Since most of my layout visitors are NOT into trains, I find that putting funny business names on my buildings is a way I can trick these people into being more interested. Once they discover one funny name, they start looking at more and more structures to see what they can find. Before long, they are praising the layout rather than sticking to the "grown man playing with trains" attitude they originally brought with them.
Hornblower
"The car with the propeller on end. MR had ads for it. Could it have been AHM?
Bernd"
Rail Zeppelin - The prototype
http://www.alspcs.com/rail_zeppelin_03.jpg
The Turbo Express (ad link posted by dknelson) was a toy to take advantage of the slot car craze. More accurate models have been made by others such as Marklin and even Lionel.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Off themed train sets, like NASCAR..........as bad as pink train sets
Steamers without tender pickup.
Sawdust and RIT used for ground over, but then again, that was all we had.
Atlas under track mounted switch machines, good luck with those!
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
As a young modeler I remember reading the construction articles by E. L. Moore in RMC and some in M-R, and he always had a tongue-in-cheek approach to naming his structure projects. He was a prolific builder and author and many of his structures were used to pattern structures that we still use today.
I guess, golly gee whiz, it was a "clever" aspect of the hobby that has not stood the test of time.
Regards, Ed
azrail Yet those "lump tunnels" got Life-Like into the ice chest business (now called Lifoam)
Yet those "lump tunnels" got Life-Like into the ice chest business (now called Lifoam)
Being a life long Marylander who has been in this hobby for 45 years, and who has been in the old Life Like factory, I will tell you that you have it backwards.
Coolers came first - styrofoam tunnels were something they could sell in the winter and make with the same machinery.
Life Foam is still today the largest maufacturer of styrofoam products in the world.
From the tunnels they got into other model train scenery items - grass mats, "grass", "dirt", ballast, trees, etc. Their factory was in a part of Baltimore full of wood working industries - sawdust for "grass" and grass mats was readily available - CHEAP.
Then later they bought most of the Varney assets and became one of the first China produced brands - later they hired a young local modeler who had worked in a local train store - who helped them develop the Proto line........
All that from a styrofoam cooler turned upside down with a couple of tunnel portals cut in the ends and some green paint........
Sheldon
As one who enjoys rebuilding, painting and redecaling Athearn BBS and old Tyco cars I pick up at the swap meets I attend, I must say that Tyco cars can often be reworked to a higher level (see my recent Soo Line caboose in the photo gallery ).
More to the point: many fads were purposefully marketed as toys, nothing more, perhaps much less. Those pink Lionel engines failed to entice very many girls into the model railroading hobby; "cute" names for model railroads may more accurately reflect a hint of dis- ease with being a railroad aficianado, or desire to present ones hobby as actually being held at arms length when shown to others, perhaps to mitigate criticism that you "play with trains" as a mature adult. Who really knows? Fads are momentary, serve a limited purpose either commercially or socially, but one hopes that the pleasure of model railroading will endure!
Cedarwoodron
Ah yes the Atlas propeller driven "whatever it was" known as the Turbo Express.
http://www.hoseeker.net/AthearnBrochuresAds/TURBORACERFLYER.jpg
I would nominate the combined trainset/slot car sets that pretty much advertised the idea of "Hey kids! Try to beat the train to the crossing."
I read somewhere, by the way, that essentially none of the "horn hook" couplers used in train sets and sold to the public actually followed the NMRA coupler committee X2F design exactly. For one I believe that the actual X2F had a square surface below the hook that enabled trains to run in reverse. Or at least that was the hope. How and why they came up with a design that had no similarity to a prototype coupler I do not know, but it might be that they were trying to avoid even looking like the then pre-magnetic Kadee.
When a modeler was not busy slathering on the asbestos cement onto his mountains and hills, he was cleaning his wheels with carbon tetrachloride. And using raw mercury in small drilled holes to make the turntable indexing work (I no longer recall the whys behind the mercury but it was a real idea).
Dave Nelson
riogrande5761 wjstix A bad idea from the very early days was giving your railroad a silly name. Thankfully that died out in the '40's - maybe the last well known 'silly' model railroad name was John Allen's "gory and defeated" G&D Line. Now now, You're treading holy MR ground there with John Allen. He is worshipped, er, well respected by many. He did seem to be quite artistic from everything I've seen but to me it was in a Disney Land sort of way. Now there have been some realistic artists since then such as Mike Danneman etc. well I'm biased. He did a wonderful rendering of the D&RGW and scenery. I have to add that Rob Spangler has done some wonderful photo-realistic backdrops and scenery too in this day and age.
wjstix A bad idea from the very early days was giving your railroad a silly name. Thankfully that died out in the '40's - maybe the last well known 'silly' model railroad name was John Allen's "gory and defeated" G&D Line.
A bad idea from the very early days was giving your railroad a silly name. Thankfully that died out in the '40's - maybe the last well known 'silly' model railroad name was John Allen's "gory and defeated" G&D Line.
Now now, You're treading holy MR ground there with John Allen. He is worshipped, er, well respected by many. He did seem to be quite artistic from everything I've seen but to me it was in a Disney Land sort of way. Now there have been some realistic artists since then such as Mike Danneman etc. well I'm biased. He did a wonderful rendering of the D&RGW and scenery. I have to add that Rob Spangler has done some wonderful photo-realistic backdrops and scenery too in this day and age.
John himself came to regret the name in his later years, especially as he became more and more interested in serious operations. So silly names, and including the G&D in that, is definitely fair game, since the builder himself felt the same way.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The car with the propeller on end. MR had ads for it. Could it have been AHM?
Bernd
New York, Vermont & Northern Rwy. - Route of the Black Diamonds
protolancer(at)kingstonemodelworks(dot)com
Love those Tyco brand name cars, nicely painted and as a buyer for a grocery chain ( since retired ) I dealt with all of the companies listed. I may have to look some of them up next time I'm at a train show.
IMHO any track/roadbed system that has propriatory fastners. Makes it difficult to interface with other manufacturers. Good for first company, bad for hobby.
Dave
The Yard Dog track cleaning thing it had a round cotton roll in front to clean the rails not enought weight to clean.
Russell
I had both the vertical launch missile, complete with a gantry tower that pulled back and a crane to lower the missile on to its launch pad, and the flatcar mounted "tactical" missile that I could shoot across my layout and hit .... the exploding box car!
Far from being bad ideas, though, these were good toys that added play value to my Lionels. Is a giraffe car stupid? No, not if it brings a smile to the face of a child.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
CSX_road_slug For "just plain bad" I nominate: Horn-hook (X2F) couplers!
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.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
When I was a kid, I had a "voice control" thing for my Lionels. It had a "microphone" that you would talk into. It wasn't really a microphone, just a momentary-off switch that would open on a bit of air pressure when you spoke into it. It interrupted the voltage to the track, thus triggering a cycle of the Lionel engine's "E-unit." So, if the train was running and you said "Stop," it would stop. Unfortunately, of course, the E-unit would then back up the engine on the next cycle, so to maintain the illusion you had to tell the microphone "Reverse" or something, although, of course, saying "Beer" or anything else would have the same effect.
BLI's animated Water tower has to be a silly idea.
(My Model Railroad, My Rules)
These are the opinions of an under 35 , from the east end of, and modeling, the same section of the Wheeling and Lake Erie railway. As well as a freelanced road (Austinville and Dynamite City railroad).
Rubber-band diesel engines broke too often from overheating. Good thing many of us got "free replacements" when we got our teeth-braces!
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
Yes, there have been some railroads or businesses on layouts that are puns or a play on words, but I don't think they ever really died out.
There is a guy who posts on another site whose railroad is the Ruphe & Tumbelle and for the images I have seen of it, it is a really nice layout.
One of the guys who posts here has a liqour store on his layout, Beaver Liqours. I can't help but to chuckle everytime I see it. If you just look around you still see it.
One thing I always thought that was bad were any of the Tyco automated items; operating crane unloader, coal unloading trestle, log dump unloader.
Robert H. Shilling II
Folks, neither Tyco or horn hook couplers were a bad thing for the hobby. I was wanting to hear about seriously awful things like the asbestos plaster that only few remember. Or the silly-named railroads/industries.
Julian
Modeling Pre-WP merger UP (1974-81)
Gotta stick up for the NMRA horn hook couplers - as weird looking as they are. Prior to them, each manufacturer kind of did their own thing. When the NMRA developed the horn hooks (early 60s???), many companies adopted them and all of a sudden we could buy to much more equipment that could be readily used with one another.
Even with the advent of KDs, horn hooks were still a god send for the hobby. After all, they were "free" with Athearn and other kits, where as KDs were pricey (for that time of course). I still recall my first venture into installing KDs back in the early 1970s. It took me years to convert all my cars, and always had a couple of connector ones in service with NMRA on one end, KDs on the other.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Don't be dissing the Tyco brand - yeah, some of their stuff was rubbish, but lots could be upgraded to nice looking daily runners with some effort, and the structure kits improved with some paint and rework.Sadly, their line of freight cars with fantasy corporate branded liveries was in retrospect pretty silly, although probably very effective in catching a parent's/grandparent's eye when looking for a neat gift for little Johnny's trainset at the local Woolworths or Korvettes.Of course, in today's modeling marketplace, no serious manufacturer would ever consider producing freight cars in fantasy corporate liveries...
cold steald.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.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
How about Lone Star's old rubberband drive N Scale locomotives? In all fairness, these did actually give rise to N Scale as we know it.
Modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad in N Scale.
www.prr-nscale.blogspot.com
ctyclsscs I know we all used lichen "back in the day" and many still do, but I love how it was packaged. You can use it to scenic your layout AND make a table centerpiece! http://www.ebay.com/itm/See-Niks-Landscaping-Accessories-Mixed-Lichen-Model-Train-Nature-Scenery-NEW-/191699021398 Jim
I know we all used lichen "back in the day" and many still do, but I love how it was packaged. You can use it to scenic your layout AND make a table centerpiece!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/See-Niks-Landscaping-Accessories-Mixed-Lichen-Model-Train-Nature-Scenery-NEW-/191699021398
Jim
I disagree on the Tyco trains. They got a lot of folks including me started in model railroading. They were affordable and mine ran pretty well.
Enjoy
Paul