The Eli Whitney Museum's annual hands on exhibition of American Flyer Trains opens Friday November 23rd at noon. Classic toy trains produced by New Haven's A.C. Gilbert Company that still run beautifully after 50 years.

Opens: Friday November 23rd, 12 to 5

Hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays 12-5; Saturdays 10-3
Special Hours: Monday December 24, 10-3; Monday December 31, 10- 3

Admission: free
Wooden trains to contruct: $8

Closes: January 13, 2008

Underwriters: The H. Pearce Company, The New Haven Register

American Flyer Curator: Walter Zawalich
Principal Artist: Hunter Nesbitt Spence
Principal Model Maker: Mike Dunn

A.C. Gilbert purchased, redesigned and produced American Flyer trains relatively late in his career. It was also relatively late in the history of American railroads. Airports and highways were reshaping American geography. Gilbert’s trains recollected past power and glory of rail. Gilbert's trains recollected the power and glory of his life. Our Holiday Train Exhibit will follow that journey.

The Layout

Above Photographs by Robert Lisak www.robertlisak.com

Wooden Trains at the Eli Whitney Museum. To build there.
Or in convenient gift boxes. $8 (tax incl) $6 for members. more

A New Haven Holiday Tradition
by Wm Brown

The holidays are a time of remembering. Each Thanksgiving, the Eli Whitney Museum reaches deep into New Haven’s attic, to unpack and display a tradition built here more than 60 years ago. Just after World War II, The A.C. Gilbert Company introduced its American Flyer Trains. Gilbert trains, with their lively movements, their carefully crafted sound, their bright lights, the cedar scent of their smoke, won an enduring place in our collective memory. New Haven built an icon of the holidays.

The Eli Whitney Museum collects and studies the products and legacy of A.C. Gilbert and his company. Between 1909 and 1964, the Gilbert Company was the premiere producer of learning toys in the world. Its showroom in New York, the Gilbert Hall of Science, was an emporium of experimental learning and a forerunner of the modern science museum. The Eli Whitney Museum’s workshops still nurture that experimental learning.

Alfred Carlton Gilbert was drawn to New Haven by Yale, especially by Yale's preeminence in sports and by New Haven’s lively vaudeville scene. Gilbert won a Gold Medal for pole vaulting in the 1908 Olympics. He earned living expenses performing magic on New Haven’s stages. And he studied Medicine at Yale’s Shefield Science School. His gift for magic led to a part time, then full time partnership with John Petrie producing stage tricks for magicians in New Haven and New York. Riding a train to New York, Gilbert saw inspiration in the new bridges and towers. He sketched the nuts, bolts, and girders of a model steel construction system he would call the Erector Set. It caught the spirit of the age. With it, Gilbert built a company that shaped the imagination and invention of three generations of American boys.

Gilbert’s American Flyer Trains were the last of his great product lines. Three thousand men and women worked at Erector Square in Fair Haven. Gilbert’s two-railed, realistically detailed locomotives were a spunky David to the industry Goliath: Lionel. The Gilbert line grew with great promise through the mid 1950’s until it encountered an unconquerable future: television. Television stole time and attention; it sold disposable toys. It substituted passive entertainment for active learning. Gilbert produced trains for just 20 years.

Still American Flyer Trains endure. Each year the Museum lets children run locomotives and rolling stock that their grandparents might have played with. That’s a tribute to thoughtful engineering, excellent workmanship, and Walter Zawalick. Zawalick is a scientist at Yale who restores and maintains the trains and who has trained Museum apprentices to assist in their care. With a few modern parts and ample ingenuity, this gifted volunteer seems to keep the trains in perpetual motion.

Under the direction of Hunter Nesbitt Spence, the Museum’s artisans and apprentices have crafted a 200 square foot layout that captures both the spontaneity of holiday layouts that once graced Department Stores and vignettes of the world that Gilbert knew. Spence, an instructor at the Yale School of Drama, is an artful storyteller in colors and textures.

The New Haven Register and H. Pearce Realty present this Holiday Exhibition. Herb
Pearce rose through the ranks to supervise the Gilbert works before he established his own company. Admission is free. Kits are available for young visitors who wish to build wooden trains with magnetic couplers for $8. The trains open Friday, November 23 from 12-5 and run Saturdays from 10-3 and Sundays from 12-5 until January 6th.

The Trains

The Passenger Car
Alfred Gilbert arrived at Yale in 1903 by rail. The Northern Pacific, The New York Central, and The New Haven railroads had carried him from Salem, Oregon to New Haven in a mere 96 hours. America was moving and railroads drew its map. By the time he brought American Flyer to market in 1946, the airport and highway had begun to reshape American geography.

The Coal Car
Gilbert pressed his Erector Square Factory complex against a rail siding in Fair Haven. Coal fired his factory and New Haven’s growth.

The Box Car
Rail united the states in commerce. Gilbert’s sold his products to the nation. And some of his products...his motorized orange juicer, for example, followed the delivery of other new products: Florida’s oranges.

The Circus Car
Before, television, before radio, rail was the entertainment network: it brought the circus. So smitten was the young Al Gilbert that he tried to join the circus at age 9. He remained a passionate showman throughout his life.

The Radio Car
Gilbert invented a new kind of showmanship. Briefly in the early 20’s he outfitted a garish mobile showroom linked to Erector Square by radio. His blend of entertainment and sales introduced America to broadcast advertising.

A.C.Gilbert spent his life embracing and encouraging change. It’s not surprising that at age 62 he defined America by the technology that was about to be supplanted by newer technologies. Rail had made his fame. The newer automobile and television would soon conspire to disassemble his empire. His magic persists. Forty and fifty year old American Flyer trains still run from coal mine to city at the Eli Whitney Museum. They still transport the imagination.