Name: Tom Snyder's Love for Model Trains, November 30, 1993
Uploaded: 2021-10-22T04:31:29.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Snyder's Love for Model Trains, November 30, 1993' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Snyder's Love for Model Trains, November 30, 1993' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-22. Transcript available.

Tom Snyder's Love for Model Trains, November 30, 1993

And welcome back, my friends. I'm Tom. This is the ColorCast now for Tuesday
night. It's November the 30th, the last day of November 1993 that there will
ever be in the history of the world.
And tonight we talk electric trains with my friend, Mr. Tom McComas. Let me
tell you a little bit about Tom and the things that will happen on this program
tonight.
And I really hope you enjoy this. As we head now to the holiday season, it's
the traditional time of the train around the Christmas tree.
You know, you can put a train around a menorah, too. There's no log. You can do
anything you want with these things.
I have loved them with passion since I was a kid. I remember my father bringing
home my first train set at the age of five or six years old.
In 1941, I would have been five. My dad used to work for a hardware wholesale
company out in Wisconsin that jobbed.
That was the word they used. They sold Lionel trains to dealers, which back in
the 20s and 30s were mainly hardware stores.
And I remember my father bringing home two sets of Lionel trains. Well,
actually, I don't remember him bringing them home because they came from Santa,
if you know what I mean.
But he later told me he brought home two sets, one for me and one for my
cousins, Mike and JP, who lived a short distance away from our home.
And on Christmas Eve, the parents put all the trains together and the ones for
Mike and JP ran just fine.
But the one for me began to smoke when they put the power to it.
And back in those days, they weren't supposed to.
It caught fire and burned up. So I had no train.
And it's been downhill with trains ever.
I've shared this hobby with you over the years.
I've been a part of it most of my adult life.
I love it and will till I no longer have breath in my body.
And I hope you share the joy and the fun we'll have with Tom McComas.
Let me tell you about McComas.
I don't know him that well.
But I've been a customer of his now for 20 years.
Back in the early 1970s, if you were a fan of trains and you wanted to read
about the history of Lionel, an American flyer,
and the train manufacturers in this country, unless you were a member of the
Train Collectors Association
or the Toy Train Operating Society, it was very difficult to get information on
the early production of Lionel trains.
McComas changed all that.
He published books about Lionel trains, which we'll talk about here tonight.
He began a series of price guides for we who collect trains and trade them at
meets as to how much they are worth and value,
depending upon their condition.
Over the years, he introduced videos to the marketplace, giving all of us a
chance to see the great train layouts
that have been assembled across America.
And tonight, we will share some of that with you.
We also have great trains.
I want to present to you, and this is at least my personal favorite here,
a train made by the LGB Company in Germany.
They're known as large-scale or gauge-1 trains.
And here she comes, folks.
They've changed since the old days.
He, he, he.
He, he.
What a great shot.
I'll put it in, I'll put it in slow, Mike, when it comes around the bend again.
Hang on, hang on.
All the sound effects are recreated electronically in these trains.
We call them large-scale or gauge-1.
They're manufactured by four manufacturers, LGB in Germany, and Marklin, I
believe, makes gauge-1.
In this country, they're manufactured by Lionel trains in Michigan and also by
Aristocraft.
These are gauge-1 trains.
Now, to the, to the right of them, as you look at the shot on the camera,
we have a loop of O-Gage track, and on that is current production Lionel.
This is O-Gage, it's available at Lionel dealers across the country.
It's also available from mail-order houses.
This is, this is the kind of stuff that we traditionally associate with running
trains at Christmas time.
This is standard production Lionel O-Gage out of Lionel Trains, Inc.
They're, they're in Michigan.
All right, stand by to return Lionel to the station.
Stand by to return LGB to the station.
Shut the damn things off.
I can't hear myself talk.
I kind of liked them better without the sound effects, huh?
You know, it's like the noisemaker on, on New Year's morning.
Damn, get the kids to, yeah, get the kids to shut that thing off.
We have Tom McComas here tonight, and if you think all you're going to see is
trains going round and round,
hang on to your hats, folks.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Back with Tom and more of you on the toll-free exchange.
Saddle back and watch the pictures and the choo-choos as they fly through the
air.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
I'll listen to the jingle on land, the roar, as she glides along the woodland,
to the hills and by the shore.
Hear that mighty rush of the angel, hear that lonesome hubbush fall.
He prowls to the jungle on the wall that's cannonball.
Along the way, if you need help setting them up, you give us a call on the toll-free
line,
and we'll give you all the information we possibly can.
We're joined tonight by Tom McComas, who is one of the founders of TM Books and
Videos out of Michigan.
He joins us tonight here in the studio to talk about trains for Christmas and
the holidays and a little bit of their history.
Thomas, I've been a customer of yours for more than 20 years, and I appreciate
you coming on the show tonight.
Thank you very much. It's nice to be here.
Let me ask you about the trains.
What is it that just draws people to these things?
You know, you have talked in some of your videos that I've purchased about the
exhibitions in New York
that drew 500,000 people over a period of years.
There's one out in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the Mall of America that I guess
draws many, many visitors.
What is it about these little toys that just attracts the attention of people
and seems to draw them to them?
Well, today was a good example because when we started setting up the trains,
it's about 2 this afternoon,
the minute we turned them on, 15 people from your offices came running in here.
Oh, look at the light. Look at the choo-choo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think the main thing is the intrinsic quality of the trains.
They were made, the old ones that people collect were made at a time when the
United States was the leading manufacturing nation in the world.
Right.
Workmanship was excellent, and the trains reflected that.
They were made of materials like die-cast metal and sheet metal, and aesthetically,
they were charming.
They were painted in irresistible colors, and if you compared an antique train
with a current mass-produced product,
an antique toy train is an absolute work of art.
Yeah, it really is.
Yeah, the colors and the use of different metals, nickel and brass, for example,
in the plates, the numbering system, that sort of thing,
they really were wonderful in their time, and some of the reproductions that
are made now by Lionel Trains,
rich art down here in Escondido, California, are truly works of art.
What about different sizes of trains?
I mentioned here that we showed the number one gauge and O gauge.
What are the various sizes of trains, and we've got some on display that you
can watch in the monitor up here,
and you'll see them as we go along.
The largest in the back is the G gauge, which is what you just mentioned, LGB.
Or number one gauge, right?
I think they're one that's slightly different.
I think G is slightly smaller than one.
Anyway, the next one is standard gauge.
Five will get you 40.
They're both the same.
They're both the same.
All right, I'll bet you.
The next size, which...
Now, the standard gauge is the black locomotive that we're looking at with the
big red cow catcher on, okay?
And this is a repro of, what, a 1929 engine built by a Lionel?
I think that's a 390 built around 30 or 31.
Yeah, okay.
And again, as you pan down it, Ray, I'm talking to Ray Fugelski, the legendary
technical director of the Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson, now on camera
number three with pride.
Look at the workmanship and the use of the nickel and the silver and the red
paint on the driving wheels.
And, by the way, when these things roll, they make some noise.
There's a lot of weight going down the rails.
Well, when standard gauge started, which was 1905, homes were big.
And there was a lot of space, so trains were big.
Then, gradually, as our society became more mobile, trains got smaller.
And standard gauge was phased out in about 1939, I believe.
And then O gauge was the popular gauge that, which is the next one on the table,
is the one most people are familiar with who grew up in the 50s.
Or, as people now call it O27, or, yeah, O gauge.
And then the next one down is the HL.
HL stands for half O.
Half as big as O.
And then almost the smallest is the N-gauge train, which is possible.
I mean, people can put an entire railroad here on a card table if they wish to,
right?
Now, for those of you who think that they only go round and round, not so.
In the videos that Tom and his team have put together, there are layouts that
will absolutely astound you with their complexity and their detail.
And we've put together some videos of various operators around the country to
give you some idea of how many people operate, how many people collect, what
the specialties are, etc., etc., etc.
The only problem is, is you know the piece of paper with the list down?
I didn't bring it up here.
But luckily, you, who are prepared, you can read it if you want.
Here, I got it.
I got you covered.
And tell me a little bit about these people.
This is called Peace of Mind.
And this is the fellow who, in his basement, he just wants to have peace of
mind.
The first bite is a standard gauge collector by the name of Frank Petrusso, who
lives in the Chicago area.
And he talks about how trains takes all the worries of his problems of life
away when he plays with his trains.
Okay, and then we go on to a collector who says that if he didn't have his
trains as a kid, he would have gotten into all kinds of trouble with, you know,
booze and girls and that sort of thing.
And then we wind up with a lady who I believe is in the Chicago area, a woman
who has an outdoor garden railroad, fantastic, in the number one or G gauge,
the large-scale trains by LGB, Lionel, and the other manufacturers.
So roll that here in Fort Lee and watch these trains, folks.
They're unbelievable.
I enjoy the peace of mind that trains give me.
I come down into my room, and my wife refers to it as my executive sandbox.
I come down, I run a train, I look at a train, I forget the world.
I don't know about taxes.
I don't know about governments.
I don't know about crime.
I know about Lionel, classic period, standard gauge trains.
Model railroading has kept me out of trouble.
When I was in high school and the kids around me were going to parties and
drinking and, you know, finding out about drugs and sex and all that other
stuff,
I was at home in my basement playing with my trains.
I have a shirt cardboard, and that shirt cardboard is all anybody needs.
You don't need complicated diagrams.
You don't need complicated wiring plans.
That's all nonsense.
I mean, get out there and build a railroad.
That's what I say.
McComas is here saying, man, look at that shot through the tunnel.
How did they do that?
How did you do that?
How did they do that?
We put a camera on a flat car.
Oh, yeah?
That layout was Elaine Sillitz of the Chicago area.
Incidentally, I got a minute here before the spot, but tell them Lionel had one
out a couple, two, three years back with a TV camera inside the locomotive.
Lionel brought out a train called Railscope, which was an O-gauge, N-H-O-gauge,
and you'd run it around the track, and you'd get a track's eye view, engine's
eye view of the layout.
It transmitted a picture from the nose of the engine, the locomotive, through
the track to a black-and-white television set,
and it was as if you were the engineer in the nose of the locomotive.
And we thought about using it here tonight, but all y