Lionel Standard Gauge Trains

Standard gauge was an early model railway and toy train rail gauge, introduced in 1906 by the Lionel Corporation in an attempt to corner the U.S. model railroading market. Lionel did so by standardizing its offerings on a three-rail track with a gauge of 2 1/8 in between the outer rails, making it incompatible with smaller Gauge 2 products offered by European manufacturers, who were predominant at the time. Lionel’s competitors followed its lead by adopting the new standard, but called it Wide Gauge in order to avoid infringing on the trademark that Lionel had registered on Standard Gauge. Wide Gauge had its heyday during the economic boom of the 1920s, which made large toy trains affordable, but it virtually disappeared during the Great Depression due to its high cost. The Lionel Corporation discontinued its Standard gauge offerings in 1940, after which the smaller O scale (or O gauge) became the most popular scale in the U.S.