I have probably over 50 Tyco freight cars. I model a Southern Pacific flatcar train of thirty Tyco cars rebuilt with new trucks, couplers, paint and decals, wooden decks replaced the plastic decks.
http://lariverrailroads.com/flatcar.html
Tyco Operating Hopper cars are a very close match to the SP ballast hopper. ave 10 of those operating too.
http://lariverrailroads.com/gravel_pit.html
Have fun with your trains
Reading through this thread, I just have to say if people enjoy collecting these older trains let them. My brother has a TYCO New Haven RR starter set from 1961. The diesel locomotive and coaches ran well into the late 1980s. I had a great GP20 (Penn Central) from TYCO which ran over 20 years. I currently do not have any TYCO on my layout but I do plan to retrieve my old freight cars from my folk's attic. I plan to display them in my freight siding. I fondly remember running them and having great fun. That maybe why others collect these models. Not everyone is super detailed orientated
I remember an all-Tyco layout, the equipment, the assembled buildings, etc. The trains ran quite well, if a little too fast. Tyco equipment was pretty rugged.
I had some Tyco stuff when I was a kid. 4'x8' pike and brass track no less!
But when I'm feeling nostalgic I head to the tycoforums website and see grownups still enjoying those same things I once had.Of course my adult train stuff is model trains not toy trains because I can afford more detailing and accuracy of my hobby. Both have a place in our free time to have!
Steve
tyco's best: the santa fe "super 630" (Alco C-630)
I see nothing wrong with collecting things that bring back memories. No Tyco but I have several Child Guidance building with flat roofs that I enhanced by putting shingles and other details on. Why because they bring back memories of the city as we called it when I was growing. Not scale modeling but I like it.
Joe Staten Island West
I definitely buy unique items if I can afford them. You never know what might be collectible for my grandchildren someday.
I own a shoebox full of the stuff that I started acquiring when my kids were old enough to start playing with them, and I certainly was not going to start them out with a $300 engine that at some point would likely take a header down the canyon! My first purchase was a non-set group of trains headed by a -- wait for it, Maine Central -- Santa Fe Alco 630 diesel that still runs beautifully many years after I bought it. Tyco's old freight cars are cheap and colorful and they make a nice parade around my little pike. My favorite Tyco offerings though, which I still collect, are their operating accessories - not too much fun stuff out there made like that anymore! I have the operating boxcar (both Burlington and US Mail versions), the pipe loader, the pipe unloader, and the gantry crane. I'm always on the lookout for a good deal on their other accessories!
This car stops at ALL railroad crossings!
As discussed in a similar thread recently: I still have most of my old Tyco collection and just bought several more of the flatcars with the pipe loads because I think a train needs to have more than just one car with a load of pipe. Someone building a pipeline or sewer needs more than just three. All of my Tyco cars have body mounted Kadee couplers. My two favorites were the stock car with truck and loading ramp. I still have the cows. The truck got chopped up for parts to detail Athearn truck kits. The interior went into a cabover and the fenders on a conventional cab that hauls two bottom dumping trailers. The other favorite was the piggyback flatcar with loading ramp. The truck was chopped up for parts also. The ramp now serves as the loading ramp at Johnson Tractor, a dealer of construction and farm equipment. The flatcars had their trailer anchors removed and now haul tractors. An auto carrier was converted into a flatcar with a 5th wheel for hauling a single 48’ piggyback trailer. The lighted house from Tyco was the first structure I ever got. I still have it and think it looks nice. Even better once I added the swimming pool.
Wow this threads origin is almost as old as Tyco trains
Anyway, I too have some Tyco on the layout.
Two piggyback trailers. I like the older silver painted ones that Tyco issued for Santa Fe. Sure they're not 100% perfect. But until I get around to decaling/detailing my own, they'll do fine in the interim on my late 50s freight.
(The Tyco trailers are the short doubles, the others are Walthers...on Walthers flats as well):
Matt from Anaheim, CA and Bayfield, COClick Here for my model train photo website
LOL I will admit, I'm one of those "off the bubble by 5 degrees" model and toy railroading enthusiasts. HO and S/O, O-27 and G (with a little "Live Steam" tossed in). I grew up in the late 60s/70s with Tyco. Not a fan of all their stuff, just the pieces I enjoyed until I ventured into HO rivet counting and O Scale High Railing. I have 2 sets of Tyco/Mantua ... one set replicates what I had exactly as a kid and every bit as cheap and toyish. The other set is identical ... except I customized and upgraded it. I love to tinker with gadgets and make things do what they were not originally designed by the manufacturer to do, so the second set of Tyco has been equipped with Digitrax, Tsunami digital sound for the type of engine, gravel/coal/timber unloaders "imagineered" (to steal a phrase from Disney) to use tortoise slow switch machines to dump their contents into bins that feed the loading system accessories. Anything that operated by crank like the Clementine Gold Mine was belt driven to run the conveyors. I replaced the push button air operating assessories with other tortoise machines to load those culvert pipes into dump cars. And that's the beauty of this hobby. If you love to tinker, make things operate better, enjoy engineering ... anything's essentially possible. And yep, everything from the lit Tyco buildings to operation is computer controlled. My 4x8 layout, largest I can have for HO in my location, is diagonally split backdrop. One side is the prototypical side with Broadway Limited, Proto 2000, some KATO, Campbell Works Craftsman kits, Woodland Scenics ... total rivet counting. Go through the tunnels and hidden siding, you end up in the land of Tyco, Mantua, Bachmann, Life-Like which I tweaked up. Hate to say it, kids and adults alike like the Tyco side more. They're not so interested in the hours I took making resin fast moving water look realistic with depth. Nope, they like the push button (converted to switch machine) timber unloader when the tyco logs (stained dowel rods) miss the bin and roll off into the layout and end up in the Life-Like McDonalds parking lot. (Yeah, I paid through the nose to get one still shrink wrapped even though the kit IS really junk). It's all in how you approach the hobby and what you get out of it. I like tinplate toy trains as much as I like live steam engines.
HO-Scale-ModelRailroaderLOL I will admit, I'm one of those "off the bubble by 5 degrees" model and toy railroading enthusiasts
.
to the forums!
Your fist few posts will be delayed by the moderators, but please stick through that period and join into the conversation here.
I would love to see pictures of this two sided layout you described.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
HO-Scale-ModelRailroader I'm one of those "off the bubble by 5 degrees" model and toy railroading enthusiasts.
You should fit in quite well here!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
SeeYou190 to the forums!
The downside of adding on to a very old thread is that original participants are long gone and photos posted are no longer available.
Steve Otte will let you start a new thread at no extra charge.
Some of us find a large block of text, with no spaces, hard to read. Please break up your posts with line breaks here and there, even if not absolutely gramatically needed.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Actually I have an old Tyco piggyback unloader that I picked up on eBay for about $8. I plan to modify it with magnets to handle more modern containers.
Doh! Got me with a necro'd topic!
I just picked up a Tyco 40 foot covered gondola car. I never saw one before.
I do not know how old it is, but guessing from the "TYCO" font, I would say the mid-1960s.
This is going to look neat once it is all detailed up and added to the the freight car fleet.
It is good to see someone else that can see the positive in using an old TYCOs. I have a variety of trains manufactured by different companies, but I enjoy repairing and modifying my old TYCO trains. I just started model railroading again after many years and my old TYCOs that I have not touched since the 70's were the beginning. I was able to repair all but a few of the cars and four of my locomotives. I have subsequently purchased higher end more detailed trains, but I still like my old TYCOs and am starting to work on building some with DCC and sound.
Jim
Yeah, I'll be 75 in a couple of weeks, and still have a number of Tyco/Mantua cars that I love. They've been cleaned up and weathered, and the old plastic Talgo trucks have been replaced and body-mounted Kadees installed.
My coal hoppers are the ancient clamshell door variety. I still have an old flood loader that actually loaded coal in cars, and I can dump the coal with the pass-over actuator into a box below. I almost bought another hopper because it came with another actuator. If I see it again I might get it.
I have a set of old streamlined passenger cars with real aluminum bodies. I picked up a couple of extras to complement the passenger consist, particularly a boat-end observation car. I removed the inappropriate Santa Fe decals and gave each car new numbers, a new maroon stripe and even a comical name.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Ok, so it's a "necro-thread" I'll bite.
I find that some of the Tyco stuff can be re-worked into beautiful stuff. Most notably, their gondolas.
But, I L O V E their building kits !!!!!!
I can't get enough of those !
Rust...... It's a good thing !
Little TimmyI find that some of the Tyco stuff can be re-worked into beautiful stuff. Most notably, their gondolas.
So true.
-Photographs by Kevin Parson
Wow.... A ressurected necro thread of a ressurected necro thread. Gotta be a record.
Some stuff from all brands can be useful. Be it repainted and detailed, or "as-is" and used for testing purposes. (Weathering, painting, decaling, etc...)
I just recently converted an old Con-Cor passenger car to body mounted KD's and metal wheelsets. (The thing had X2F Talgo mounted couplers!) Add some weight, detailing, and it's a pretty good stand in for the prototype.
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
SeeYou190 Little Timmy I find that some of the Tyco stuff can be re-worked into beautiful stuff. Most notably, their gondolas. -Photographs by Kevin Parson -Kevin
Little Timmy I find that some of the Tyco stuff can be re-worked into beautiful stuff. Most notably, their gondolas.
New brakewheel? New grabs? What? Come on, spill!!
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
I'm surprised that I'd not seen this thread when it was first posted. My first trains, in the mid-'50s were mostly Varney (plastic and/or metal), Authenticast (cast metal), Roundhouse (cast metal), Athearn (stamped metal), Silver Streak (wood/cardstock/and cast metal), along with an A-B-B-A set of Globe F-7s (only one with a power truck). I also had a John English Pacific and a Tyco cast metal 0-6-0 side-tank switcher.I still have all of them, mostly updated and/or with some better details.
A few years ago, I saw a thread showing how to create a reasonably good model of a particular CNR prototype gondola, using cheap plastic gondolas.
Not too long after that, I was visiting a friend in Pennsylvania and we went to a train show. I wandered around checking out what was available, and found a guy selling Tyco gondolas. As I recalled, those were the cars needed to replicate the CNR prototypes, so I bought all eight that he had, for just a buck each.
When I returned home, I looked-up that thread and discovered that the cars needed were from Model Power.
Undeterred, I decided to skip the CNR prototypes and simply upgrade those 8 cars with some better details and some body-mounted couplers...
I kept the plastic trucks, but modified them as screw-mounted, rather than clip-ins...
...and also added body-mounted Kadees. I then added some very basic brake gear, and scraped-off the mould-on grabirons, and plastic stirrup steps, replacing them with metal parts. Some paint and lettering made them into useful cars (not quite as nice as similar ones from Accurail, due to their oversize rivets), but in a train, not too objectional at all...
I had also bought, off the "used" table at a nearby hobby shop (now long gone) some Tyco wood-sheathed reefers. I had stripped-off the paint and lettering and and added some free-standing metal grabirons and sill steps, plus new paint and lettering on three of these...
...and one like this...
I later noticed that all four cars had sagging underbodies, so decided to upgrade them a bit more. Here's the condensed version of that...
Another old-time line was from Varney, which later became LifeLike (the Proto-no-thousand version).I picked-up three of these, stripped the paint, added some details and new paint and lettering, and ended-up with three ice service cars - used for shipping ice to various on-layout dealers and also servicing passenger equipment with ice-activated air conditioning...
I was pretty happy with them, but eventually realised that the ice hatches and platforms were unnecessary, as the cars didn't need ice bunkers, since the entire car would be used for block-ice.I decided to re-do the roofs...
...then re-lettered the cars...
I've also upgraded some other Varney cars, including a metal boxcar and a couple of plastic hoppers. I wouldn't consider them comparable to current-day offerings, but simply "good enough", since they date from my first layout, in 1956...purely sentimental value.
...and some rivets the size of HO scale cannonballs...
Wayne
I love when these Zombie threads get revived.
When I first got back into the hobby in the late 1970s, I bought a lot of Tyco simply because I didn't know any better. I knew I wanted to model the UP but that's about all I knew. No concept of era or locale so I just bought just about anything I could find that was lettered for the UP. I remember I had a Tyco F-7 that didn't come close to matching UP's Armour Yellow. I also picked up several Tyco Amtrak cars which were lighted and had the silhouetted passengers in the window. I thought that was very cool. My favorite was a string of bright yellow hopper cars with red lettering (all same road number of course) that I filled with Life-Like coal. I thought it looked so realistic. What did I know. I discovered I still have one of the Amtrak cars in a storage box. I have no idea what I did with all the other Tyco stuff.
I have a fuzzy memory about Tyco being a low end line for Mantua but I am not positive about that.
Tyco started out as Mantua's ready to run line, Mantua was still kits (esp the steam locos). In the early 60s, everything was rebranded under the Tyco brand (the official name of the company was still Mantua Metal Products until the late 60s)
And the "TY" in TYCO was for the Tylers, who owned the company.
From the things I have heard, the Mantua name is still held in fairly high regard. TYCO not so much. I'm as puzzled as the OP was when he started this thread in 2005 as to why anyone would collect TYCO. It makes no more sense to me today than it did back then.
You got me curious as to the history and I found this very informative website:
Mantua/Tyco Trains (tcawestern.org)
According to this, the Tylers sold Tyco to General Foods in 1970 and two years later, the Mantua name was retired although existing stock continued to be sold with the Mantua name. Some of the Mantua line was rebranded as Tyco. 1972 was also the year John Tyler died. I wonder if he is any relation to our tenth president who amazingly still has a living grandson who is in his nineties now. Until a few years ago, he had a living brother as well. He was featured on 60 Minutes about a year ago.
Fact or Fiction: President John Tyler has a living grandson? (10news.com)