Proper use for a Tyco engine

[acelachaser]

well, the old light green Penn Central F9 will be sitting in the far corner of my city freight yard up on blocks with the trucks removed and graffiti all over its weather beaten body...hey! that's just the same condition as when Amtrak bought it!

[cacole]

Other -- we give them to children who visit our club's open houses. It seems that every time we have an open house, we have a rash of visitors who try to sell us old Tyco or Bachmann train sets that have been collecting dust in their attics for several years. One person even had the gall to ask $75 for an old Tyco Christmas train set that didn't even run, if it ever had.

[DavidJ611]

QUOTE: csmith
Tyco for a lot of folks was the "gateway drug", if you will. That's what I started with as a young lad, as well as many other modelers I know (although some would never admit it).

[#ditto] I too got my introduction into the hobby with Tyco trains. My very first train set was a Tyco "Spirit of 76" set, which "Santa" brought me for Chrstmas in 1975. I have many fond memories of playing with those old trains and with my dear (now departed) dad's help expanding my humble little 4X8 empire year by year as my collection grew.

I readily acknowledge that the "Power-Torque" [?] drive mechanisms were flat out terrible and frustrating to deal with as they wore out--way too quickly [Who else out there knows that horrible "wheezing" [xx(] sound of a binding "Power-Torque" [?] drive by heart?]. Nevertheless, I still had fun with them, and as I got older and the new Tyco products got funkier, I discovered and progressed onto better quality, more realistic scale model railroad products (Athearn, Atlas, MDC, etc.).

I haven't run any of my old Tyco trains in years, but I still have 99% of them, and although they aren't even close to the fine HO scale models I now enjoy as an adult, they still bring a smile to my face simply for being what they are and what they meant to me in my youth.

I can appreciate all of the voting options available, depending on one's frame of reference, except that I doubt anyone could find a Tyco train that would actually run halfway well [or at all] for any reasonable duration [;)]. As for myself, I'm thinking of digging out a select few pieces to display in celebration of my 30th anniversary in the World's Greatest Hobby. [:)]

-David

P.S. Anyone else who has fond memories of their old Tyco trains might find the following website of interest: http://tycotrain.tripod.com/tycotrains/

[choochin3]

I run 'em,I fixem,I lovem !
Been playing with Tyco,Life Like,etc. for about 28 years now.
Actually i have started to get all the stuff I had when I was a kid,and a lot of the stuff I couldn't afford at the time.
I think the hardest part is finding good traction tires for Tyco locos.

Carl T

[BillLading]

It is hard for me to part with anything that I have had from when I first got into HO.

Took out the gearing when it died and made it into a good dummy engine.

[TomDiehl]

Depends on the age. The Tyco's I had back in the '60's and '70's were good runners and pullers. After Consolidated Foods bought them and moved production to Hong Kong, well, those are the ones that should be flamed, for operation and looks.

A chrome plated Santa Fe engine??? Puleeese.

[Darth Santa Fe]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TomDiehl

After Consolidated Foods bought them and moved production to Hong Kong, well, those are the ones that should be flamed, for operation and looks.

A chrome plated Santa Fe engine??? Puleeese.

Alot of their Hong Kong engines did look really bad (the GG-1, for example) but there were some that did look pretty good (the SD24 started out with realistic trucks).

And the chrome plated and gold colored stuff was probably made because some people wanted something *shiny*. (sparkel sparkel)

[AggroJones]

My Tyco and Life-Like crap line stuff was sold off to lauch me into real model railroading.
I suppose if I still had them, I'd practice me airbrush strokes on them.

These people with still run Tyco, what is that like? You got photos of this stuff on your layout? Do you detail and weather them, then run them through realistic scenery? I'm trying to imagine this....

[BNSFNUT]

Door stop.

[Anonymous]

I voted for the weathering practice on a loco. I had the Santa Fe F7 made by Tyco.
By the way what ever happened to Tyco anyway?

[Darth Santa Fe]

QUOTE: Originally posted by [e-mail]

By the way what ever happened to Tyco anyway?

In 1993 instead of improving their quality, they stopped making model railroad products and went on to making other toys instead. (I think they made the original Crash Dummies, and they had something similar to the large Mega-Blocks)

[tommyr]

Aggro;
Yes I do!! That sounds like a pretty elitist remark to me. I have a Tyco 262 that I bought in the 60's that is still running on my RR _weathered & all. It runs & pulls like ##@@. I don't understand all you guy s badmouthing Tyco so much. I admit I only have 1 but as I said it has been running for 40 years with no problems.
Tom

[Anonymous]

Look up the funky "Fundy Northern" Scrapyard Contraptions that have been floating about as of late. Doe something like that to your old tyco unit. Would be laods of fun and still using a cherrished model at the same time.

James

[oleirish]

I wish I had my vary first HO engine A tyco 0-4-0 saddle tank ,today It would have a good place of honer with my model railroad stuff .I got it for XMAS when I was 13 years old.I'am 63 now.That and rideing the old P.E. in southren Calif.started my love of trains.[sigh]I have allso ridden the S.P.DAYLITE when I was vary young.

Jim[:)]

[dragenrider]

Tyco's make great Guinea pigs for kitbashing, testing paint schemes, weathering practice, and for selling as "rare gems" to gullible Ebay shoppers. [}:)]

[Darth Santa Fe]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dragenrider

Tyco's make great Guinea pigs for kitbashing, testing paint schemes, weathering practice, and for selling as "rare gems" to gullible Ebay shoppers. [}:)]

I found out that some collectors will pay $100 to $300 on eBay for the Tyco GM&O GP20!!! I got that information from this website: http://tycotrain.tripod.com/tycotrains/index.html
It tells all about Tyco, AHM, Bachmann, Cox, Atlas and Pemco trains from the early 60's to late 80's.

[Anonymous]

Junk heap

[aloco]

Stomping on.

[Darth Santa Fe]

QUOTE: Originally posted by aloco

Stomping on.

Don't do it with bare feet.[xx(]

[darkstar974]

sittin on my shelf collecting dust

[ben10ben]

Getting a person into Lionel. That's what they did for me, at least.

[3railguy]

Geeesh!! I got a Tyco GP-20 set for XMAS in 1967. I ran the **** out of that engine for a few years and I can still see the little headlight blazing the rails, hear the motor humming, and smell the hot grease. Saw an identical set on ebay mint and boxed. 20 bidders and I stopped at $125. I must not be alone.

[cwclark]

I voted other...as in a more sinister slow painful death than using it for firewood...like cement trucks and dropped to the bottom of the ocean..or slowely strangled at the hood nose with a thin piece of piano wire...I never met a tyco locomotive that could hold it's on tracks... [:D] chuck

[palallin]

Funny, I would say that most of the suggestions given here apply to ANY HO locomotive. ;-)

[ducking for cover]

Seriously, my experience with Tyco was mostly unproductive, the Chatanooga Choo-Choo having seduced my into HO for about ten years. Fortunately, I grew out of it and back into O (3 rail, 2 rail, and 30" gauge). HO is too finicky for me. It wasn't just Tyco: I never found a decent running HO loco of ANY brand, though, as someone emntioned above, I suspect that brass track was a major culprit in that situation. Still, such problems are refreshingly rare in the larger scales.

[espeefoamer]

When I saw "Proper use for a Tyco engine" in the list of forums,before I clicked on this,two words popped into my head."Doorstop and Paperweight"[}:)].
I voted for haul to junkyard,but if I had it to do over again,I would have voted Firewood[:o)]!

[Anonymous]

I had to vote other. I think the only place for a true Tyco locomotive is somewhere else, anywhere else. I think they look good in a sanitary landfill. They operate much better when driven over by a large truck, and it improves the detail too.

Tom

[Darth Santa Fe]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tpaulsen

They operate much better when driven over by a large truck, and it improves the detail too.

Tom

That's called roadkill. Unless the engines already "dead". Then you'll be haunted by an evil Tyco ghost that takes over your quality engines and slowly Tycoizes them.

[canazar]

Put it on a fancy tablecloth. Take a good picture of it, stick on Ebay and call it a vintage engine and slap on a 49.99 Buy it Price.

[}:)]

[Darth Santa Fe]

QUOTE: Originally posted by canazar

Put it on a fancy tablecloth. Take a good picture of it, stick on Ebay and call it a vintage engine and slap on a 49.99 Buy it Price.

[}:)]

Maybe $24.99. Or if you advertise it in the paper, $19.95, order now.
$8.00 shipping and handling. Please allow 3-5 weeks to get to your home.

Now if it was a rare engine, it would sell for quite a bit. You could get a couple hundred for a GM&O GP20.

[TomDiehl]

To answer Aggrojones's question, I have 4 Tyco Mikados, 2 Pacifics, a Prarie, a General, about a half dozen switchers, on the steam side. You can't beat the die cast zamac boiler for pulling power. Several of these I assembled from kits. On the diesel side, all the ones I have operating have what is known as the MU-2 power truck, a self contained motor and gear train, assembled directly to the wheels. The easiest way to spot these is the bottom of the truck has a metal plate. All the crap running ones have plastic bottoms. I have 5 C430's, some with pilots closed in and body mounted couplers, a couple GP-20's, a Plymouth Industrial, and several F-9's.

When I started model railroading back in the '60's, the Tyco's were much better than the rubber band drive (at the time) Athearns. They could pull better and didn't look like they were setting a land speed record.

The other thing I agree with is the Chatanooga Choo Choo was the beginning of the end for Tyco. The start of when they went downhill on a bobsled.