WHO made the most 'Dog's'?

[Don Gibson]

(with apologies to Canine's everywhere): WHO made the most 'Dog's'?
Tyco?
Bachmann?
Life Like?
Marx?
Model Power?

ALL above have established themselves with the 'Toy Train' maket (cheap). Some have offered upgrades (at upgraded prices). Some have not.

ALL the above are considered maker's of 'Toy Train's'. (Look on E Bay).

[dragonriversteel]

Tyco by far,.......has to be the biggest piece of @%$&. Followed by life like,then bachmann. The only thing tyco made,that I think was worth a flip , was the two bay operateing clam shell hopper.

Patrick

[Anonymous]

I'd have to vote Tyco. I don't know of anything Tyco made I'd consider 'worthwhile.' At least with all those other makers, i can think of at least a few things that were okay; with Tyco every piece of it I ever encountered was sheer junk.

[Anonymous]

let's see, last i checked the World Heath Organization doesn't make dogs, considering they're mostly Human Doctors and not vetrinarians. [:D]

[bikerraypa]

Well, let's see....

Bachmann makes some crap, but the Spectrum N locos are great
Life Like makes some crap, but my SD7 and E8 are great
Marx, I dunno. Isn't that S scale or AF stuff from the 50's??
Model Power makes some crap, but the new 4-6-2 is supposed to be great
Tyco stuff sucks

So, as both total units of crap produced and percentage of units qualifying as total crap, survey says....Tyco


Ray out

[Anonymous]

Tyco -- in the 70's produced garbage that was deliberately designed to conk out after about 40 hours of running. Did more to keep people from my generation away from the hobby than anything else. But the original Mantua/Tyco stuff from the sixties wasn't bad by the standards of that era. And when Mantua re-opened in the 80's they did put out a good product in steam.

Model Power -- They are trying to upgrade now by re-introducing the Mantua line. The last of all the '"toy" companies to try to enter the modeler market. Maybe that train has already left the station?

Lifelike -- Made a lot of junk. But they did introduce the Proto 1000 and Proto 2000 line. Their steam is good to excellent.

Bachmann -- Bachmann steam is worthwhile. But their diesels -- even the Spectrum Line -- are unreliable. To me they are the worst of the bunch because they pretend to offer quality with their Spectrum line which is only marginally better than their toy line. Model Power never pretended to be anything other than what it was.

[areibel]

AHM!
All the running capabilities of a "newer" Tyco, plus the worst (IMHO) as far as detailing, sizes, etc...

[douginut]

Preiser and Meurten. For Sure!

Doug, In Utah

[AntonioFP45]

Tyco is a cinch as the winner, but don't forget the Tyco GP20! Junky drive but excellent shell!

Back in the 70s and early 80s if you wanted a decent looking GP20, this was the only route to take. The challenge was modifying an Athearn GP chassis so the shell would fit.

[Anonymous]

We've come along way baby! With their cast in place handrails, that were about 3 feet thick these sucks didn't really even look go sitting in my layouts scrap yard. Those were the days, and I for one am happy they are gone.

[cbq9911a]

Lionel HO of the 1959 - 1966 era. Such a dog that they had to redesign the drives every year. Marx HO had better mechanisms.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cbq9911a

Lionel HO of the 1959 - 1966 era. Such a dog that they had to redesign the drives every year. Marx HO had better mechanisms.

I have to agree, I had a Lionel FA with rubber band drive! Ewwwwwwww!!! Got so bad I decided to rip out the guts, make it a dummy, and tow it with a Tyco 430C!!!!!


See what I mean!! (yes, the picture is over 30 years old, but I still have BOTH the engines, both now have modified Athearn drives!

[steamage]

I think AHM made the worst crap. That was back in the days of large flanged wheels, and they wouldn't change that design for years. Glad I don't have any of their junk.

[Anonymous]

Back in the 1980s, I received a Bachmann train set... Its engine was an E60CP with the piece-of-crap pancake motor drive. It ran jerkily out of the box for exactly 1 week before spending the next 20 years as a paperweight. Calling it a dog would be too kind. [:p]

It's not until recently I got to rectify that situation... By getting an Athearn AMD103 Gennie and a string of Walthers Amfleet cars. It was everything that Bachmann set wasn't. [:D]

[MisterBeasley]

Oscar Mayer.

[grayfox1119]

What do you expect from Tyco???? Haven't you read the papers or watched Tv news AT ALL??? The Tyco CEO was throwing Roman style BD parties for his wifee poo, that cost millions, plus all his homes in the mountains and all over the place, and cars, vacations, etc.....no all the money has to come from somewhere within his company...right? QUALITY....cheapen the product and give me the money to spend....

[MisterBeasley]

No, no, no. WHO didn't make the Dogs. WHO let the Dogs out.

[andrechapelon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by grayfox1119

What do you expect from Tyco???? Haven't you read the papers or watched Tv news AT ALL??? The Tyco CEO was throwing Roman style BD parties for his wifee poo, that cost millions, plus all his homes in the mountains and all over the place, and cars, vacations, etc.....no all the money has to come from somewhere within his company...right? QUALITY....cheapen the product and give me the money to spend....

Different TYCO, dude.

Although I have to admit your version has the ring of Bluto Blutarski's rant about the Germans attacking Pearl Harbor. *

Andre

* National Lampoon's "Animal House"

[RedGrey62]

QUOTE: Originally posted by grayfox1119

What do you expect from Tyco???? Haven't you read the papers or watched Tv news AT ALL??? The Tyco CEO was throwing Roman style BD parties for his wifee poo, that cost millions, plus all his homes in the mountains and all over the place, and cars, vacations, etc.....no all the money has to come from somewhere within his company...right? QUALITY....cheapen the product and give me the money to spend....

Not sure, but is this even the same Tyco? Their stuff was "dogs" long a long time ago[:D]

Rick

[Anonymous]

A TYCO C430 cost $19 new in 1976- you could buy an Atlas FP7, SD35, or anything w/ the legendary Roco drive for $25 in 1976 and an Atlas would still be running strong today. A TYCO wouldn't make it one year (with some rare exceptions)

L-L trainset is crap but it's better than TYCO because it runs longer. (my L-L GP38 died after 7 years)

[on30francisco]

I would vote for Tyco and AHM. These were my first introduction to HO scale in the late 60s. They ran and looked terrible compared to the Lionel O gauge trains I had before. The Lionel trains may have been tinplate and out-of-scale but they were built like a brick s***house and were very reliable in operation.

[tomikawaTT]

My vote goes to the PRR.

Keeping an O-1 or P-5 on the rails at anything approaching mainline speed was close to a miracle.

And then, of course, there was the absolute dog of all time, the T-1 duplex.

[jecorbett]

Tyco is in first place and there is nobody close enough to them to claim second place. Model Power stuff was almost as bad but the weren't as prolific a producer as Tyco was. The amazing thing is that Tyco must have been selling a lot of that junk because their stuff was the most prominent brand in the department stores. Apparently they sold a lot of stuff to newbies who hadn't learned to discriminate regarding quality. I know. I was one of those newbies. I bought a lot of their junk before I learned better.

[Don Gibson]

First of all, 'WHO' was on first base.

My 'wisht' I'd said it' goes to Beasley's ''Oscar Mayer".

Antonioso45: When you-a-gonna turn 46?
My 2 Tyco GP-20's now have AT&SF freight-paint, and Hobbytown (FL) drives. Eat 'cher heart out - or have an Oscar Mayer hot dog.(Bring your own buns).

[Anonymous]

I will say that lifelike "junk" will run reasonably well. a lot of their sets come with operating accesories, whitch are of reasonable quality, for a beginner, and their loco's are ok, the run reasonably, but won't pull well.

alexander

[Anonymous]

I would say Lima. Right until the end (which came in the early 2000s) they were putting out utter rubbish for the UK market. Bodyshells were variable - some were ok, others were dire. Motors and drive units were 99% awful - they were still using those old pancake motors with plastic frames and ridiculously deep wheel flanges, and they had the nerve to continue to put prices up without upgrading the models. What added insult to injury was that they were also making some very good locos for the HO scale European market, but not upgrading the OO to match. I only have three Lima locos, one of which seems just about acceptable on DCC power (BEMF does wonders for 3-pole motors) and will probably get some new wheels at some point to replace the pizza-cutters it left the factory with. The other two are unlikely to run much!

[cwclark]

I always thought tyco was a winner in the "Dogs" catagory but then when i look back and reflect on the old days...Model Power really made some "dogs" too....remember the old MP fence...it was huge!...then their rolling stock...out of scale, little detail, and snap in trucks with plastic slag still on the wheels where it was cut from the sprues...then there was the search light target that didn't have lights and no way of mounting them if you even wanted to kit ba***hem into an operating light......chuck

[Soo Line fan]

Tyco with it’s pancake motor is the ultimate dog. I think they found the armature inside a slot car somewhere. It only had one bearing on the worm side, the rear of the armature rode in the motor housing with no bearing! After a while the worm would eventually slip on the shaft producing that wonderful wining sound accompanying with no forward movement. A little Loctite would fix that but up next are the plastic gears. Better keep them lightly oiled or they would self-destruct. Too bad the gearbox, if you could call it that was not enclosed, so the oil would get thrown everywhere. Finally the armature overheats, the windings short and it’s put out of its misery. A marvel of minimal engineering if ever there was one.

Jim

[Anonymous]

I recall reading somewhere that the Tyco mechanism was designed with a limited lifespan (40 hours was one figure). Not sure how accurate this is but judging by the "engineering" (if you can call it that!) involved in the mechanisms it's probably not far from the truth!

If you have a Tyco F-unit that you want to keep, put it on a Bachmann Plus mechanism - they're relatively cheap and run very nicely indeed when in good order.

[Anonymous]

Yes, you're right about the 40 hrs on TYCO.