Building A Lionel Mickey Mouse Circus Tent
reprinted from the Desert Division Dispatch, October 2002
by Paul Wassermann
click any image for larger version

One of the most treasured Lionel prewar trains is the 1935 only Lionel Mickey Mouse Circus Set #1536. In my 30 years of collecting toy trains, I have had a more or less consistent goal of trying to obtain a complete set. I started with just a “good” condition locomotive, Mickey tender, and three cars, eventually added a “fair” condition Barker, and then over the years went through about four trains to upgrade the set. The major improvement occurred a couple of years ago when I found a boxed set locally that included a like new train, barker, and cardboard insert for the box. But still missing was the elusive paper components of the train, which for obvious reasons seldom had the lifespan of the more durably constructed train.

Two years ago, Ebay provided a sample of what I was after. A seller had the cardboard Sunoco Gas Station, Billboard, and Mickey in the Sunoco Truck. I was able to purchase that part to at least demonstrate a portion of the paper items, but the big attraction, the tent, was still missing.

Then serendipity struck! A circus train consisting of a good loco/tender, excellent cars, and a good portion of the tent became available on Ebay. When I contacted the seller to inventory the paper parts she had, I was able to determine that the parts missing from the tent were in fact the parts I already had! So the acquisition of this train would allow me to have all the cardboard components of the circus set. Needless to say I made the purchase of the set my number one Ebay priority.

When I received the train and its treasured paper I was thrilled! The condition of the paper was really excellent, with just a few areas of soiling; a couple of paper tabs missing, but the colors remained vibrant and the paper essentially intact. Now I faced a dilemma. I wanted to assemble the tent for display, but also wanted to be able to include the unassembled tent in the original box, which now housed all of the items Lionel included with the set. It struck me that reproducing the tent should be investigated. (Greenberg Publishing has done the American Flyer Tent, but not the Lionel version) A visit to Kinko’s dashed my hopes of getting it done commercially. They couldn’t provide cardstock heavy enough to allow the assembly of the tent.

Returning home the light went on! I have a good quality scanner and a superb printer (Canon S9000), which can handle paper up to 13 x 19 inches. Unfortunately my scanner only scans up to 8 x 11, but that limitation can be overcome in the computer with the pasting abilities of Adobe Photoshop. The most difficult part of this project was finding thick paper that would accept the inks of the printer with clarity. I lucked out on my first try as I purchased a pack of poster paper from Osco Drugs that comes in 11 x 14 inch sizes and is thick enough to permit the cardboard construction to stand without sagging. My first test printing convinced me that my tent could be made at home. Unfortunately, to demonstrate how fickle this printing process is, the same paper available in 22 x 14 inch size would not work…the inks ran. Same paper, same company, but something different in the paper surface.

The next three days were spent scanning, pasting, cutting, taping and assembling the structure. I am delighted with the results. My reproduction tent is exactly the same size as the original, and the colors very closely approximate the original. One extra benefit of the computer/scanning process is that I can repair defects in the original. Therefore the missing tabs were duplicated and pasted in the appropriate places, and I can of course make as many tickets of admission as I want (7 came with the original).

So now you can visit the Wassermann train room and see the boxed circus set, complete, as well as an assembled reproduction of the tent and other paper components. The combination of computer technology and toy trains can be a winner!