Tyco what ever happened to that company I like their buildings

[Anonymous]

I found an old model railroad 'how to book' and the author (Malcom Furlow) uses Tyco model structures on his layout. The ones he suggests look pretty nice. I started wondering what ever happened to Tyco. I know their locomotives were suspect but their cars and buildings were (are) cool. When I was a kid Tyco was everywhere. What happened to Tyco?

[Medina1128]

I think they went the way of the dodo - extinct...

[SMassey]

They sold the molds for the trains I believe to Life Like. Trains were not a big seller for Tyco after they stared making the R/C stuff. They are now in a bunch of court problems similar to the Enron stuff a few years ago. Exects stealing company money is not good. oh well.

[rolleiman]

A lot of the buildings are still available from other manufacturers. I think IHC is marketing some of them now too. As far as plastic building kits go, they were actually pretty fair. To bad the same couldn't be said about most of thier (post 1972 or so) trains. If you want to pay a premium for some of the buildings, a lot of them pop up on ebay all the time.

[Anonymous]

I just looked on ebay there's pages and pages of cars and a few buildings. Most going really cheap. I can see alot a resemblance between atlas and tyco products.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by SMassey

They sold the molds for the trains I believe to Life Like. Trains were not a big seller for Tyco after they stared making the R/C stuff. They are now in a bunch of court problems similar to the Enron stuff a few years ago. Exects stealing company money is not good. oh well.

Tyco trains and Tyco the conglomerate which is having legal troubles are two separate entities. Tyco never produced any R/C items nor sold molds to Life-Like. In addition, Tyco and Mantua were linked. Hopefully the link below will be helpful:
http://www.railstop.com/History/Mantua/MantuaHistory.asp

[IRONROOSTER]

Check out IHC http://www.ihc-hobby.com/cgi-bin/bsc.cgi?sn=013
Enjoy
Paul

[Anonymous]

Tyco was probably not expected to survive too many years, much like the trains they built.

[Soo Line fan]

Mattel purchased Tyco the toy company in 1997. Sadly this is what is left of them, hope you’re not shocked: http://www.tycorc.com/us/index.asp
Here is some more info: http://tycotrain.tripod.com/tycotrains/index.html
IHC does own some of the old molds.

Jim

[Anonymous]

Sadly tyco got out of the train business around the late 80s early 90s. Such a sin too because they had alot of nice structures. Although IHC is still selling alot of their old Center street buildings and I believe their ranch house and two story house are old tyco models too.

[ctyclsscs]

Many of the kits sold under the Tyco name were made by Pola and have been sold under a number of different names over the years. Many were orignally marketed by AHM. A good many of the kits, as was mentioned, are still available from IHC and also Model Power. You'll probably be able to still find almost any of the buildings from the old Tyco line if you look in a Walthers catalog or at train shows.

Jim

[jecorbett]

It is very common for the same structure to pass from one company to another. For example, the synagogue Walther's announced under their brand is a Heljan kit. I found the Heljan kit at my LHS and it was much cheaper than the MSRP from Walther's.

[Anonymous]

I think they went under because they're engines were DESIGNED to last 40 hrs and die. And they did die that fast. Tiny truck mounted motors no bigger than a quarter.

[ICRR1964]

AHHHHH! The good old pancake motor! They always died a fast death do to heat.

Most of the buildings were not to bad in the late 70's and early 80's. Aunt Lucy's, Snatchem Funeral home, Blacksmith Shop, and Ma's Place still live on my layout. These are all Tyco kits.

[ShaunCN]

40hrs and die? ya right i still have my dad's Tyco CN F7, ya it's 30+ years old and still runs, but i don't use her anymore.. the cars were okay, and yep the buildings were cool, still got one onthe layout now

[Anonymous]

My wife said they sold off the toys and now monitor out burglar alarm system. I too have a few of the buildings either by them or under another name. Phil

[Anonymous]

Yes, 40hrs is what TYCO actually DESIGNED them to run. I have a TYCO depot on my layout and it's okay. TYCO freight cars suck. let me explain- plastic wheels and trucks which make them pull hard and they have truck mounted couplers which cause a derailment when you back up.

QUOTE: AHHHHH! The good old pancake motor! They always died a fast death do to heat.

Or the gears went out. TYCO's powertorque motor sheared those skinny gears right off.

[jecorbett]

When I got back into the hobby in the 1970s, I thought the Tyco stuff was way cool. I bought a whole bunch of bright yellow UP hoppers with red lettering. That was really prototypical wasn't it. I also got their Amtrak set with an F-unit on the lead and lighted cars with silohuetted passengers in the windows. I must have spent a fortune before I learned the difference between toy trains and model railroads.

[Soo Line fan]

The structure kits are nice, especially the center street series. I have the whole set on my layout plus some of the others. The cars need the couplers to be body mounted and the trucks replaced with Athearn to be useable. The pancake motor is another story; I think they found the armature inside a slot car somewhere. The best thing is to put the body on a Athearn chassis.

Jim

[Anonymous]

The TycoHO products were originally Mantua. Tyler sold everything to Tyco, which he was connected with. When the quality of the engines declined, he bought the tooling back , improved them & put out a good running engine until he decided to go to China. They couldn't seem to get things right over there & because of the competition they went under. Lifelike now has the tooling & is putting out a pretty good product. As far as the buildings go, Most if not all are available under various names

[emdgp92]

Tyco's drive unit...well, sucks. I've had good luck repowering the RF16s with F9 chassis from Bachmann. As for Tyco freight cars, if you remove the couplers from the trucks and body-mount them, they aren't that bad.

[wjstix]

A Tyco trainset was my introduction to HO back in 1971. Tyco was owned by Mantua, Mantua had been around since the forties, then somewhere in I think the sixties began selling their cheaper stuff under the Tyco brandname (Mantua's owner was named Tyler - TYler CO = TYCO). Eventually it became just Mantua again. The Tyco 4-6-2 I got in 1971 was a RTR version of the Mantua kit that had been around since the Korean War years.

[fmilhaupt]

QUOTE: Originally posted by emdgp92

Tyco's drive unit...well, sucks. I've had good luck repowering the RF16s with F9 chassis from Bachmann. As for Tyco freight cars, if you remove the couplers from the trucks and body-mount them, they aren't that bad.

A couple of their cars can be used for some pretty nice rivet-counting-level kitbashes, too. The new Prototype Railroad Modeling journal that Speedwitch Media began publishing late last year has an article on kitbashing a Minneapolis and St. Louis URTX reefer that uses the sides from a Tyco reefer.

Just shy of 20 years ago, there was a Cyril Durrenburger article in MR on how to kitba***he Tyco/Mantua steel gondola into a prototypically accurate gondola for a few railroads. I seem to remember the Wheeling & Lake Erie and the Texas & Pacific being two of the roads that had cars that the Tyco gon worked well to make. The cars he covered in the article were all very easy projects to make into highly-accurate models.