Just bought a TYCO caboose for $5 because it was odd. The markings were Mayline with a large question mark and the numbr 24. Anybody know anything about it?
Sounds like modified caboose. Never heard of the Mayline. Can you post a picture?
Simon
Tyco was often Mantua stuff sold ready to run rather than in kit form. If the caboose looks good to your eye, you might consider painting it. Regular railroads painted cabooses red all over on the theory that the caboose was supposed to show the end of train to all concerned. Cheap railroads like the Boston and Maine, painted their cabeese in cheaper box car red, and only painted the ends in bright caboose red. It can probably benefit from some wire grab irons, and perhaps some brake rigging. Roof should be dark gray, Krylon or Rustoleum drak gray auto primer looks good. Trucks want to be painted, rust colored. Glossy black plastic does not look so good. And of course you need decals after a paint job.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
The sale is now over but recently someone was offering a "Mayline" HO tank car - also with a large stylized question mark on it -- on Ebay. Very possibly a Tyco car as well. If you act fast you could see the small picture,
Tyco was big into promotional trainsets for various manufacturers, not necessarily intended to be sold to the public but used as give aways and customer favors. I recent wrote an article about Johnson Wax cars (the prototypes) and mentioned that Tyco had created a Johnson Wax promotional trainset that included a caboose labeled Johnson Wax. I don't know if Johnson Wax sold these sets or gave them away to favored dealers and other customers.
Mayline was a respected manufacturer of office furniture for many years. The company has been acquired by another -- so it lives on perhaps as a brand but not a company. My guess is that either Tyco created a promotional trainset for Mayline (perhaps for their salesmen to use). Either that or someone who worked for Mayline decided to create a train, maybe to be used at some company event.
Tyco cabooses are, frankly, so commonly found at swap meets, often at almost give away prices (particularly the later ones that got very cheaply made), that there would be nothing special about this one. It can with a bit of plastic surgery (pun intended) be made into a more accurate model of the Pennsylvania RR's N8 class of cabin car, which is the prototype for aspects of the Tyco model but Tyco for reasons of its own scrambled the elements around to make it less specifically Pennsy; articles on how to do this have appeared in MR and more than once in RMC. Bowser's nice and more accurate N8 model in HO kind of killed most interest in the kitbash of the Tyco but at one time I laid in a supply of Tycos (on the assumption that I was almost bound to botch something in the process) and still have 'em, somewhere. I don't think I paid more than a dollar for any of them, and some of the shells I probably got for a quarter.
No longer a Pennsy modeler!
Dave Nelson
If you freelance/protolance those are a good caboose to have in your fleet. (Presuming you model an era where caboose were still in use.) Some of the schemes were a bit garish but a good coat of paint will solve that. (I have somewhere around ten of them in three different schemes.) At least for my tastes, I removed the plug trucks, filed the holes down a little to reduce the height (stock they ride a bit high), filled them with either sprue or styrene tube, then use some 2-56 screws to attach some better trucks (I used Athearn caboose) and body mount some Kadee couplers. (My suggestion would be 140 series as they are quite easy to work with.)
FRRYKidSome of the schemes were a bit garish
I have this one, and I am not sure what I am going to do with it.
-Photograph by Kevin Parson
It is garish for sure, but not the worst example Tyco made.
-Kevin
Living the dream.