The Lionel Legend: An American Icon

An exhilarating, photo-filled journey through the history of America’s favorite toy trains, The Lionel Legend whisks readers through more than a century of Lionel. Veteran hobby historian and author Robert Schleicher conducts us all the way back to Joshua Lionel Cohen’s 1902 “electric cheese box”—the train that started everything—right up to the high-tech, meticulously detailed Lionels of today.  This thoroughly entertaining book features an astonishing variety of Lionels—the famous and the fascinatingly rare—steam and diesel engines, freight and passenger cars, action accessories and cars, track and transformers.

Lavishly illustrated with modern color photography, vintage advertising, and historic images of the “real” prototype trains, The Lionel Legend charts the course of what is arguably America’s most-enduring toy-industry icon.