dti406 PB&J RR As a kid, I had TYCO trains, along with AHM, Bachman, Rivarossi, and a bunch of others... As an adult with 15 or more years away from the hobby and coming back now it seems that most everyone has a morbid dislike of TYCO... Perhaps I'm the exception that proves the rule, but I don't remember having a lot of trouble out of any of their stuff, or atleast no more than anything by any of the other makers... I am not trying to stir up argument or insults just trying to understand. I was a kid, so maybe I missed something. I worked in a hobby shop and the day after Christmas in would walk a parent and their child with a Tyco piece of trash that did not make it through the day. As the repair guy it was a quick fix that would not last as there was no bearing that the motor ran in just plastic that would not hold lubricant. We would tell the owner the problem and how to fix it. We would then try to get them to upgrade to an Athearn or Atlas engine. By the way the train set was usually purchased at Kmart or Hobby Lobby etc. who did nothing to help the customer. Rick Jesionowski
PB&J RR As a kid, I had TYCO trains, along with AHM, Bachman, Rivarossi, and a bunch of others... As an adult with 15 or more years away from the hobby and coming back now it seems that most everyone has a morbid dislike of TYCO... Perhaps I'm the exception that proves the rule, but I don't remember having a lot of trouble out of any of their stuff, or atleast no more than anything by any of the other makers... I am not trying to stir up argument or insults just trying to understand. I was a kid, so maybe I missed something.
As a kid, I had TYCO trains, along with AHM, Bachman, Rivarossi, and a bunch of others...
As an adult with 15 or more years away from the hobby and coming back now it seems that most everyone has a morbid dislike of TYCO...
Perhaps I'm the exception that proves the rule, but I don't remember having a lot of trouble out of any of their stuff, or atleast no more than anything by any of the other makers...
I am not trying to stir up argument or insults just trying to understand. I was a kid, so maybe I missed something.
I worked in a hobby shop and the day after Christmas in would walk a parent and their child with a Tyco piece of trash that did not make it through the day. As the repair guy it was a quick fix that would not last as there was no bearing that the motor ran in just plastic that would not hold lubricant. We would tell the owner the problem and how to fix it. We would then try to get them to upgrade to an Athearn or Atlas engine. By the way the train set was usually purchased at Kmart or Hobby Lobby etc. who did nothing to help the customer.
Rick Jesionowski
Well I suppose that depends on what era of Hobby Lobby you were talking about... my first job was running the hobby department in Hobby Lobby store number 5. We did carry the cheaper stuff but we also carried Athearn, Roundhouse and even some of the early spectrum and roco made Atlas. We even got to order from Walthers. At that time it was more sales rather than self service too. As the company expanded they centralized the Hobby department. First to go was RC then they just went to the cheaper stuff in trains and cut out outside suppliers.
Talgo trucks allow a lot more swing than standard couplers that are body-mounted, so the cars can negotiate tighter curves. The only remaining Talgoes on my layout are on a string of old Tyco passenger cars, which work fine so I'm not going to change them.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
MisterBeasley Talgo trucks were forgiving.
I have noticed that Kadee recently updated their "talgo" style trucks with whisker couplers. Previously they had a version of the #4 coupler.
That makes me believe there are still some people that prefer to have truck mounted couplers.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
As a teenager, I had a few boxes of trains found at yard sales. There were a couple of Tyco engines, which ran fine but physically looked in bad shape. They were so old that back in the sixties I actually had to upgrade their couplers to horn-hooks.
I still had those trains when I was in my fifties. I was running just diesels at the time, and had transitioned to DCC, so I abandoned the engines, but i kept the rolling stock. I think they were overweight, but the weight kept them on the track and the Talgo trucks were forgiving. I still have every one of those cars. With improvements, they all run fine and look better than they did when I was in junior high.
I've mentioned this on other Tyco-related posts but I have quite a few recycled Tyco engines/cars. I have a whole fleet of GP-20s and caboose that I have improved. The 20s ride on Athearn BB drives. The caboose have Athearn caboose trucks and body mounted couplers on them. I call them Tyrhearns. These are for my protolanced road.
I also have a a few other pieces of the other manufacturers mentioned previously. I have three AHM U-boats for coal hauling for the prototype side of my modeling. (One I will admit is in the shop waiting for me to either get a puller and upgrade the wheels or else order replacement traction tires.) I have some Bachmann caboose that happen to fit another prototype niche. They have had some upgrades as well.
For some of us even in this day and age of the RTR rolling stock, they fit prototype and budget.
To a 10 year old kid on a bicycle with grass cutting money, that TYCO Santa fe F9 in blue and yellow looked beautiful to me along with that U P #29500 yellow gondola with the containers that had opening lids. Now I only needed some of that fiber tie track because I could use my Aurora slot car controllers to run the train, I think. I'v come a long way from that time in my life.
I still have that engine and gondola.
dti406 I worked in a hobby shop and the day after Christmas in would walk a parent and their child with a Tyco piece of trash that did not make it through the day. As the repair guy it was a quick fix that would not last as there was no bearing that the motor ran in just plastic that would not hold lubricant. We would tell the owner the problem and how to fix it. We would then try to get them to upgrade to an Athearn or Atlas engine. By the way the train set was usually purchased at Kmart or Hobby Lobby etc. who did nothing to help the customer. Rick Jesionowski
Perhaps Tyco had its place and something else came along. I get it if you're just starting to use Tyco.
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
Rule 2: I make the rules.
Rule 3: Illuminating discussion of prototype history, equipment and operating practices is always welcome, but in the event of visitor-perceived anacronisms, detail descrepancies or operating errors, consult RULE 1!
MisterBeasley allegedlynerdy I recall seeing someone who had, I believe, a Sierra Railroad layout that serviced a dam construction site, which ran multiple extra gravel trains to the concrete plant at the dam per day. They used live loads, with old Tyco or Mantua self-unloading hoppers, so that they didn't need to have operators handling the gravel cars or mess around with aprototypical rotary unloaders. For him, those Tycos were golden for what he wanted to model. I believe the comment was that it took about 3 of the cars to every single one on the layout to donate parts to make them work reliable though. I still have about a dozen of those old Tyco "clamshell" door operating hoppers. Honestly, I've never had problems with any of them. I still have my original dumper insert for unloading them, too. I have removed the Talgo trucks with the plastic pizza cutter wheels, added body-mount Kadees, replaced the trucks with Tichy's and the wheels with Intermountains. They run better, but the originals still worked and my work was a planned upgrade not a maintenance repair.
allegedlynerdy I recall seeing someone who had, I believe, a Sierra Railroad layout that serviced a dam construction site, which ran multiple extra gravel trains to the concrete plant at the dam per day. They used live loads, with old Tyco or Mantua self-unloading hoppers, so that they didn't need to have operators handling the gravel cars or mess around with aprototypical rotary unloaders. For him, those Tycos were golden for what he wanted to model. I believe the comment was that it took about 3 of the cars to every single one on the layout to donate parts to make them work reliable though.
I recall seeing someone who had, I believe, a Sierra Railroad layout that serviced a dam construction site, which ran multiple extra gravel trains to the concrete plant at the dam per day. They used live loads, with old Tyco or Mantua self-unloading hoppers, so that they didn't need to have operators handling the gravel cars or mess around with aprototypical rotary unloaders. For him, those Tycos were golden for what he wanted to model. I believe the comment was that it took about 3 of the cars to every single one on the layout to donate parts to make them work reliable though.
I still have about a dozen of those old Tyco "clamshell" door operating hoppers. Honestly, I've never had problems with any of them. I still have my original dumper insert for unloading them, too. I have removed the Talgo trucks with the plastic pizza cutter wheels, added body-mount Kadees, replaced the trucks with Tichy's and the wheels with Intermountains. They run better, but the originals still worked and my work was a planned upgrade not a maintenance repair.
It sounded like he was getting them on the second hand market, so I believe the issue was more "rehabilitating" ones that had sat in a garage for a few years or accumulated the other gunks that are known to happen to old rolling stock.
IRONROOSTER I have fond memories of my first 4x8 layout, running a Tyco 10 wheeler and a Tyco prairie with brass Atlas track and Atlas buidlings. It was a lot of fun. I was hooked on the hobby. I added some MDC cars, built a LaBelle flatcar, and built a Bowser K4. And so it goes. Enjoy Paul
I have fond memories of my first 4x8 layout, running a Tyco 10 wheeler and a Tyco prairie with brass Atlas track and Atlas buidlings. It was a lot of fun. I was hooked on the hobby. I added some MDC cars, built a LaBelle flatcar, and built a Bowser K4. And so it goes.
Enjoy
Paul
15 years later and I still love my old Tycos.
navyman636 One guy's junk is another guy's challenge. It's sometimes easier, too, to dare to do a thorough reworking of an old junker than it is to try and work up the guts to pull apart something more modern, gorgeous and recent. And expensive. And like I've said before, some locomotive or car is always better than no locomotive or car. Save the Tycos. They're someone's dream awaiting.
One guy's junk is another guy's challenge. It's sometimes easier, too, to dare to do a thorough reworking of an old junker than it is to try and work up the guts to pull apart something more modern, gorgeous and recent. And expensive.
And like I've said before, some locomotive or car is always better than no locomotive or car.
Save the Tycos. They're someone's dream awaiting.
Like so many other modelers I fantasize about perfection in every respect, even perfect realism in dirt and grime. When I got my Masters in Historic Preservation I was one of apparently very few to specialize in historic technology. I'm philosophically, ethically and in lots of other ways committed to accuracy. The document called "The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation," a preservation sacred text, has been applied to my models as much as it has been to the 1:1 scale preservation projects I've worked on. That applies as much to my railroad as to anything else, although what I see in my head isn't always what I see on my layout. Or, not yet, anyway. If only my budget could keep pace.
I can see how others might relegte Tyco and other similar pieces to their swap, sell or junk pile.
Except that the car I already have is a lot cheaper than the one I've been drooling over at the hobby shop.
I must have at least two dozen - probably more - real pieces of junk in my collection, including a bunch of Tycos from my earliest days in the hobby. Every one of them has undergone some level of overhaul to improve various characteristics, be it running, appearance, fidelity to a prototype. I've been gathering my stuff for more than 30 years. By now some even have sentimental value, like the HO caboose I was given because I rescued it from a mountain of debris while overseeing the recovery of the Gold Coast Railroad Museum after Hurricane Andrew in '92-93. Shall we say it needs no further weathering.
I was also given a barely operable Tyco Pacific, somewhat crappily lettered for the B&M, which I also pried out of a collapsed building that once housed GCRM's HO model railroad. It has become the lead locomotive in my Great Lakes & Hudson's River RR transition era passenger fleet, along with five less than stellar Tyco Pacifics I've since gathered. All have been drastically cleaned up, re-liveried, upgraded with new motors and many details, as well as sound decoders. They're all numbered and named for various boats in the same or related classes as the boat I served aboard in the Navy: USS Nathanael Greene SSBN636 now has a counterpart in the Great Lakes & Hudson's River engine No. 636, the General Nathanael Greene. I can sit there for hours, just looking at them in my main roundhouse, because each one represents a lot of hours, a lot of imagination, a lot of homework and a perfect platform as much for my pickiness as my dreams.
here was also an article in RMC (or was it MR?) that bashed the Freight House onto the top of a Bachmann coaling tower (cut off the peak) to make a wooden coal mine "Frenda Mine." Actually, a second coaling tower was needed for the extra front slope area. And you can see the top of the Bachmann tower as part of the little supply house at the far end of the pic.
The kits make for a very nice older coal or silver mine.
I did not have the Bachmann Coaling Tower, but as a 15 year old I cut off the top of the popular TYCO AHM now Walthers Coaling Tower to make a smaller version of Frenda Mine. The TYCO tower is very close to the same width as the Freight House, so the bash is really easy. Cut off the tower at the heavy horizontal beam, and just plop on the freight house.
- Douglas
When I was a teenager back in the 60s, i would say my Tyco rolling stock performed the best of all the brands i had, mostly for the wrong reasons. First, i was an impatient teenager, and if trackwork looked good enough, it was. I've since learned that 95% of poor train performance is because of the track, and my old Tycos were more tolerant than the rest.
They were heavy, with solid metal frames and metal trucks.
They all had Talgo trucks. You couldn't back them up, but running in forward they hugged the track.
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a Tyco! The standard Tyco wheels were those pizza-cutter plastic wheels with oversized flanges. No, they didn't climb over the rails with all that weight.
Now, my track is all Code 83, and as bulletproof as I can make it. Replacing the old plastic wheels with metal ones resulted in no difference in reliability, because the track is the way it should be, and getting rid of the pizza-cutters made the cars run better on Code 83 because they didn't bump along the ties.
My old Tyco friends have the kind of home they deserve.
Before Kadee's patent expired in 1997, virtually all HO model railroad equipment came with horn-hook couplers. Walthers, MDC, Athearn, Stewart, etc.; cars and locomotives. Some continued doing so well into the 2000s.
kasskaboose Some threads ought to just die off. Why did anyone bother to respond or generate discussion. Never had Tyco but refuse to waste time/money on replacing horn-hook couplers, etc. IMHO, such cars are not RTR.
Some threads ought to just die off. Why did anyone bother to respond or generate discussion. Never had Tyco but refuse to waste time/money on replacing horn-hook couplers, etc. IMHO, such cars are not RTR.
So you also refused to waste time/money on Athearn, MDC... and, well, everybody that sold cars with horn-hook couplers?
I can see Tyco serving as a practice line for weathering and painting. I don't have any and won't but fine for others.
Tyco probably had its place. It seems thing happened in its history. Such is life.
Doughless SeeYou190 Little Timmy Walthers Trainline. This example is interesting, to me anyway... The classic Tyco version is wood with a wooden dock, but the Walthers Trainline version is brick with a concrete dock. Oher than the building material represented, the buildings look identical. -Kevin As others have mentioned, these kits were first introduced, I believe like so many kits that we know, by one of those European company's...Vollmer, Pola, etc. and imported to the USA via AHM, TYCO, etc. I think the actual first version of this kit was in brick, and the better known wood siding kit was a later copy. Speculation: somebody issued it with wood siding to avoid a copyright issue (or visa versa)?
SeeYou190 Little Timmy Walthers Trainline. This example is interesting, to me anyway... The classic Tyco version is wood with a wooden dock, but the Walthers Trainline version is brick with a concrete dock. Oher than the building material represented, the buildings look identical. -Kevin
Little Timmy Walthers Trainline.
This example is interesting, to me anyway...
The classic Tyco version is wood with a wooden dock, but the Walthers Trainline version is brick with a concrete dock.
Oher than the building material represented, the buildings look identical.
As others have mentioned, these kits were first introduced, I believe like so many kits that we know, by one of those European company's...Vollmer, Pola, etc. and imported to the USA via AHM, TYCO, etc.
I think the actual first version of this kit was in brick, and the better known wood siding kit was a later copy. Speculation: somebody issued it with wood siding to avoid a copyright issue (or visa versa)?
Didn't Art Curren do a kitbash using this kit, and when readers complained that the kits they subsequently purchased were brick instead of wood, whichever manufacturer/distributor it was at the time offered to replace the walls?
Edit: Yep, March 1985 issue of MR
Edit 2: There was a letter on page 17 of the June 1985 issue of MR where a reader wrote about the brick walls. Tyco responded that Pola was manufacturing the kits and switched the siding. Kit purchasers could exchange the kits, and Tyco promised the next run would have wood siding.
I think I may have commented in this thread before. Without checking, here's probably the same thing written again.
When I was a teenager from about 11 to 13, I first owned TYCO, AHM, and Life Like products. They were fine because that was all I knew. Then at about age 14 I discovered Athearn blue box kits, and their rolling quality and paint jobs were just so much better. I never bought another TYCO product again.
It was the trucks and couplers that made the big difference...detail not so much.
Funny, even as a teenager, once I find something better I quit playing with the old stuff. I'm 60 and I still do that.
riogrande5761 BEAUSABRE In my opinion, it's because some people need to feel superior to others. Totally forgetting two things 1) "Model Railroading Is Fun" In the 5th grade I bought a Tyco train set which came with a flashy red and silver Santa Fe F7. Imagine my disappointment when it wouldn't run. It went back for a refund. That wasn't much fun. My only other Tyco set was one that came with a little switcher as an engine that didn't run great. Well, that wasn't much fun either. That was my experience, but I'll make no judgement calls because heaven forbid someone accuse me of needing to feel superior. Cheers.
BEAUSABRE In my opinion, it's because some people need to feel superior to others. Totally forgetting two things 1) "Model Railroading Is Fun"
In the 5th grade I bought a Tyco train set which came with a flashy red and silver Santa Fe F7. Imagine my disappointment when it wouldn't run. It went back for a refund. That wasn't much fun. My only other Tyco set was one that came with a little switcher as an engine that didn't run great. Well, that wasn't much fun either. That was my experience, but I'll make no judgement calls because heaven forbid someone accuse me of needing to feel superior. Cheers.
I suspect you were in the era when Tyco quality was at its lowest. And yes, at that point it was pretty bad.
The problem I have with some of these manufacturer bashing or praising threads is that people tend to over simplify situations and histories that don't fit into a "sound bite".
And they judge the entire history of a company on one bad product they purchased.
Tyco is a company who's best efforts over their whole history were very good, for the part of the market they were meant for. And their worst efforts, while owned by a big conglomerate, were very poor.
Then the heirs of the original owners bought it back, and offered some nice items for a decade or so.
Now that tooling belongs to LIONEL, a company that has repeatedly failed in the HO market.
Sheldon
BEAUSABREIn my opinion, it's because some people need to feel superior to others. Totally forgetting two things 1) "Model Railroading Is Fun"
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
In my opinion, it's because some people need to feel superior to others. Totally forgetting two things 1) "Model Railroading Is Fun" - Al Kalmbach 1) "The are nine and sixty ways of contructing tribal lays - and every single one is right" - Rudyard Kipling. If it's not your way of doing things, so what? The point is for each of us to enjoy the hobby in his own way.
I never owned any Tyco equipment, but still own some 1960's vintage AHM cars that came with truck mounted X2f couplers and oversized flanges. I was a teenager, it's what I could afford. So I saved my money to buy replacement trucks and Kadees added weight to NMRA standards and some kind older members of the club I was a junior member of showed me how to turn down the flanges on my two locomotives (IHB 0-8-0 and B&O 2-10-2) and add front couplers so they met club standards. I've repowered them with can motors and added DCC since then, but they still are AHM equipment from the Sixties in terms of detail. And guess what? I still enjoy operating them and my freight cars.
The freight house was first issued as an Atlas product...It was made in Germany by Pola, who had a version under its label.
The Pola kits went under a number of importers....Atlas, Life Like, Tyco, AHM, and now Walthers!
My dad traded in his well worn, actually worn out, Lionel train set to Lewis K. English Sr. at English's Model RR Supply (now Bowser) in 1972 or 1973. He got me the Mantua Tyco Santa Fe freight set with the red and silver C430 (painted in the scheme of the actual U28CG units). The Lionel train set went into Mr. English's ultimately $1,000,000+ collection. That HO set got me hooked on HO trains. So far as Tyco dying--maybe the Power Torque crappy drives only lasted a year or two--but with proper maintenance, we got 10 to 15 really good years out of the Mantua Tyco locos made in Woodbury Heights, NJ (not to be confused with the Power Torque later Tyco crap from Hong Kong). In fact only one power truck ever actually died, after two or three replacement sets of brushes. All the other Mantua Tyco diesels and steam power were still operable when I was in my 20's (actually even after many years of storage, the surviving steamers were still operable recently). They all ran ok as long as they were run fairly often. They ran basically fine after nearly 30 years of storage at Dad's house.
I have so many good memories of playing with those trains with Dad and my sister.
Later on I moved into Athearn, then Atlas, Stewart, and Kato diesels. In my 20's I either gave away or threw away the Mantua Tyco diesels (I had done some not so good paint jobs into NYS&W yellow and black, and I didn't want to remember them that way). All the steam engines had been well played with; we got our money's worth out of all those trains.
The memories are better in my mind than the cosmetic condition of some of the steam engines after nearly 50 years, so I just retained the one trolley to remember my childhood trains.
To this day whenever I see Illinois Central Gulf orange and white diesels in photos or as models, it takes me right back to my childhood and specifically the time period from about Christmas, 1975, to 1983 or so when I was really into Illinois Central Gulf trains, before I got into more prototypical railroad modeling.
In hindsight I never should have gone the "more prototypical" route of this hobby, because I was absolutely the happiest with the ICG and Santa Fe trains of my youth, before I knew that Alcos didn't actually do so well for Class 1 railroads and before I tried to fit Alcos into rosters where they most certainly didn't fit in real life. Now I've gone back to Illinois Central but with the correct locos that they did have, including also the late black Deathstar diesel paint scheme.
The intervening years from 1983 or so to 2023 were quite a railroad journey, and I am thankful to the folks in Woodbury Heights, NJ, for the Mantua Tyco trains that started it all. I don't hate them; they served their time quite well. I just have some better IC/ICG stuff now such that I wouldn't buy Tyco off ebay.
I literally spent so much time with the train layout that Dad built with a little help from Susan and me that I have a complete photographic memory of it in my head that can be replayed whenever I wish to see it. Those were good years.
SeeYou190 kasskaboose Why did anyone bother to respond or generate discussion. Because the topic is still valid. Some people hate Tyco, and some people have fond memories. Some people want to recreate them, only in a better running version. Some people want to forget about them. I like my Tyco cars with Kadee trucks and couplers. -Photograph by Kevin Parson With just a bit of work, you can run a memory with reliability. -Photograph by Kevin Parson I like to have fun with my model trains, and sometimes it is fun to pretend to be a kid again. -Kevin
kasskaboose Why did anyone bother to respond or generate discussion.
Because the topic is still valid.
Some people hate Tyco, and some people have fond memories. Some people want to recreate them, only in a better running version. Some people want to forget about them.
I like my Tyco cars with Kadee trucks and couplers.
-Photograph by Kevin Parson
With just a bit of work, you can run a memory with reliability.
I like to have fun with my model trains, and sometimes it is fun to pretend to be a kid again.
I have 2 large cardboard boxes of old trains I am trying to work in, here or there....