BTW: A good number of the old Tyco, Bachmann, IHC, and Life Like strutures show up on ebay. Some of them are over priced, but in a number of auctions they go reasonably cheap. The stuctures I would especially look at are the ones where the owners say there are some scratches, light damage or mssing parts.........and the sellers start with really low bids.
As stated before, imho, any modeler with basic detailing and weathering talents can change these types of structures into realistic looking creations.
"I like my Pullman Standards & Budds in Stainless Steel flavors, thank you!"
jecorbett wrote:Tyco was entry level quality. It was OK for newbies who simply hadn't acquired an eye for better quality. That was certainly the case for me. I can't imagine why anyone would want to acquire old Tyco equipment for their layouts today but if you look on e-bay, you will find there are apparently some Tyco collectors. One man's trash...
I have a brother who in the 70's and 80's was in the medical supply business. There was a company, also named Tyco, that made small medical instruments for doctor's offices. Things like stethoscopes, thermometers, scales, and those gizmos the doctor uses to examine your ears and throat. I have been following some of the links in this thread back to the company history, and I wonder if the medical equipment company was in fact a branch of the same company as the model train company. About the only clue I can find is where it states that towards the end, the firm branched out into "other businesses".
One similarity, according to my brother, was that the medical supply company's products were junk as well...
I have figured out what is wrong with my brain! On the left side nothing works right, and on the right side there is nothing left!
stebbycentral wrote: I have a brother who in the 70's and 80's was in the medical supply business. There was a company, also named Tyco, that made small medical instruments for doctor's offices. Things like stethoscopes, thermometers, scales, and those gizmos the doctor uses to examine your ears and throat. I have been following some of the links in this thread back to the company history, and I wonder if the medical equipment company was in fact a branch of the same company as the model train company. About the only clue I can find is where it states that towards the end, the firm branched out into "other businesses".One similarity, according to my brother, was that the medical supply company's products were junk as well...
As Rosanna Rosannadanna would say; "Nevermind." I just answered my own question on Wikipedia, which says this about the subject:
"Tyco Toys is a division of the Mattel toy company. Not to be confused with Tyco International, with which Tyco Toys has never been affiliated."
Tyco International it appears was the parent company of the medical supply company Tyco Healthcare.
We now return you to our regular programming...
After spending a few years with a Marx Commodore Vanderbuilt train set, about 1954 I got myself down to an LHS with a small (I may have been 9 or 10)handfull of life savings and purchased:
1: Mantua streetcar kit
2:Mantua train set with 12 15" radius track sections, one 9" straight, one terminal section, a power supply that was about a 2 amp AUTOTRANSFORMER, Booster 0-4-0, flat, gondola, and bobber caboose. The rolling stock had the old Mantua loop and hook couplers. Oh yah, the set also had a roll-on rerailer and a little spring uncoupler ramp. I think I still have the motor, drivers, main rods, cylinders, and crossheads from that loco.
3: Mantua kit for a B&O twin bay hopper. To be assembled by RIVETING the components together.
4: Mantua kit for a tank car, also riveted together, and both being beyond the skills I had at that age.
I still have a large number of Mantua and Tyco steam and rtr locos, but nothing in their diesels, and only a couple of the cars. Even found an NIB Mantua Shifter kit recently in an antique salvage store. Blue box bottom with a basket weave pattern on the hinged top. The small parts bag even has a pair of the old hook and loop couplers. The die cast Zamac arch bar truck frames have disintegrated though.
Once laid out a string of flex track on the basement floor, and stung out all 68 freight and MOW cars I had at the time behing one of the kit built 2-8-2s. It pulled the whole string. And that was before Delring RP-25 trucks and wheel sets.
I also in the last couple years bought both the new Mantua 2-6-6-2s, and the 0-6-0 Camelback. Decent looking and so far, running. I still have a project to use some of their 53" drivers on a milled frame combined with an old AHM 0-8-0 boiler to make a nice heavy duty 0-10-0.
All the steam locos I got from the company(s) seem to run just fine, and the 4-6-2 is supposed to be a decent reproduction of the B&O P-7. Never was impressd by the diesels I've seen, and I used to want the Mantua Talgo Train, till about 8 years ago I found one in a Knic-Knack shop up in Houghton-Hancock. Didn't buy it. I am not too interested in tinplate.
The Tyco I am most familiar with nowadays is a large multi-national corporation that seems to be engaged in purchasing companies that make electronic connectors and relays.
My dad got a Mantua brass 0-4-0 camelback swicther in 1947, it ran better than his Varney locomotives. In the late 50's I did research on USRA locomotives. I found that Mantua's model of the B&O 4-6-2 was based on the USRA Pacific. I also found that the frame and running gear of Mantua's 2-8-2 kit, which I had measured were the same as the USRA Makado. I ordered a 4-6-2 boiler from Mantua and found it screwed together with the Makado frame and it ran great. I wrote a letter to Mantua asking for two kits consiting of the 2-8-2 frame and running gear and 4-6-2 boiler and details. Mantua sent the two kits, to my knowleadge the only like kits they made.
Have fun, Rob
Tyco was a money pit draining funds from very good Athearn Blue Box engines at the time. That is one item that should never have gotten into the family. But hey, what did we know?
They were good for destruction for it's own sake. Now that Tyco has been dead these few decades never again will junkers run on my layout. It will run well or get sold. LOL.
Unquote
Until being purchased by Mattel Tyco Toys was indeed part of the Mantua company.If memory serves me correctly Mantua was origonally a division of the The Tyler (Tyco) company.
FYI- the two Tyco covered hoppers both used Athearn shells,Thevreason I know this is because I installed the Athearn floors in all 20 of my Tyco hoppers.(paid a buck a piece for them when K-Mart quit selling trains at christmas)
I still have my Tyco Baldwin RF16s packed away somewhere. They ran fine at first, but after a few years (I only had the trains up at Christmas) they started running poorly. By the mid-1980s, the drives were shot, and I'd retire them. A shame, since nobody had an RF16 then. Before long, I'd found that a Bachmann train-set F9 drive would slip into the Baldwin shell quite easily...after I'd trimmed the drive's mounting tabs. Still haven't fitted Kadees to the pair, mainly because I don't want to screw up the Johnson Wax paint job. I know, the Bachmann drive isn't much better...but it's reliable, and parts are easier to come by. In fact, both of the F9s were about five bucks apiece!
Oh, and as to the freight cars...once you've replaced the wheelsets with metal ones, body-mounted the couplers, and added additional weight, they're fine. As much as I like free-standing grab irons, I find them prone to bending or breakage. That's why the majority of my rolling stock doesn't have them.
_________________________________________________________________
TYCO.
A name to remember to forget. Sound like a song.
Darth Santa Fe wrote:I just picked up one of the famous Tyco Chattanooga Choo-Choos at the Decatur train show yesterday. It's not in great condition, so I thought I'd see what I could do with it. Who knows!? Maybe it'll turn into a nice engine!
I have one that I built up from junk parts myself. I've been telling myself I'll put a motor in the boiler one of these days, but I've been off on other tangents. They were good looking Consolidations for their time, but why they had to put that Powerpork truck in the tender is beyond me. Consolidated Foods = EVIL.
IHC/Mehano now uses the boiler tooling for their 0-8-0 and 2-8-0.
The steamers were great basic engines that could be detailed out the wazoo, as Wayne and Peter have shown. Consolidated Foods once again ruined something good by eliminating their brass axle bearings during the brown box era, so they would waddle like ducks.
BTW, Wayne and Peter:
Catt wrote:FYI- the two Tyco covered hoppers both used Athearn shells,The reason I know this is because I installed the Athearn floors in all 20 of my Tyco hoppers.(paid a buck a piece for them when K-Mart quit selling trains at christmas)
Funny you should mention it. Someone just posted a comparison over on the Tyco forum.
Nelson
Ex-Southern 385 Being Hoisted
SteamFreak wrote: Darth Santa Fe wrote:I just picked up one of the famous Tyco Chattanooga Choo-Choos at the Decatur train show yesterday. It's not in great condition, so I thought I'd see what I could do with it. Who knows!? Maybe it'll turn into a nice engine!I have one that I built up from junk parts myself. I've been telling myself I'll put a motor in the boiler one of these days, but I've been off on other tangents. They were good looking Consolidations for their time, but why they had to put that Powerpork truck in the tender is beyond me. Consolidated Foods = EVIL. IHC/Mehano now uses the boiler tooling for their 0-8-0 and 2-8-0.The steamers were great basic engines that could be detailed out the wazoo, as Wayne and Peter have shown. Consolidated Foods once again ruined something good by eliminating their brass axle bearings during the brown box era, so they would waddle like ducks.BTW, Wayne and Peter: Catt wrote:FYI- the two Tyco covered hoppers both used Athearn shells,The reason I know this is because I installed the Athearn floors in all 20 of my Tyco hoppers.(paid a buck a piece for them when K-Mart quit selling trains at christmas) Funny you should mention it. Someone just posted a comparison over on the Tyco forum.Bittersweet Behemoths: #358- CenterFlow Hoppers
My Chattanooga Choo Choo uses a Bachmann 44 tonner mechanism under a Roundhouse Oil tender for power.It runs great and there is plenty of room to add weight to both tender and loco.
IHC is now using the old Tyco cars with decent paint jobs and they still look decent to me.The don't need anymore upgrading than you would apply to an Athearn blue box.The trucks on these and the old LifeLike cars can be made to roll smoother than a KaDee if you use the the Reboxx or Micro Mark truck reamer.
TA462 wrote:Tyco should have just stuck to slot cars.
Good point (i wish somebody would bring back their US-1 Trucking slot car system ). But nontheless Tyco got me started in model railroading also. My first train set was the Rock Island express one with a Sharknose and 3 cars, which i got for my 3rd birthday (still have the engine shell and power pack, 27 years later, and i found the same complete train set on Ebay last year). I've had (and still have) other Tyco items since them. And the engines have always been low (actually the bottom) on the good runners list for me. The ones i have now seem to have pick up problems i can't solve, otherwise they'd run. The only one i had which ran good was a C-430 that came with a train set i got in 1990, and only because it was the Model Power one instead of Tyco's.
The freight cars were decent, though some were clunky (is the're a prototype for their caboose?). And it carried over into IHC. I have 3 of the PS-3 covered hoppers whose bays sit too high up and have flat ribs, and imagine my suprise when the center flow i got had both round and trough hatches! . Luckily i had some spare Athearn trough ones so i shaved off the round ones and glued them on.
Guess it's about time to pull out the US-1 stuff i got off Ebay earlier this year and my Tyco trains and set up a combined layout on the floor
You probably will have to put some work into older, less expensive models, but if you're willing to do that, you might enjoy the result. Unless you're RTR only, you might even find some fun in it.
Tyco water tower:
Tyco GP-20:
Mantua Pacific:
Here's a photo of a Tyco US-1 trucking auto loader i modified to load a Life Like auto carrier. You back the car in and as it slides back the cars are loaded.
trainfan1221 wrote:What amused me about later Tyco stuff was the complete lack of handrails, earlier models appeared to have them and apparently when they went more toy like I guess they decided not to bother with them. Also, the Century 425 or 420 or whatever they said it was had huge "Plates" on either side of the fuel tank, visible in MOPAC's picture, that served no purpose except apparently centering the fuel tank.
The earlier ones did. I have a Rocky Mountain Line SD-24 which has plastic handrails, and a Spirit of 76' C-430 which i got new (from a train show), and came with a metal handrail set that assembled like Athearns.
I think the plates on both sides of the tank were just to cover the repulsive gaps between the trucks and tank. What the heck did they do wrong? Is the body too long or the tank too short?
Here's my 3 (poor) runners:
yeah me too I do the same & there is a website dedicated to Tyco as well
Plus my only complaint against Tyco was the crummy motors that Tyco used Otherwise its a nice train to start out with
Do not throw away DC trains! EVER!!!
I always had a soft spot for Mantua loco kits.
As said, the cars are fine, just do whats been recommended (couplers), if you get some real ugly dogs at a swap meet always remember you can alway just weather them or graffiti them to cover all the age related blemishes that come with being old as dirt.
I had a Tyco Burlington GP20 set as a kid, was my first HO train, ran OK (either stop or 70mph IIRC) then ceased to work when lint from the carpet the track was laid on got into the engine works. I remember it had one motorized truck, only had brass pick up wheels on ONE side of either truck and those lousy NMRA hook couplers.
Personally I would collect maybe the kits as they were cool, and a few of the passenger cars, but if I was to geek out over my favorite childhood toys I'd rather collect the old Hot Wheels Hotline trains, those were awesome looking.
Have fun with your trains
OK, that's it. I am going to find a thread from 1999 and reply to it.
Rich
Alton Junction