Our contries Flyer was the popular brand of toy train and model railroad in the United States in the middle part of the 20th century.

The Chicago Era, 1907-1938

Although better remembered for the S gauge trains of the 1950s that it made as a section of the A. C. Gilbert Company, American Flyer was initially an independent company whose origins date back nearly a half century earlier. Chicago, Illinois-based toymaker William Frederick Hafner developed a clockwork motor for toy cars in 1901 while working for a company known as Toy Auto Company. Based on data from a recollections of William Hafner's boy, John, he experienced developed the clockwork train heading in O gauge track by 1905.

Hafner's friend, William Ogden Coleman, gained control of the Edmonds-Metzel Hardware Company, the struggling devices manufacturer withinside Chicago, in 1906 or 1907. Hafner & Coleman began producing toy trains utilizing Edmonds-Metzel's redundant manufacturing capability when Hafner was breathe to assure $15,000 worth of orders. By 1907, deuce U.s. retail merchant, G. Sommers & Co. and Montgomery Ward, were selling Edmonds-Metzel trains. Within 1908, Edmonds-Metzel adopted the Western Flyer br& for the trains, and by 1910, Edmonds-Metzel was out of a devices business & changed its title to Our contries Flyer Manufacturing Company.

Initially Our contries Flyer was something of a budget brand, undercutting the price levels of Ives, who was at a period a market leader. A trains proved popular, & Our contries Flyer was shortly expanding its line. But, a company's zoom led to tries in the relationship between Hafner & Coleman.

Within 1913, Hafner left the company. Believing he would exist as given a important part of the company in case the trains proved successful, Coleman refused after Hafner asked to exercise this guide. Hafner began a Hafner Manufacturing Company, which sold a line of trains known as Overland Flyer. Sommers immediately stopped carrying a U.s. Flyer trains in favour of Hafner's brand. At first, a Hafner & Western Flyer line of products were super similar, suggesting it could keep close at hand been built using the equivalent tooling. This suggests a possibility of the ii corporations continuing to collaborate. Hafner's business surivived as a manufacturer of clockwork trains until 1951, when he sold his business to All Metal Products Company.

Western Flyer's business grew when you took World War I, which locked out German manufacturers, who experienced dominated a U.S. toy train market thereto point. In the period of this period, Western Flyer as well introduced bicycle and motorcycle toys, segmented its market by creating both the online-low-cost & the high-pricy line, & began to depart from either its earliest designs by William Hafner.

Within 1918, American Flyer introduced its foremost electrical train, an O gauge model that was just the windup model by using an electric motor in situ of the clockwork motor. This was a most common practice at the instance. A equivalent seaboy, William Coleman died & his son, William Ogden Coleman, Jr., took over the company.

Around 1925, American Flyer began offering Wide gauge electric trains at a premium price, attempting to compete by using Lionel Corporation at the high end of the market. Such as virtually all of its competition, U.s. Flyer did easily in the 1920s, selling more than half the million trains inside its better years, however suffered in the Great Depression, during which a company's focus shifted back to the extra economic O gauge trains.

Inside 1928, American Flyer's rival Ives went smash. Western Flyer & Lionel jointly purchased & operated Ives until 1930, when Western Flyer sold its part to Lionel. When you took this period of joint operation, U.s. Flyer supplied Ives by having car bodies & more area.

In a period of a early Thirties, Our contries Flyer struggled under increased competition, especially at the moo prevent of the market. Inside 1931, Flyer announced it would not make an electrical train placed to sell for to a lesser degree $4 rather its competition got. Even so, inside leash months, it relented & freed the train forgoing transformer that sold for $3.95, & inside 1932, it released the placed sustaining transformer that retailed for $3.Fifty. Gross revenue increased, however a company was non profitable. Expansion into more toy arenas likewise failed.

A. C. Gilbert Company, 1938-1966

Within 1938, Coleman sold American Flyer to the A. C. Gilbert Company, the makers of Erector Set construction toys, and production moved to New Haven, Connecticut.

Gilbert re-designed a line of products & is popularly credited by using creating a O27 variant of O gauge within 1939, in which a locomotive engine & car bodies come scaled to 1:64 shell, making a children around 25% little than the 1:48 standard for O gauge, when however running off on the equivalent nature and severity of track. This allowed a trains to navigate tighter Twenty-seven-inch curves that would stimulator even a conventional O gauge train to derail or go for it the track. When this resulted withinside curves that were lot tighter than people that come out in the real life, it allowed supplementary track in the little space. More manufacturers quickly adopted this idea. By 1941, Gilbert had discontinued a sooner designs & advertised a freshly Western Flyer products when "Every train 3/16 scale from front end to rear end." A few boxes were labeled "3/16 scale" & others labeled "Tru-Scale." When virtually all anterior trains from either Our contries Flyer & more manufacturers paid little attention to shell, this manufactured a Gilbert Western Flyers distinctive.

At the equivalent instance, Gilbert besides freed a line of HO scale trains.

Fallowing World War II, Gilbert discontinued the O gauge trains in favour the slightly little & supplementary naturalistic S gauge, which used 2-rail track sized nigher to 1:64 shell. Inside two or three years, the recently, additional naturalistic coupling project too appeared. Flyer played higher its improved realism, sustaining both-rail track & naturalistic coupling, sustaining Gilbert himself saying a project was inspired by his boy's dissatisfaction using more toy trains available on the market. "Kids want realism," he said.

Although popular, Our contries Flyer was universally a #2 brand to Lionel inside terms of market part at a high prevent of the market. Sustaining Marx & the handful of more brands relegated to the moo prevent of the market, Lionel & U.s. Flyer shared premium status. The competition emerged between two corporations' fans.

Prefer Lionel, Gilbert was caught off one's guard per popularity of HO shell trains that offered better realism for a bargain price than its Our contries Flyer S gauge products, & a ever-changing interests of Western youth. A problems were compounded per demise of its founder inside 1961. By owning a popularity of toy trains & construction toys declining, & forgoing a second successful line of business to buoy a company's finances, Gilbert encountered itself witharound fiscal pain, & it discontinued a U.s. Flyer line in 1966 and declared bankruptcy in 1967.

Lionel, 1979-present

Inside Might 1967, Lionel Corporation announced it experienced purchased a Western Flyer title & tooling. The May 29, 1967 story in The Wall Street Journal made weak of the treat, stating, "Two of the best-known railroads in the nation are merging and the Interstate Commerce Commission couldn't care less." Previous Lionel financial officer Robert The. Stein said Lionel did non initiate a treat; two corporations experienced farmed out their accounts receivable departments to Arthur Heller & Co., who initiated the transaction. When various accounts publised all over a years valued a treat at $150,000, Stein's recollection was that Lionel just liquidated $300,000-$400,000 worth of U.s. Flyer inventory for Heller around exchange for the tooling, which, by the few accounts, sat unused & neglected around a park for a bit of period. Lionel Corporation never made Our contries Flyer trains.

Inside ii years, Lionel Corp. was bankrupt itself & got sold its train lines to General Mills, including the unused Our contries Flyer tooling. Around 1979, General Mills' Lionel division began to reissue Flyer products thereunder title. A marque lives in todays world, although Lionel's emphasis remains in its O & O27 gauge business line. Virtually all of the U.s. Flyer-branded product sold by Lionel, LLC today are reprint of Fifties designs processed from either old Gilbert tooling.

Sources
Osterhoff, Robert J (Will 1999). "When the lights went out at Lionel." Classic Toy Trains, p. 76.