Ah. Christmas, the time of joy, laughter, and a bit steam and sound.....

As you can already guess, I'm referring to Lionel Trains. It's (awesomely) a American tradition to get a Lionel train, and put it around your Christmas tree. And I think everybody should enjoy it...

In Australia, it's very similar, you get a $25.00 O Scale mockup of one, and put around your Christmas tree.

What would it be like to have Lionel come to Australia, or should it stay in the good ol' USA?

10-4 Dispatch, Railroad9111, out!

4905311 This has two separate answers depending on the context

1. If you mean you personally buying a lionel train set to put around the christmas tree then I say go for it.

2. If you mean whether Lionel should expand its business to Australia, then it would most likely present a lot of opportunity (Triang released a umber of Australian prototypes in the 50s), but also a number of problems: namely some people are going to want accurate ready to run models based on locomotives that aren't/weren't built to standard gauge (you guys use three separate gauges if i remember correctly).

Allas I never got the joy of a proper train set running around the christmas tree, OO is too small in this regard ironically enough

4905409 depends what state. New South Wales was all standard gauge. Victoria was broad 5'3 gauge with a little bit of standard, Queensland was mostly narrow 3,6 gauge or 2ft if you're talking about the sugar cane railways. South Australia was a complete mess of all three, theres one roundhouse down there that has all three gauges going in, out and around it. And as far as i believe Western Australia was either broad or narrow, i can't remember which. Northen territory didnt really have railways and tasmania was standard and narrow. First garratts in the world where for tasmanian narrow gauge railways.

And the commonweath railway (which was the railway that linked state to state because the state railways wouldnt go outside their boarders) was standard gauge. Mainly because all their engines were just renamed NSW engines

4905894 ah, cheers. never knew that, I knew Australia used one of the 5ft Gauges, but I wasn't sure which