell more expensive trains to rail buffs.
Calabrese attributes the renewed success of the 108-year-old Lionel brand to nostalgia, and a yearning for a perceived simpler time.
“Our brand is really one of the iconic American brands and is incredibly deeply rooted in our culture, especially at Christmas time,” Calabrese said. “It is tied up in rites of passage, and the relationships between father and son, and all that stuff, which is good no matter what year it is.”
So far, the Grand Central Terminal transit museum has sold 20 of the 100 Metro-North train sets it ordered, said Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for the railroad.
“We expect them to sell well,” Anders said.