# Vintage deluxe department store catalog train sets!



## wiley2012 (Dec 8, 2012)

Ahhh, the holiday catalogs big department stores like Sears, JCPenney's, Montgomery Ward, etc. all put out until the 2000s. They pretty much had something for everybody. And that included HO-scale model trains! In many cases, the mass consumer-aimed HO-scale train manufacturers (such as Bachmann, Life-Like and TYCO) would make special train sets exclusive for those catalogs, and in many cases they would include landscaping materials, often enough to cover a whole 4x8 sheet of plywood or whatever, so you could have everything you need to really get started on building a model railroad in one big package! These super-deluxe sets were usually meant for more ambitious beginning model railroaders that want to get started in a nicely-landscaped model train layout right away. Generally, sets like these came from Bachmann and Life-Like; by the end of the 1980s the JCPenney catalogs almost exclusively featured Life-Like train sets.








Bachmann had a few different variations of this Overland Steam Freight train set made for Sears's early 1980s holiday catalogs. This sort of set would give you a LOT to work with, including their deluxe Texas Chugger 2-10-2 steam locomotive and tender car (with working smokestack and electronic chugging sound module in the tender!), ten freight cars (including their crane car and boom tender), the "Gandy Dancer" operating hand car, steam whistle wayside warehouse, operating dual crossing gates with flashing lights and bell (which wasn't a great crossing accessory, BTW), several Plasticville building kits (this 1982 edition of their Overland Steam Freight set included their lighted freight station accessory), signs and poles, a huge 45x96 double oval track layout (with a dead end siding on the 1982-83 sets and a second passing siding on the 1984-85 sets) and enough landscaping material (including grass mat) for a 4x8 layout. This is a HUGE train set, literally a single-train model railroad layout in a box! But of course the track layout uses 18-radius curves, as that's all Bachmann made for curved HO-scale track back then, so I'd imagine that Texas Chugger locomotive and tender would have a LOT of trouble running on that layout!









Because A.H.M. offered a full line of landscaping materials with their "See-Nicks" product line, they also made a few such department store train sets, but not as many as Bachmann and Life-Like did! This was a neat one, their "Lighted Railroad Empire" set for the 1980 JCPenney catalog, with the A.H.M./Mehano Cheesie GP18 diesel with blinking light pulling the main freight, an A.H.M. trolley on its' own circle of track, operating dual crossing gate with lighted building, several of the Pola building kits A.H.M. sold at the time with interior lighting kits, A.H.M. "High-Lights" working lampposts and billboard, signs and poles, and A.H.M. See-Nicks grass mat, path/earth paper, tree and shrubbery to make a really nifty 4x8 layout with!









Some of the JCPenney catalog sets Life-Like came with were REALLY extravagant, containing all the stuff for a 4x8 model railroad layout, often with two or even three trains! The Thunder Mountain Railroad Empire set from the 1985 JC Penney catalog was a really gigantic set with two separate track loops for running two freight trains, one pulled by that Union Pacific 2-6-0 steam engine Life-Like rebranded in the 1980s, and the other with the Chessie System GP38-2 diesel, its' consist including TWO dummy engines (really, for a freight consist that size, just one dummy engine is fine enough!) And all the operating accessories and building kits it comes with, including the operating logging mill, coal tipple, crossing gate, log dumping station, switchman crossing, blinking light storage tank, and the blinking bridge and trestle set for the mandatory over-under figure-8 track loop! Building kits include the Equitable Trust Bank Co., Hampden Fire Engine House, Hank's House, and even the 7-Eleven and Kentucky Fried Chicken kits, all with interior lights to put in them!









The 1985 JCPenney catalog also includes these more sensible Life-Like sets, and they also offer some expansion possibilities (like adding an extra dead-end siding, more structures and accessories, maybe even doing simple block wiring so you can park one train to run another (the Grand Junction Railroad set that year included a mail-in rebate coupon for getting a 2-6-0 steam locomotive and tender car at no extra charge!) I know the Great American Work Train set there was not JCPenney-exclusive, but still a pretty ideal set for someone who wants a train set with the landscaping material included and room for expansion possibilities (including more track!)









That same year's Montgomery Ward catalog also included a similar deluxe 4x8 Life-Like train set. It only has a little less action accessories and light-ups, but a 9-unit train with their Chessie F7 diesel, and it also includes more structures like the Pikesville Junction stations, Woodward Police Station, Hampden Fire Engine House, Town Church, and again even the Kentucky Fried Chicken!









In the late 1990s, Life-Like was still making train sets for JCPenney with conventional Code-100 snap track, in addition to their Power-Loc roadbed track! In these cases, their bigger sets still used the snap track; the earliest JC Penney Power-Loc sets were noticeably smaller (really, a train set with a 47x38 track oval also including the landscaping material?) but they got a big better over time, like the Mainline Junction set from the 1999 catalog. It included the log dump car and dual crossing gates often found in Life-Like's regular mass-produced Power-Loc train sets, along with their neat Snap-Loc Dickerson Station kit and the trackside shanties and signal bridge kits. A nice little 4x6 layout for starting with, including room for some more buildings and accessories. The last JCPenney catalog to include any HO-scale train sets was their 2000 catalog.









QVC continued the tradition for a little longer with such online-exclusive Life-Like deluxe train sets as the City Express (pictured), the Scenic Lights Express, the Radio Double Diesel, even the Triple Train Empire Proto 1000 train set! And in the 80s and 90s Life-Like sold some similar train sets for the rest of the retail market, usually with a smaller track plan, including the aforementioned Great American Work Train, the Rugged Mountain Railway, the Treacherous Mountain Run, the Heartland Express and the Double Train Express.
Most of the deluxe department store train sets shown here cost around $60 to $130 back then, and when adjusted for inflation nowadays they'd be around $200 to $300, and even then you'd get a lot more bang for your buck compared to what today's HO-scale train sets in the same price range has to offer (though in most cases the locomotives are noticeably higher-quality nowadays, even in Bachmann's sets!)









The late 1970s and early 1980s catalogs would also sell additional accessories and such for their train sets. And because TYCO never made their own landscaping material but still had some neat catalog-exclusive train sets, JCPenney also included Life-Like's "Scene-O-Rama" landscaping kit in their catalogs so you could include that in the order.
And this brings up the main disadvantage of these deluxe packaged department store train sets: they are rather limiting when it comes to designing a model railroad layout! The manufacturers essentially wanted you to build the layout THEY designed and planned. Plus, each one would only come with one type of roadname, you'd have one set just have a Santa Fe train, a different set with a Union Pacific train, another with a Chessie Systems train, and so on. That would limit things if you want a train set with a particular roadname.
While those deluxe sets do look very nice and eye-catching, I find it would be more fun to get a more typical packaged train set that would just include the train, tracks, power pack and maybe a few accessories (like the signs and poles typically found in Bachmann and Life-Like sets) and buy the landscaping materials separately (maybe include them in the same online order as the train set), and then get additional track and design your own layout plan with them, because then you can design your own unique model railroad layout this way and it'll look just as nice as those deluxe sets shown! That approach worked for me when I was a pre-teen, and I know it'd still work just fine today.

The majority of these catalog images I found on THIS website containing a ton of neat old department store catalogs; they provide a nice wealth of information on such train sets!





Catalogs & Wishbooks


287 Vintage Christmas Catalogs & Holiday Wish Books with 256,717 total catalog pages from Sears, Montgomery Ward and JCPenney over the years.



christmas.musetechnical.com




Any comments?


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## Magic (Jan 28, 2014)

Pretty interesting stuff.
Love the prices on thing way back then.

Magic


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## Andreash (Dec 30, 2018)

Thanks for posting....I drooled over those catalogs as a kid..cheers🍻


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## kilowatt62 (Aug 18, 2019)

Oh, those catalogs back in the 70s. High drool factor for me as a kid.

Sorta on topic. Life Like also did sets for grocery stores, at least around these parts. I was gifted this recently. Have the five cars too. Kellogs, domino sugar, et etc..


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## ddsrave86 (9 mo ago)

wiley2012 said:


> Ahhh, the holiday catalogs big department stores like Sears, JCPenney's, Montgomery Ward, etc. all put out until the 2000s. They pretty much had something for everybody. And that included HO-scale model trains! In many cases, the mass consumer-aimed HO-scale train manufacturers (such as Bachmann, Life-Like and TYCO) would make special train sets exclusive for those catalogs, and in many cases they would include landscaping materials, often enough to cover a whole 4x8 sheet of plywood or whatever, so you could have everything you need to really get started on building a model railroad in one big package! These super-deluxe sets were usually meant for more ambitious beginning model railroaders that want to get started in a nicely-landscaped model train layout right away. Generally, sets like these came from Bachmann and Life-Like; by the end of the 1980s the JCPenney catalogs almost exclusively featured Life-Like train sets.
> View attachment 557309
> 
> Bachmann had a few different variations of this Overland Steam Freight train set made for Sears's early 1980s holiday catalogs. This sort of set would give you a LOT to work with, including their deluxe Texas Chugger 2-10-2 steam locomotive and tender car (with working smokestack and electronic chugging sound module in the tender!), ten freight cars (including their crane car and boom tender), the "Gandy Dancer" operating hand car, steam whistle wayside warehouse, operating dual crossing gates with flashing lights and bell (which wasn't a great crossing accessory, BTW), several Plasticville building kits (this 1982 edition of their Overland Steam Freight set included their lighted freight station accessory), signs and poles, a huge 45x96 double oval track layout (with a dead end siding on the 1982-83 sets and a second passing siding on the 1984-85 sets) and enough landscaping material (including grass mat) for a 4x8 layout. This is a HUGE train set, literally a single-train model railroad layout in a box! But of course the track layout uses 18-radius curves, as that's all Bachmann made for curved HO-scale track back then, so I'd imagine that Texas Chugger locomotive and tender would have a LOT of trouble running on that layout!
> ...


I have a 1999 JC Penny Catalog Train Set Still
In the box in great condition that’s for sale. We just realized we still had it when we opened an outer box that it had been stored nice and neat in. Pretty cool seeing it together on this site!


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## Gramps (Feb 28, 2016)

kilowatt62 said:


> Oh, those catalogs back in the 70s. High drool factor for me as a kid.
> 
> Sorta on topic. Life Like also did sets for grocery stores, at least around these parts. I was gifted this recently. Have the five cars too. Kellogs, domino sugar, et etc..


About 2 years ago the ACE Hardware store near me was selling a Bachmann set around Christmas. It was an F unit and about 3 or 4 cars all in ACE markings.


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## prrfan (Dec 19, 2014)

Very nice post. Thank you. If these were available now, I’d buy one for my grandsons.
I will disagree with one of your points, however:

“But of course the track layout uses 18-radius curves, as that's all Bachmann made for curved HO-scale track back then, so I'd imagine that Texas Chugger locomotive and tender would have a LOT of trouble running on that layout!”

I think most of the running problems on these sets came from two things: Incorrect alignment of rail joiners in sectional track and abysmal quality of turnouts. 
Over the years I’ve owned (bought and sold) around 75 different locomotives. I have about 40 now. Every one ran/runs well on 18” radius curves, including 2-10-0 Decapod and several different GG-1s. 

Back in the day, 18” radius was commonly used by almost all train set manufacturers. No, they didn’t look great but they worked. 
It’s so easy to run the foot of the rail over the rail joiner rather than inside of it. Even properly connected sectional track usually develops electrical conductivity problems over time.

The roadbed track eliminates some of these problems but Bachmann still uses the ordinary rail joiners in the EZ Track.


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## Opus (Jan 14, 2020)

I remember years ago L. L. Bean sold a Lionel train set in their catalog.


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## SF Gal (11 mo ago)

I remember oogling over all the accessories you could get to put on your train layout...loved the blinking storage tank! 
I had a neighbor who's father was a big train buff and me and Cookie loved watching him run trains in the basement.
I got my father to visit and see his trains and he saw a lot of my interest when we would take the train downtown to a relatives home. They lived in the back of the Santa Fe yards and I would wonder what it would be like to have my own layout. Guess I bent my fathers ear enough for his interest to peak and he bought me one of those Tyco sets. I never got to run it much (he got into it too)but I learned how to connect the track, the power, and how fragile these things can be. So after a couple months, the engine stopped working and a coupler or two broke, so I didn't get to play with it much. My interests also changed during that time as most girl interests do, but it locked in a interest that continues today.


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## prrfan (Dec 19, 2014)

Last night a gentleman posted an ad in our For Sale Member to Member forum section for 60 original boxed Tyco sets. Quite an amazing lot.


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## DrawsOnCad (8 mo ago)

That Bachmann Gandy Dancer is now $80


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## artfull dodger (Nov 19, 2016)

My very first HO train set was the Deluxe Royal Blue set made by Tyco for Sears back in 1978/79. Came in a white box with blue lettering on it. Quite rare to find complete with the white cardboard box and all paperwork. The engine being the tender driven 2-8-0 with puffing smoke. Great looking set, to bad it didnt run as good as it looks. While that set is long gone. I did buy a seperate sale Royal Blue locomotive/tender in mint condition that now resides in a display case on the wall. One day I will fit a Bachmann 44 tonner drive chassis(the single can motor version) as its nearly a drop in fit inside the tender shell. Some older Tyco, if boxed and mint, has become quite collectable and expensive .


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## leegolden51 (8 mo ago)

My first train set was from Sears and was made by the Marx toy company. I still have that set and the engine still runs, but not well. I've included a photo of me playing with my trains back in 1958. I was nine then and I'm 71 now. I got a lot of great hours of fun and enjoyment out of that old set. No I am still modeling, but I do it in HO and have been a dedicated model railroder for all those years.


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