Trains
One of C&F's earliest products was electric toy trains.[15] The toy train industry had begun in Europe, with simple designs from British and German toy manufacturers. These were followed in the late 19th century by American companies such as C&F who began manufacturing more substantial models.[16]
Other American companies had made toy trains before C&F. Ives Manufacturing Company, founded by Edward Ives, opened a factory in Plymouth, Connecticut, in 1868. These other makers used wind-up clockworks, steam, electric batteries, or overhead wires to power the cars. According to model railroad historian George E. Hoffer, C&F's 1896 advancement was to use the two rails as electrical conductors.[17] Hoffer called this a "striking innovation" although this technology had been demonstrated as early as 1851 by Thomas Hall.[17][18] Toy encyclopedist Sharon M. Scott writes that C&F's 1897 train set, which she describes as "revolutionary in its day", was driven by a dry-cell battery enclosed in the locomotive body.[19] The Train Collectors Association, considers C&F to have invented the electric toy train since they were the first to produce them in volume.[20] In his 2007 essay about the company, Cincinnati historian David Conzett takes the same track, describing C&F's electric trains as "the world's first mass-produced and marketed".
C&F's wood and metal trains entered the marketplace around 1897. They were approximately 5.5 inch tall and ran on metal track with rails 2 inch apart, known as 2 gauge.[20] In 1897, C&F made a train set with a 4-wheel coal mining locomotive, three coal cars, two zinc-carbon elements, and a can of chromite. The locomotive included a switch for starting and reversing, and was powerful enough to pull the three loaded cars up a grade. That same year, they also made an "electric railway with double truck car" set, with a car running on two 4-wheel trucks. It was 12 in long, 5 in high, and 3.5 in wide, and made of polished brass with iron wheels. It had two motors and could run at 150 ft/min. Both sets included 18 ft of 2 in gauge track.[21]
In his 1998 New York Times exploration of the history of toy trains, Les Line speculated that an early C&F train set may have been the inspiration which led Joshua Lionel Cowen to start building toy trains. He eventually founded Lionel Corporation, a leading manufacturer of toy trains for most of the 20th century.[22]
Other toys
Although best known for their toy trains, C&F also produced some electric toys of other types. Two battery-powered models were introduced in 1899; an automobile and a torpedo boat probably based on those used in the Spanish–American War.[23] This entire line of business was discontinued at the onset of World WarI.[13]
The 10 in long automobile sold for $3.50. It had 4 in wheels, weighed 8 lbs in its wooden box, and could run for up to an hour on its rechargeable bichromate battery. The front wheels could pivot, controlled by a steering lever. The 1900 catalog listing proclaimed that "Electricity will undoubtedly be the universal method of propulsion for all vehicles in the near future" and that the model was "an exact reproduction of the large electric automobiles which may be seen in such numbers at the present day".[6]
The 24 in torpedo boat sold for $6.00. Constructed from copper, it included two watertight compartments to make it unsinkable and could run for two hours on its one-cell bichromate battery. The boat with battery weighed 5 lbs and included an adjustable rudder which could be set to make it run straight ahead or in a circle.[6]
Miniature Electric Railway Construction
In 1906, C&F published a 58-page booklet titled Miniature Electric Railway Construction. The introduction stated that the book was intended for "wide-awake boys" who are interested in the study of electricity, that model railroads were "undoubtedly the best means of studying the practical workings of electricity", and that it would be useful to readers looking to purchase electrical toys as Christmas presents. The book consisted of seven chapters, each of which concentrated on a particular aspect of model railroading. Topics included track construction, banked curves, signalling, direct current motor theory, and switches, with a discussion of which components could be home-built or should be purchased as finished items. Several chapters were devoted to aspects of delivering electrical power to the cars, how power was routed within the cars themselves, and construction of battery systems.[24]
The book garnered some literary attention. Brookline, Massachusetts librarian Harriet Stanley included it in her 1908 Something to Read for Boys and Girls under "Occupations for Boys".[25][26] In 1913, the New York Public Library placed it on A Selected List of Books on Engineering, Industrial Arts and Trades and the San Francisco Public Library included it in their 1910 List of Books on Electricity under "Experiments and Amateur Apparatus".
1910 catalog
C&F's c. 1910 catalog included three train sets ranging from one car and a 3 ft circle of track for $3.50 to a coal train with four cars and 18 ft of configurable track for $5.00. All of these included components to build a three-cell battery with customer-supplied glass jars for the chromite wet cells.[29]
For $7.00, one set could be ordered with motors wound to run from a 110 volt direct current lighting circuit for continuous use in a show window. Available options included additional non-powered cars, an inclined plane railway, a brass truss bridge, a cross-over track fixture for building a figure-8 layout, a rail switch, and railway station with automatic signals. A hand-cranked or belt-driven dynamo and a water-driven generator were also available.[29]
The 20 inch tall inclined plane model was patterned after Cincinnati's Price Hill incline, located near the C&F factory. The $4.00 model had two platforms which rode on inclined rails with one going up as the other came down, driven by a small electric motor. Conzett writes that only 120 of these were ever produced and none are believed to still exist.[23]
Collectability
By 1991, C&F train sets had become rare collectables. W. Graham Claytor Jr, who was president of Amtrak at the time, was reported by the Train Collector Quarterly to have "one of the finest collections anywhere of trains by Carlisle & Finch". Claytor noted that the trains were not exact scale models, but were proportionally shorter, fatter, and taller than full-sized trains. The shortness helped the models negotiate curves better.[30]
In 2014, a C&F model 45 train set sold for $46,020 at auction. The exact manufacture date of the set, consisting of a locomotive, tender, and passenger cars, was unknown but stated to be c. 1904. A boxed set of freight cars sold at the same auction for $23,600. Reporting on the auction, Antique Trader described C&F as a "revered American manufacturer".[31] As well as the actual trains, C&F catalogs are collectable; a set of over a dozen 1904–1931 catalogs from toy train manufacturers Ives, Boucher, C&F, and Voltamp brought $1,980 at a 2000 auction.[32]
