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From his first train, the Electric Express — one account described it as “an open wood box on wheels” — Joshua Cowen fashioned a toy train empire. Sales increased tenfold between 1910 and 1919; Lionel even sold a war train with cannons. A company slogan in the 1920s went, “Real enough for a man to enjoy — simple enough for a boy to operate.” There were Lionel plants in Newark, Irvington and Hillside. (Lionel equipment is now made in China and South Korea).

In his book “Inside the Lionel Trains Fun Factory,” Robert Osterhoff described the daily scene at the Jersey plants:

“It was a manufacturing marvel how the nondescript sheets of shiny metal, delivered to exacting specifications of demanding engineers, were ushered into the dimly lit factories and emerged back into the sunshine, boxed and neatly packaged, glamorously formed and carrying a glossy coat of high-grade enamel, ready to be time-tested around the toy railroad tracks of youth around the world.”

In the 1940s, the company introduced an array of milestone products, including locomotives with real puffing smoke, and a remote-control coupling system. In 1949 alone, the company’s daily output was 18,000 cars and 52,000 pieces of track. By 1953, Lionel had become the world’s largest toy company. One celebrity collector: Frank Sinatra, who built a full-size replica of a train station at his Palm Springs compound to house his Lionel layout. There was even a Lionel TV show, hosted by Joe DiMaggio.

“Joshua Cowen once said the train going around the Christmas tree is as traditional as the tree itself,” Waller said. But in the ‘60s, according to the official Lionel website, the company “lost its founder and its bearings; America was undergoing social upheaval and the idealized image of Lionel railroading no longer fit in.” In 1967, Lionel filed for bankruptcy. In 1969, Lionel licensed its train manufacturing to breakfast-cereal conglomerate General Mills. Production was shifted to Michigan and, in one ill-fated move, to Mexico. In 1985, General Mills sold off its toy divisions, with Lionel was absorbed by Kenner Parker.

In 1986, Detroit-based real estate developer Richard Kughn bought the brand; Kughn sold Lionel to 1995 to an investment group that included Neil Young. “Our task was to reopen Lionel to the mass market, to American pop culture again,” explained Calabrese, a onetime newspaper editor who also worked at Playboy magazine and Marvel Comics. In 2004, the company once again filed for bankruptcy. “I had a clear mandate to change the company,” Calabrese said. “Bankruptcy provided the means to do it.”

He stood in the atrium at One Gateway Center in Newark, where four Lionel layouts are on display through Dec. 31. The atrium is across the street from Newark Penn Station, where another Lionel layout is on display in the main waiting room. The Polar Express and Harry Potter train sets have helped fuel Lionel’s recent resurgence. Waller, at The Train Station, has already sold out of Lionel’s R27 subway train set, which features opening and closing doors and an operator announcing the stops. At The Train Station, you can buy everything from ready-to-run $300 sets to such collectibles as the prized 700E New York Central Hudson. The Train Station even hosts Net auctions on its train-station.com website.

“I sold an empty cardboard Lionel box from 1965 for $5,000,” Waller said, wonder in his voice. “I was about to throw it away.” His regular customers? “Grandfathers buying for their grandsons, dads for their kids, and dads for their kids, but it’s really for dad,” he said, laughing. Calabrese, for his part, talks of bringing the Lionel name back to New Jersey. Newark, he said, would be a perfect location for a Lionel museum/visitors center. “We have both gone through some really hard times, and we’re both still alive,” Calabrese said of Newark and Lionel. “We’re both scrappy.”