The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Lionel Trains (1997)

I worked on a demonstration prototype for the "wireless cab", a handheld remote that allowed control of various features of a Lionel layout. This was used as part of a demo in convincing the previous ownership to allow the purchase of Lionel in the 1990s.

After working directly with Neil Young, to understand his vision for this demo, I was amazed by his attention to detail, and determination to make as many aspects of the layout as possible, perform to scale.

This performance to scale was not just in the size of the components, but in every aspect of their real time performance.

He wanted the trains to accelerate at scale, where appropriate produce little puffs of steam at scale, and produce sounds at scale, as well as have the sounds occur at the exact correct times, in synchronization with the motion of the trains. He even had a project where he traveled to locations to find the real versions of specific engine models, to record their actual sounds and it's timing, and then work to integrate these recorded features into the scale model Lionel engines.

It was really a fun project! and regarding working with Neil Young, I was amazed at the level of detail in his technical vision and specifications. He's commissioned a lot of custom electronic projects over the decades, and his experience in working with EEs and S/W engineers was apparent.

"Lionel even claimed the tender had the correct number of rivets on the tender. Although a collector later informed the company that the model tender was three short of the prototype's 1,402 rivets."

Tidbits like this are why I love these kinds of articles.

"Model Railroading Is Fun" - appeared on the cover of Model Railroader for decades.