Copyright 2002 T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
In case you didn't know, Marx made more than toy soldiers and playsets. The Louis Marx Company produced a wide variety of tin toys, dolls, playsets and games. They were also a major producer of electric trains in O and HO gauges. In fact, it is a good bet that Louis Marx sold more trains than Lionel back in the day. Marx
In the 1920s, Louis Marx had an arrangement with the Girard Toy Company of Girard, Pennsylvania. Marx's company bought and sold Girard's trains. These were sold "as is," or specially made to sell under the Marx logo.
When the Depression hit, Girard was in serious trouble. Among other things, they owed Louis Marx a massive commission check for being an agent for them. Marx had accumulated a lot of his pay in stock. The employees also owned stock ,so Louis Marx bought them out. He offered them 50 cents on the dollar value for their stock. Since they realized that the stock was probably worth half its value, they agreed to sell. This brought Girard squarely into the Marx toy empire and it kept all the employees working through the Depression. At a time when most companies were folding or laying off, Marx and his newly-acquired Girard company worked.
Marx immediately set to work implementing his program. First was development of a better motor. They ran the motor continuously for months. When it finally failed, engineers examined it to see what went wrong. They replaced the bearings with better ones, and so was born the most reliable toy train motor ever made.
Louis Marx's business philosophy was simple - build it to last and make it as cheap as you can, so you can keep the price down. Marx trains were cheaper than competing products from Lionel and American Flyer. They were slightly smaller, less ornate and less detailed. Blessed with a simple, reliable motor, these tinplate wonders were sold through fine-and-dime stores, general stores and small department stores. They were priced half or less than competing Lionel products. That meant a lot during the Depression. While Lionel and American Flyer struggled, and Ives and Dorfan folded, Marx sold trains.
One of Marx's biggest sellers were his Army trains. Take a train, paint it olive drab and change the cargo. That's about all he did. He used tin cannons and wind-up tanks from other toys and had them fitted to his rail cars. Army trains are highly collectible today. They were sturdy, affordable and loads of fun in their day. And they didn't involve new tooling or set-up costs, because Marx just made the same guns and accessories he made for his tin Army cars and trucks.
Louis Marx mastered tin toys. He knew that he could use the same tooling over and over to make many different toys, just by changing the lithography. That went with his trains as well as other things. The same tooling that made a green Rock Island RR gondola could also make a yellow one and a blue one, just by changing the printing.
Marx trains were cheap and simple in those days. The first change came in 1939,m when A.C. Gilbert hit on a novel idea for making a scale train. He opted to make a 3/16" scale train to run on O track. Marx liked the idea of scale and set to work producing tin-lithography cars made in scale dimensions and colors. These were a big hit.
Okay, folks, you may wonder why 3/16" scale. Isn't O gauge a 1/4" scale, or 1/48? It is, but Gilbert realized that many cars, if made to precise 1/4" scale, would be too long to run on the tight )27 and O-31 curves. By going with 3/.16", which is 1/64, he could use the same track, make a smaller train and make it to scale. Marx adopted the idea wholesale.
World War II interrupted train production. After the War, Marx continued production of both its cheap 6" cars and the 3/16" scale cars. Plastic soon replaced tin for the cars, but the 3/16" scale remained. Only the 6" cars were still made in tin, and most of them were going to wind-up sets for kids. Marx was not out to match Lionel, but to excel in his own niche of low-priced, sturdy trains. To do this, Marx had to at least keep up with the latest developments. T%hat meant operating couplers and specialty trains. Unlike the knuckle coupler of Lionel, Marx used a flat tilt coupler. As for action trains, Marx produced its Army trains and an assortment of others in plastic. One of the most popular were the Cape Canaveral trains with missile-launching cars.
Another good move was incorporating trains and other toys. Marx produced a western playset / train combination that sold briskly. He also had Army sets packed with soldiers and accessories. The same men used in the 1950s gas station were sold as trackside figures for the trains. The same cars used in those gas station sets showed up as cargoes for flat cars and auto carriers. A series of tanks for smaller figures became a series of flat car loads for Army trains.
When Ho was getting popular, Marx jumped in. The company produced a small variety of HO sets. Though crude and lacking detail compared to modern HO, the Marx trains sold well. One innovation was packing a train set with HO slot cars. Marx made a special track that allowed slot cars to cross the railroad tracks The HO trains were made differently than O gauge, using tiny DC motors and having all plastic bodies..
Of course, it had to end. In 1972, Louis and David Marx sold the business to the Quaker Oats Company. Train production continued until 1975. It was then sold to another firm, which eventually went bankrupt. Marx's tooling was sold, some to the modern train maker K-Line, some to Mexican firms.
In the 1990s, Jim and Debbie Flynn licensed the Marx name to make tin trains. They made theirs pretty much like the originals, with changes in the motor and the lithography. Rather than reproductions, they have entirely new paint work and some design changes. The prices are rather high, too. Before 1975, Marx trains were the low-priced alternative. Today's Marx trains are a pricier collectible.
Louis Marx's range of trains was never as vast as Lionel's. Marx had a small variety of tinplate, plastic and diecast locomotive types available in a limited variety of road names and colors. Lionel produced scores of different tinplate locomotive types, while Marx produced less than a dozen. There were only three different diecast locomotives in the Marx array, four different steam locomotive types and four plastic diesel types. All used variants of the same basic motor. That motor had slight changes such as plastic rather than metal gears in the cheapest sets. Other than that, it was essentially the same and it propelled all but two Marx locomotives. (One was a shortened version of the motor, the other used a DC motor and was only made for two years.)
Though is trains were simpler, Marx made all of the necessary accessories, From 1930 until 1975, the company produced tin and plastic stations, plastic buildings, working signals, lights, miniature railroad people and bridges. The Marx trains had operating switches and operating couplers and cars with operating features, such as the coal dump, log dump and operating boxcar. They were not as complex as their Lionel counterparts, but they worked (and still work!).
I feel that one of Marx's biggest contributions was availability. Lionel and American Flyer trains were expensive. Marx's sturdy, reliable trains were cheap. Though built to last and attractively painted, they were half or less the price of competing products. Many a child who might never have had a Lionel set could have a full-featured Marx set with accessories.
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I collect original Marx trains. I buy them to run them and am in the process of building a new layout. Because most pre-1954 Marx locomotives cannot work with Lionel switches, I had to acquire Marx switches. From beginning to end, Marx switches could accommodate any O scale train they made. The plastic ones made from the 1950s on could also accommodate Lionel. One thing about Marx trains is the durability. Even if the motor is no longer working, it can usually be repaired easily. Most motors are working, and you can see that many of these old trains have survived rough treatment by kids. It is rare to get one without a few dents and dings.
The Marx trains are not as fancy or substantial as Lionel. They are lighter, smaller, somewhat cheaper. Their appeal is rather hard to express in words. Marx's proud little locomotives jump to life with enthusiasm, hurtling around the track with a characteristic buzz. The tin signals light and ring as train pass. Simple, but always willing to run. I love Marx trains and continue to add to my home railway. While not seeking to build a monster collection, I enjoy having enough of a railway to have some fun.
Louis Marx made trains that were fun to own, fun to run, and affordable. He made it so that every boy could have a working electric train set, at a time when most trains were too expensive. He may well have sold more trains than Lionel.