Terrible Model Railroading fads/ideas/products that died off?

[riogrande5761]

maxman

 

 

riogrande5761

coffee clutch

 

 

not to shift gears, but it is coffee klatch 

Thats a new one on me, maybe it depends on what part of the country you live in?  For me it's northern California, Texas, Indiana, New York and Virginia.  I've always heard "Clutch".  You know the old saying, YMMV.  

[maxman]

riogrande5761

coffee clutch

not to shift gears, but it is coffee klatch

[riogrande5761]

Dave, you don't enjoy ramming your Athearn Genesis engines with slot cars?

Jim

You've got more money than me if you can afford to buy detailed exensive models just to ram them with slot cars.  I mean, who wouldn't want to do that?

 

jmbjmb

After reading this, I'd say about 90% of the "terrible" items listed were actually best available technology for the time and without them we might not have any model railroading hobby.  jim 

I'm going to have to agree with this one.  But as is the MO for this forum, people to turn topics into what suites them, not what the topic is supposed to be about.  Sort of a coffee clutch for remembering the olden days for train guys.

[eaglescout]

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACY

I don't think anybody has mentioned brass track

 

 

Brass track carried the HO element of the hobby for about 50 years. Nickel silver track came out in the early 1960s and almost everyone ignored it until the 1980s when suddenly everyone who had been ignoring it all those years suddenly started yelling brass was bad. ??? Never understood that lack of awareness.

 

 

[/quote]

I don't think brass rail was a fad or a bad idea as many of us still utilize it today.  It never warranted as bad a rap as it still gets from many out there.  It may not work as well for DCC but works fine for DC users.

[BRAKIE]

BroadwayPhil

For details on the "coupler wars", get an All-Access Pass and read about the subject in the back issues from the 1950s. If Kadee couplers had turned up just a couple of years sooner it might have been moot. Linn Westcott was very picky about horn-hooks; he refused to call them X2F couplers because the actual products had an integral spring instead of the separate springs of the design, or NMRA couplers because although the committee that created them (headed by famous model railroader Paul Mallery) operated under NMRA auspices, they were never endorsed by the NMRA. Oddly enough, even the NMRA website sometimes calls them "NMRA" couplers!

Actually my Dad was a modeler and I have first hand knowledge on how most of the couplers worked and the best of the lot was Bakers but,X2F took hold and flourished.

Lynn pushed the idea of a standard coupler instead of the hodge podge collection of couplers we had.

[forester6291]

Atlas had brass rail too in N.

[davidmurray]

Javelina

a town in the U.S. named Glen Campbell.

The Scottish naming tradition used "Glen" to mean valley.  So Glen Campbell would be first settled by a Campbell.

Dave

[Southgate]

There was a small restaurant in Reedsport, Oregon called

Half Fast Cafe.   I shoulda took a picture.

[Javelina]

andrechapelon

Here's a few place names: http://mentalfloss.com/article/27987/15-places-strange-names-and-how-they-got-them Think of it this way. You could always live in Dull, Scotland or Boring, Oregon. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-28691197 Andre

Interestingly, the second of your links I quoted (regarding Dull, Scotland) is authored by one "Glenn Campbell" and the prior link mentions a town in the U.S. named Glen Campbell. The same name, sans one "n". Coincidence?

I think not.

 

[DAVID FORTNEY]

The X2F sure has had a history of both good and bad. All my freight cars have kadee but some older IHC, AHM, Rivorossi passenger cars I keep the X2F's but only having a transition car in front with a knuckle coupler. nobody can notice the X2F's when running or sitting on a siding. I don't back them up or make up a passenger train in a yard so for now the X2F's work just fine. 

[andrechapelon]

I don't think that's so ridiculous.  Not that long ago I saw a feature on the Wazzup Dock Railroad.  And I'm still seeing punny names for industries on published track plans.

As for me, my model railroad will have Princess Dairies, North American Veeblefetzer (from Mad magazine, and I'm hoping to display Arthur the potted plant in a window), a Shotz brewery (from Laverne & Shirley) and Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt (Roman Catholic, of course, like me).  One town is called Clarksville (as in "last train to...").  The herald for my Omaha Southern Railroad will be based on the chakram (a circular weapon) from the later seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess.

 

I don't either. My wife gets her hair done at a place called Curl Up And Dye. There are lots of funny business names in the world as well as funny place names (off the top of my head, I can think of 3 actual place names that would get me permanently banned if I posted them).

Some funny business names that actually exist. http://www.pleated-jeans.com/2013/10/07/20-of-the-funniest-business-names-of-all-time/

Here's a few place names: http://mentalfloss.com/article/27987/15-places-strange-names-and-how-they-got-them

Think of it this way. You could always live in Dull, Scotland or Boring, Oregon. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-28691197

Andre

 

[Southgate]

I remember an article in MR, about the early history of electric trains. One set had the rails powered...straight to the electrical outlet!

Hmmm. That would keep the cats off the layout, huh?

I think I still have that mag and article. Anyone else remember it?

[BroadwayPhil]

BRAKIE

One thing I think is worth mentioning as a very bad modeling idea but,was still popular during the 50s...

How many can recall making lead figures in wooden molds? The lead could be bought in square strips at hardware stores or removed from old car batteries then melted and poured into a figure mold.

A lot of those figures you see in photos of the G&D and other layouts of that time was made that way and IIRC there was articles in MR on making these lead figures.

There was no safety involved in making these figures.

This used to be fairly common for military modelers, especially those who wargame with miniature figures.  Commercial kits were available as late as the 1980s, using rubber molds secured with wood strips (because of the heat) and thick rubber bands.  Prince August was one manufacturer; they also sold lead and other appropriate accessories.  They did caution about vapor from the melted lead as well as the heat.  I still have several molds, accessories and lead bars.

Similar warnings came with products like Cerro Bend and Cerro Safe, which model railroaders used.  I haven't seen the articles in question, but I'm sure the authors warned about hot metal.  Similarly, lead has been used to give locomotives extra weight for traction.  Lead is not a metal to be regarded lightly, but even without protective gear it can be handled safely when cold - just wash your hands, carefully clean up any filings, and you shouldn't have food or drinks around a modeling project anyway.

Back when there was a controversy over lead and it was abolished for wargaming and fantasy miniature figures, an exemption was granted for model railroaders precisely because of the uses we made of lead and the attention to safety.  I remember this because I worked for a wargaming wholesaler/mail order store and manufacturers were scrambling to change over to pewter.  (And it gave Games Workshop an opportunity to raise prices again!)

Model railroaders continue to use dangerous chemicals, with appropriate warnings.  Photoetching involves acid, for instance.  At one time carbon tetrachloride was used to clean track (and available over-the-counter as a spot remover for clothing).  And once upon a time, when battery power was the norm (not all homes were wired for electricity), there was more than one case of model railroaders being electrocuted by their homemade power supplies.  This sort of thing is why MR has a stock warning about 110V connections in wiring diagrams.

On the subject of brass track, it was popular because it looked like real rail (except the shiny surface where the wheels ran), but fell out of popularity because it had to be cleaned much more frequently.  This was due to oxidation, which made the sides of the rails look even better; but the oxidized layer was non-conductive.  Nickel silver was already commonly available in the 1960s, and N scale used it exclusively, as far as I can remember.

[BroadwayPhil]

Milepost 266.2

 

chutton01

Of course, in today's modeling marketplace, no serious manufacturer would ever consider producing freight cars in fantasy corporate liveries...

 

 

 

 

 

Those are very Lionel-ish, but hardly as bad as tootsie roll tank cars and Chef Boyardee four bay open hoppers.

How about those collectible beer cars (reefers with assorted craft brewery liveries)?  Anyway, the prototype does enough of that, from the NS heritage fleet to the blue "Take an Alberta Break" and green "Saskatchewan!" covered hoppers.  Or Guilford renaming itself the Pan American Railroad and using the old airline logo as its herald.  As even freight lines are not as ubiquitous as they once were, the idea of rolling billboards has faded away, though we still see some colorful company-owned cars, mainly from chemical companies.

[BroadwayPhil]

BRAKIE

 

CSX_road_slug

For "just plain bad" I nominate: Horn-hook (X2F) couplers!

 

 

 

 

 

Ken,Those X2F couplers was needed in their day and when properly body mounted they worked quite well.

You see back then we had couplers,couplers every where that wouldn't  mate with other brands and most worked quite poorly.

The X2F was a good idea at the time but,the X2F turned bad when companies like Tyco,Mantua,Life Like and other like manufacturers cheapen them and placed them on the trucks instead of the body.

We have crappy couplers on the market that's worst then the X2F.

 

For details on the "coupler wars", get an All-Access Pass and read about the subject in the back issues from the 1950s.  If Kadee couplers had turned up just a couple of years sooner it might have been moot.  Linn Westcott was very picky about horn-hooks; he refused to call them X2F couplers because the actual products had an integral spring instead of the separate springs of the design, or NMRA couplers because although the committee that created them (headed by famous model railroader Paul Mallery) operated under NMRA auspices, they were never endorsed by the NMRA.  Oddly enough, even the NMRA website sometimes calls them "NMRA" couplers!

The idea was to produce something that worked and was simple to manufacture, and the X2F met those requirements. But truck mountings on the sharp curves of most model railroads of the 1960s compromised its efficiency, as with the bulky Rapido couplers of N scale later.  (This too was a compromise, adopted by European manufacturers and already in place when N scale came to the U.S. 50 years ago.  Lone Star's models were actually 1:152 and called OOO "gauge", later regauged to N but not re-scaled.)

The trend today is for broader curves on all but the smallest of layouts, and knuckle couplers as pioneered by Kadee in the smaller scales.  (Lionel, of course, had truck-mounted knuckle couplers since the late 1930s, and American Flyer used them in S scale from around 1947).  But the humble X2F served its purpose in providing inexpensive train sets and equipment for beginning modelers.

[BroadwayPhil]

riogrande5761

 

cold steal

d.c.c.

 

 

Having a laugh aren't you.  How do you figure DCC fits the "terrible/hilarious/just plain bad ideas" when it has been gaining steam for well over 20 years now and most loco's are either DCC ready or have DCC installed.  Uh huh, thought so.  Enjoy yourself.

I'm with you on that, though I don't use DCC myself.  On that subject, not a bad idea but one that came too early was Astrac, by General Electric.  This was the first ancestor of DCC, and thoroughly tested by Linn Westcott, who gave it a thumbs-up.  The problems were several: there were only five channels, and Channel 3 was not available as a stand-alone; it was bulky for HO, as components were not solid-state (and computer chips were not even a gleam in anyone's eye in 1963), though part of the casing could be pared away; a receiver was set to a single fixed channel, so two locomotives set to the same channel would either have to be doubleheaded or not used at the same time.  As a throttle it was great, however.  GE soon withdrew support for the product and Astrac was already history before 1970.

[BroadwayPhil]

I don't think that's so ridiculous.  Not that long ago I saw a feature on the Wazzup Dock Railroad.  And I'm still seeing punny names for industries on published track plans.

As for me, my model railroad will have Princess Dairies, North American Veeblefetzer (from Mad magazine, and I'm hoping to display Arthur the potted plant in a window), a Shotz brewery (from Laverne & Shirley) and Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt (Roman Catholic, of course, like me).  One town is called Clarksville (as in "last train to...").  The herald for my Omaha Southern Railroad will be based on the chakram (a circular weapon) from the later seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess.

John Armstrong kept this sort of thing up throughout his life.  Even manufacturers still get into the act.  I saw a commercial model of a used-car lot, and the phone number was BR-549, a reference to a continuing sketch on "Hee Haw".  And there are plenty of real-life names that are deliberately or accidentally funny: Diehl Ford (pronounced "deal") in Bellingham, Washington; the Rust Tractor Company in Albuquerque.  Both are family names.  And then there was (also in Albuquerque) A Real Muffler Shop, so named to get it placed first in the phone book, which concluded its ads with: "...because we're not a pretend muffler shop, we're A Real Muffler Shop!"

It's a matter of personal preference.  Not all of us want to be prototype-specific!

[jmbjmb]

After reading this, I'd say about 90% of the "terrible" items listed were actually best available technology for the time and without them we might not have any model railroading hobby.  If model railroading is still around in 50 years there will be someone doing a thread like this saying model building was such a bad idea since they will have holographic layouts.

 

jim

[Darth Santa Fe]

How about this fad?

CLEANING TRACK WITH STEEL WOOL! Enough people did this in the 40's and 50's that Lindsay put screens on their motors to keep bits of steel from getting sucked in and shorting out the motors. I've seen old mechanisms at train shows that were absolutely clogged with the stuff. Good thing we have plenty of alternatives now!

[Uncle_Bob]

I just remembered another: used coffee grounds as scenery material.  If you like bugs (and who doesn't?), this was the technique for you!

[Uncle_Bob]

The Ferro Kid

 

 

rrinker

 Any Stooges fan worth their salt will have the law offices of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe.

 Across town they have a competitor, with the first Howe's brother as a partner: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman & Howe. As a Yes fan AND a Stooges fan I had to do it.

                --Randy

 

 

 

 

 

Another great 3-Stooges law firm was "Cess Poole & Drayne" from a 1947 short.

 

 

Not to mention, the Susquehanna Hat Co from Abbot & Costello.  I bought a box truck decorated for that company for my layout.

Side dump gons marketed as "log cars" back in the '70s.  Mine was forever dumping over in the middle of curves, sending the plastic logs onto another track or onto the floor.  Say hello to a static display!

Also, using a soldering iron to distress freight cars.  While not a product per se, it was a technique that introduced a teenaged me to the wonders of burns from soldering irons and toxic petrochemical fumes if I got too close to the car side and melted the plastic.  

[BRAKIE]

One thing I think is worth mentioning as a very bad modeling idea but,was still popular during the 50s...

How many can recall making lead figures in wooden molds? The lead could be bought in square strips at hardware stores or removed from old car batteries then melted and poured into a figure mold.

A lot of those figures you see in photos of the G&D and other layouts of that time was made that way and IIRC there was articles in MR on making these lead figures.

There was no safety involved in making these figures.

[chutton01]

Geared Steam

BRAKIE

chutton01

and hey it's not contest quality anyway...

But,it looks great! I likes

 I agree with Larry, it looks great.

Thanks guys, one day I'll put some more effort into it - but really, I can't image culverts being shipped (even back in the 1940s) without a lot of wood blocking, which Tyco kind of tries to duplicate, but really can't without defeating the operation of the unloader (which was cool, if a bit slow).
What it does prove is that many Tyco freight cars, with new trucks and couplers, some details (NO filled in stirrup steps - what was Consolidate Foods thinking), and maybe a new paint job, can be made to look good. Many cars, not all.


Final thing I want to add to this thread of silly/bad ideas - cartoonishly drawn shop interiors for certain building kits (notably I'm thinking Heljan here). OK, maybe we can give Plasticville a pass here as they more geared toward the train set crowd, but more advanced building models? Even as a pre-teen I thought it looked ridiculous (those buildings are long gone). They couldn't spring for photographs or better artwork - was 3 color printing beyond their technology level? (OTOH, those poorly drawn cartoon window signs is how I first heard of Cinzano, which I didn't really know what it was in those pre-internet days...)

And for all my praise toward Tyco, the passenger car window silhouettes gets a major FAIL.  Even clear windows and an empty interior would have been less noticible.

[Geared Steam]

BRAKIE

 

 

chutton01

and hey it's not contest quality anyway...

 

 

But,it looks great! I likes.

 

I agree with Larry, it looks great.

I also had the 0-4-0 with slope back tender, that got lost over the years. I still have the white Dairyman Milk Car and the red SF caboosearound here somewhere. 

[BRAKIE]

chutton01

and hey it's not contest quality anyway...

But,it looks great! I likes.

[chutton01]

Geared Steam

LOL, I had the same conundrum, it didn't make sense but yet........it was fun at 7 years old (and I still have it sitting on a shelf, right beside the Tyco Freight unloading depot.   

 Can you imagine pushing concrete pipes down a ramp? Maybe they should have called it "The Gravel House"

Of course, you would also need this! 

Ah, a fellow aficinado of the glorious Tyco way.
I might just know a thing or two about that Tyco Freight Unloading Depot...

This AFAIK is the oldest freight car I own, from my first layout in 1976/77. Motive power was a PRR Tyco 0-4-0 Shifter & Tender, and I'm pretty sure I also had a Blue B&M offset open hopper as that was required by law then (that, or the famed "Hooker" chemical tank car - just the thing to get preteen boys smirking). I think my parents brought the unloader at the same time as the train set, it did work (and the little tractor's blade often did catch on the flatcar as in the video), but my unloader must have been old stock, as it didn't have the painted shrubs and weeds around the concrete base like the Tripod page images shows.

OK, yes, I did upgrade the flat car around the turn of the century as a nod to it's importance in my history; new KD body mounted couplers, new trucks attached by screws to the body, and a new brake wheel & staff (from some other car). Airbrushed the pipes Floquil concrete, and one day I'll add the remaining chains so that 3 chains criss-cross each pipe - I ran out back then, and hey it's not contest quality anyway...

 

[Geared Steam]

chutton01

*Including the Lifelike Logging Mill which my parent got me as a kid...and while I liked to play with it, it made absolutely no sense - you loaded the logs in the high bin, the logs rolled onto the log car, you shunt the log car around then back to the same spot, and then dump the logs into the (painted) pond... whatever, it was fun at the time).

  

LOL, I had the same conundrum, it didn't make sense but yet........it was fun at 7 years old (and I still have it sitting on a shelf, right beside the Tyco Freight unloading depot.   

 Can you imagine pushing concrete pipes down a ramp? Maybe they should have called it "The Gravel House"

https://youtu.be/hxyw1WZGP58

Of course, you would also need this! 

 

[tomikawaTT]

Just a brief flash in the pan - COLD STEAM (dry ice) locomotives.  I understand that in operation the stack would ice up like a mint julep glass.

I disagree about a number of the products others have called bad ideas.  Many of them were state of the (not very advanced) art when made by people working out of garages, basements and spare bedrooms.  Advances in technology always leave earlier products lying in the dust.  (1980-ish mobile phone about the size and weight of a brick...)  That doesn't mean that the products were bad THEN, although they appear ludicrous NOW.

About the time the 'sorta like an X2F' coupler made HO toy train sets practical, Japanese RTR manufacturers standardized on a close approximation of the Baker coupler.  I have a small pile of them, removed from freight cars now equipped with Kadees.

I also have one of those much-maligned Mantua Loggers (which actually hauled Gilsonite, not logs.)  The chassis of another is under TTT F101, which looks rather more JNR than Uintah (superstructure inspired by the E10 class 2-10-4T.)

Use of toxic and hazardous materials by model railroaders was much more common before the CPSC and that California sticker made people conscious of the dangers.  There was a nice article (forget which mag) about weathering model timber with dye - aniline dye, toxic as **!!  It was not alone.

When the Talgo truck-mounted couplers appeared they were actually praised by the model press, as a way to get cars around tight radii...

And now a counter-question.  What's (supposed to be) wrong with plastic wheels?

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[hardcoalcase]

"Biffy" (outhouse) modeling contests sponsored by the NMRA and perhaps others.  

Thank goodness we've outgrown the bathroom humor!

Jim

[steemtrayn]

Howard Zane

 

 

chutton01

Would the "Olfactory Airs" layout scents from Mikros around the mid/late '80s be in the running for either silliest and/or lamest?

I guess it was the peak of the Scratch & Sniff era after all...

I liked Olifactory Airs. It added another dimension to the hobby which is now limited to 5..........relief (which is 3 dimensions), sound, and movement. Only when I suggested to Micros to do an outhouse smell, they thought I was nuts.

HZ

 

 

 

 

You'd be nuts to pay for it when you could make it yourself.