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Although The American Flyer model trains were at their peak of popularity in the middle of the 1940s and the 1960s, they absolutely had a long history before that, and their popularity seems to be on the increase again today.

William Hafner, working as a toymaker in Chicago, industrialized a clockwork motor for use in toy cars in the very early part of the 19th Century and by 1905 was making toy trains using that clockwork motor.

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With a friend, William Coleman, and using a small hardware manufacturing enterprise known as the Edmonds-Metzel Hardware Company, Hafner began producing toy clockwork trains while 1906-7. These Edmond-Metzel trains were sold so successfully straight through some major retailers that the brand name The American Flyer was adopted for marketing purposes and by 1910, the name of the hardware enterprise had been changed to American Flyer Manufacturing Company.

The American Flyer trains proved very popular, in part because they were lower priced than other makes favorite at that time, and also because their detailing made them more realistic than other low budget model trains.

Hafner left the partnership in 1913 to start up his own enterprise and Coleman's American Flyer trains did extremely well while the First World War as they had no competition in the Us from the German companies. By 1918, the first of the American Flyer galvanic trains were in yield and enterprise boomed while the 1920s but declined sharply while the Great Depression.

In 1938, William Coleman Jr, son of the company's founder, who had taken over the enterprise following his father's death in 1918, sold the American Flyer to the A C Gilbert Company. Gilbert had been manufacturing and selling an allembracing range of toys but not toy trains. He moved the enterprise from Chicago to New Haven, Connecticut and immediately began to re-design the trains. He re-developed the American Flyer as S-scale in 1939 , a scale which was a modification of the very favorite O gauge model trains then on the market. The S scale, which scales trains to the 1:64 ratio and made them smaller than the O scale trains, had a whole of major advantages in terms of the track and track layouts.

In 1946 Gilbert made an additional one major convert to the American Flyer. Until that stage model galvanic trains had run on three rails, with the centre rail carrying the current. Gilbert industrialized a two rail principles for running the American Flyer. This two-rail track, which had seven-eighths inches in the middle of the rails, made the track layout, and hence train operation, more realistic as the track now looked like 'real train track'.

With the coming of television - to distract both younger habitancy and older habitancy from their quarterly hobbies - together with the rise of the discount chain stores which undercut prices and demanded lower wholesale prices, A C Gilbert enterprise ran into trouble and in 1962 was sold to Wrather Group. The new owners produced lines of toys, together with model trains, which were of very poor capability and sales dropped sharply until in 1966 yield of the American Flyer ceased. By 1967 the enterprise was bankrupt.

At this time, Lionel Corporation, which was itself in financial trouble although it had been the important model train constructor for many decades, bought the possession to the American Flyer. However, by 1969 Lionel Corporation itself was bankrupt and sold the possession to the design of its model trains, together with the American Flyer, to normal Mills.

General Mills began selling some of the original Gilbert designed American Flyer trains by 1979 but in 1984 sold its Lionel enterprise section to a toy manufacturer, Kenner who on-sold the enterprise to Richard Kughn in 1985.

Kughn was very successful for over 10 years with the Lionel and American Flyer trains but sold in 1996 to Wellspring Partners who set up the enterprise Lionel Llc, which operates today selling a range of model trains, together with the S-scale American Flyer. Initially Lionel Llc concentrated on promoting the O and O27 scale model trains of its original lines but since 2002 has been releasing more and more American Flyer models.

The American Flyer then, is now more that 100 years old, and has gone though a whole of ownerships and fluctuations in popularity. Dedicated S-scale enthusiasts now believe that this noted model train is once again making a resurgence.

The American Flyer Model Train