Ives Manufacturing Company

Ives' trains were made of tin or cast iron and initially powered by clockwork, and later electric trains On December 22, 1900, a disastrous fire struck and destroyed the Ives & Williams Company main factory, destroying the building and all the patterns, parts and tools for manufacturing the cast-iron toys.

The fire prompted a re-design by William R. Haberlin for 1901 that resulted in Ives' first toy train that ran on track.

In 1901, The Ives Manufacturing Company, in a space rented from William R. Haberlin and Timothy F. Hayes, began producing the first "O" gauge trains in the United States to run on a fabricated sectional track.

[1] In the end, the fire benefited the Ives Manufacturing Company, as the insurance money permitted it to build a modern factory with state-of-the-art tooling.

The campaign succeeded in building brand loyalty for the company, and they would go on to become the largest manufacturer of toy trains from 1910 until Lionel overtook them in sales in 1924.

[2] William R. Haberlin is the man who made all of the tools and dies for the original Ives O-gauge ("O" gauge) clockwork train line in 1901.

Aside from the patterns for the iron locomotives bodies (made by Charles A. Hotchkiss, mentioned in Model Craftsman - March 1944) and the clockwork mechanisms themselves (manufactured by The Reeves Manufacturing Company in New Haven, Connecticut, later in Milford, Connecticut), everything that went into this line was tooled up by Haberlin and his partner, T.F.

The work included the first tools and machinery ever built in the United States for manufacturing tinplate track.

The next year Haberlin and Hayes made up regular dies for use in a punch press, which would cut the rails and ties out of sheet tin.

Haberlin later went on to work for Ives entirely, using his expertise as a tool maker to design and machine all of their early dies.

However, Ives' geographic location made it difficult to bring in the materials it needed to make trains, as well as shipping finished products.

Although Ives could rightly claim that its lithographed offerings were more realistic than Lionel's simple enameled two-color cars, Lionel, taking a cue from Ives, targeted advertising straight at children, claiming its cars were the most realistic and that its paint jobs were more durable.

Ives' subdued responses did little to counter Lionel's claims, only calling its competitors imitators whose technology was "12 years behind."

Numerous other companies also entered the wide gauge market in the early 1920s, increasing consumer interest in the size and forcing the manufacturers to innovate in order to survive.

In 1924, Ives introduced a locomotive engine that would change directions when its power flow was interrupted, a feature that Lionel would not offer for another two years.

This was worsened by Ives' attempts to compete at the low end of the market, where, unlike its competition, it sold its entry-level models at a loss.

Although it had a 4-4-2 wheel configuration, it was otherwise a recognizable copy of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad President Washington Class 4-6-2 locomotive.

Some historians have said Cowen coveted the Ives e-unit, and that it was the primary reason Lionel bought the company.