In my town, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, there was a department store that featured Lionel trains at Christmas. Every year in thev50's I would wait impatiently for the trains to come out in the Toy Department. I am sure I saw the D132, this one, and all of the 5 X 9 layouts. While mom shopped I would spend hours watching these layouts operate! Great memories!

Man, I wish they'd re-market these large train sets; I can remember the rush as one would crank up the dial on the transformer and smell the electricity as the locomotive or diesel came to power; I'd buy one in a heartbeat to share with grandchildren or just myself!

Very cool to see! There is something about that 60Hz BUZZ all of the accessories and locomotives have that really gives that nostalgia feeling!

Makes this 90 year old kid feel great again. Thanks for the trip down LIONEL lane. Jim Hatboro, PA

hi from ukraine!...i'm 35 but i still look at it like a little kid....it's amazing!...wish you development and prosperity!

Wow i was born the year this layout was produceed. Its wonderful to see how well its been taken care of. I still have the Lionel set my dad gave me at Christmas when i was 6yrs old.

Always liked how the the tree trains could intersect on this layout. Two run in opposite directions toward each another and one passes over top of the those two. Also a good example for the use of a 111 Trestle Set without needing a 110. I like how the front loop is asymmetrical to accommodate the control panel Adds some verity to the train design. A good showcasing of accessories. But always found it funny to have the water tower on the motorized stub track.

I was six years old in 1956 and I did have a Lionel train set which to the best of my recalling began in Christmas of that year. But if I would have awoken to something like this on Christmas day I probably would have totally freaked out! Thank You for showing this, very nice!!!

You have a spectacular collection!

My dad brought home the 1963 demonstrator set from Payless Drug Store,( where he was a Pharmacist ). As a 7 year old, I was the coolest kid in the neighborhood! Sadly, long gone, but I still have my original FA diesel and cars, plus about 18 more locos and lots more cars. Have not quit ‘playing with trains’!

Awesome video! Very enjoyable to watch.

It was fun to walk into Sears in December and see the train displays running. HO scale by that time I believe. Just as much a bummer to this child in the 1960s when I saw a train display NOT running, then eventually no displays at all. 😞

Fantastic video! Love the old Dealer Displays. I built a faithful replica of the D-105, a 5x9 two track layout. Great fun running postwar trains with lots of operating accessories.

This is wild! A original Lionel dealer display that you don’t see very often is running beautifully and smoothly. Great job on the display and video🚂

In the 1950s, Macy's in NYC had a 20' X20' display like this one. It had multiple levels.

Someone took great care of that layout over the years, its got everything you could want. Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for the memiories .I received Jersey Central set for Christmas in 1957 myself. Dad created a layout similar to Lionels D-106 to run it on along with 2026 set. We had it for two years when Dad changed us to HO in 1959 (Santa Fe space set with dog bone layout). I still play with trains and have re-collected all three sets, but only the HO set has four of the original cars and the rocket launcher..

WOW -- it's fascinating to see, first-hand, what Lionel wanted the public to see -- LOTS of continuous action, plus the opportunity to demo all those exciting accessories. I really enjoyed experiencing what you've created here: a genuine time portal to 1956 -- bravo -- thanks for making this!

I had so much fun building my 4 x 8 Lionel O27 layout in the 50’s. I still have a water tower in its original box. I wish I had held on to the trains & track. Very nice video. Thank you.

I remember every car, loc, accessory I had and I am 81 years old now. Will todays children remember the toys they get now. I do not forget my plastic building blocks, Lincoln Logs, erector set to.

By far the 621 is my favorite NW2. I too have the 1551W set nicely boxed, however, I have a red gondola and a red caboose.

When I was ten, a friend of my Dad's gave him a Lionel train set that his son no longer wanted. It had a locomotive with the smoke pellets a controller with a whistle function, a freight car with doors that opened a flat car and a gandy dancer and enough track for a 4'x6' oval

Very enjoyable. I own a number of Lionel accessories, post war, but don't have the room on the layout for all of them. The post war accessories can be finicky, but with minor adjustments work well. I built a separate table for the Marx trains since the Marx don't operate well over the Lionel switches, hence the reason for a smaller Lionel table.😎🚂🚃🚃🚃✝

That’s a bunch of separate oval tracks!! The crossing tracks were the entertainment… we could adjust speeds to get amazing wreck’s about every half hour or so!… I loved my Lionel locomotives…. I however was pretty brutal with them!!! I just got a kick seeing high speed head on collisions… they never died…. Always ran…..rip: Lionel !!!… I am sure they are junk made today.

Always great to see one of your videos , thanks again . have a great weekend !

That is really spectacular. I wish I got this when I was a little kid (born 1963). Thanks for sharing.

Very nice

Hi. Brian what a beautiful layout I like I always liked Lionel train I got a big layout 40by60

The dealer display is very cool. I never heard of them till now. They may have been the inspiration for the 70's life-like styrofoam layout which i remember from my childhood.

Great layout. Lots of action. Thanks for sharing.

Dealer displays are neat, besides being part of Lionel history they can be great inspiration for layouts as they pack a lot of action in a small space.

aIn my hometown.Sears and Roebuck used this same display every December until 1969. Just upgrade the new release train sets every year.

Really nice! Love it!

Thank You, love it so very much! A part of my youth and a big part of my life to this day! Audio clips are nice as well! 😊

Very true. My comment really was aimed at ppl saying how expensive trains are ( it was a bit sardonic). This was designed to be bought by a dealer,300 bucks was a lot of money back then to most people. But I agree if you sold something like this today that it would be a decent price. Too I suspect some don't realize the trains didn't come with it:)

I don’t know if this was the lay out that was in the Sears store when I was a kid. Way too many years ago. I just remember it was big, at least for a little kid. In the toy department of Sears they had a display that I could stand all day and watch. I never thought about it as a child. But retrospective I wondered if an employee or employees set up the display before Christmas and took it down after. Maybe this is how they always had a great display. In 1956 I would have been 11. About the right time. Never had a Lionel. It was the premier. It was out of Santa’s price range. I got a Marx (a big toy manufacturer in Chicago that made every kind of toy imaginable and were low priced by the standards then). Not nearly as detailed or precision but was fun just the same.

There was a dealer layout looked fairly good for it'd age, 750 bucks, I could have modified my layout, like take up all the track and just took the lionel display mount it on the four by eight platform, I wish I seen it before I laid the track, my display was built by my nephew, so I plan to keep it. But these lionel displays are very interesting. You can never be bored on yours iam enjoying watching yours.

Very Nice layout thanks for sharing. The only thing I can see would be the passenger cars should be the Red stripe cars that were only sold in 1956, they it would be perfect!

Rivet counter's won't like it but train lovers will love it.

Don't get me wrong, my two favorite Lionel store display layouts are this one and the D132. However this one has an operating water tower on the track that coukd only handle the #60 Trolley, # 50 gang car and # 52 fire car; none of which required water. I would have moved the water tower to close in to one of the stations. Just my thought.

I'm running on a 6'X6' without a mountain. But I do plan to add a dual elevated loop over Christmas break. Looks like you're running a C of NJ NW-2, Burlington GP-7 and maybe a 637 variant? Very cool, thanks for the vid!

NICE! I`d make a similiar layout double the size if I had the room in my basement so I could run longer trains,especially passenger consists with my Lionel Pennsy GG 1 locomotive..

I can smell the mineral oil smoke puffs chuffing out of my screaming steam engine now! Great memories this! I think the diesels were lighter because my steam engine always stayed on the tracks regardless of which direction they crashed into each other on the exact same tracks…. Fuck that was probably a really old antique… way before diesels existed. My bad..

Wow! This is great!

Love the dealer display, but you asked for feedback. So I would've had the guys who were talking incessantly be quiet while the trains were running. Very annoying to hear that yammering in the background. But the visual quality was excellent.

All that on 64 square feet. Remarkable. Was this sold completed or as a kit?

How are you? Is the grass on this supposed to be this color or is it faded over time? Thank you very much love this layout😊

Brian - can you please tell us what bluetooth camera you connected to the train for viewing on a phone? The quality on the 1959 train layout video was superb. Thanks

This absolutely amazing to see in action. Do you know the measurements of this dealer layout?

Why do many people always run Lionel trains at such a fast speed? I only seem to see the unrealistic speeds in O scale, but not in HO, N, and etc. It's like a very common thing to race O scale. I'm just wondering why?

I always wanted to know how wide and how thick are those ground buss strips are. Do you know?

This one is musuem quality.

I like your videos. But you asked for advice. The only thing I can say is: Explain how you or your fellow collector came across the item. Maybe a little about the owner. But this is nitpicking I really enjoy your channel.

Ppl will look at the price and say 'wow, all that for 300 bucks' lol. Even by conservative estimates that us like 3k today

Uninsulated buss bars not OSHA friendly.

You didn't run the trolley!

In 56 you could buy a new car and have a thousand dollars left over.