Lionel Trains Inc/Richard Kughn Era (1986-1995)
In 1986, Detroit-based real estate developer (and railroad enthusiast) Richard Kughn bought the brand and established Lionel Trains Inc. In 1989, Lionel rolled out RailSounds, heralding an era of high-tech audio realism, and trumpeting better things yet to come. In 1992 Richard Kughn and musician Neil Young, an avid model railroader, created Liontech, chartered to develop exclusive new model train control and sound systems. Liontech's RailSounds II debuted in 1994. This all-new digital system captured a real-life locomotive's actual sounds, and propelled Lionel to the forefront of model train technology.
Also debuting in 1994 was the brainchild of Neil Young, Lionel's Trainmaster Command Control, a technology similar to Digital Command Control which permits, among other things, the operation of Lionel trains by remote control. Richard Kughn sold Lionel in 1995.
Read more about this topic: Lionel, LLC
Famous quotes containing the words lionel, trains, richard and/or era:
“frog pond ...
a leaf falls in
without a sound”
—Bernard Lionel Einbond (b. 1937)
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
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“You’ve gotta tell ‘em! Soylent Green is people! We’ve got to stop them! Somehow!”
—Stanley Greenberg, U.S. screenwriter, and Richard Fleischer. Thorn (Charlton Heston)
“Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himself remained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)