Lionel long missed its most brilliant advertising possibility.
Building, or buying *real* trains!
Not practical trains, but fantasy trains. Nostalgic, futuristic, ornate, etc., for touring around the country.
A modern locomotive costs about $2M, the rest of the cars considerably less. But that price could be amortized over twenty or thirty years, and even then the train could be sold at a good price.
Most of the time, these trains would sit on small sidings near public parks, and their cars would be small retail, like a Starbucks car and a high tech product display and retail car for high end electronics. From local businesses, with just empty cars traveling around with the locomotive, keeping fuel costs low.
And each time a new style of train arrived in a town, it would get a free promo in the local newspaper.
They might have also commissioned a luxury train that would move around the country like a cruise ship solely for tourism. An American Oriental Express.