He’s got a new post up on Hi-Rail Times, [8D]
http://www.coilcouplers.com/hirail/hirail00.shtml and you might want to look at this soon. It is a bit critical of the current toy train companies, all of them, so it may be taken down or even retracted sometime soon. He’s got all the “yer dang tootin” and stuff like that in there that we have come to know and love. What a writer !!! This man should be doing poetry, or putting his thoughts to music. Anyway, I think he makes some neat points, and just maybe he gives some hints about what just might be seen in TMCC 2.
[:D]
It’s junk. The man has lost it. If he really ever had it. He totes the greatness of Lionel’s TMCC in earlier rants and then trashes it all in one posting. He trashes DCS which is in poor taste because “he” or “his cronnies” can’t get it to work. What a joke. CC used to be amusing but lately it’s sounds like someone who has a kegger party and then let’s the angry drunk at the keyboard, only to have the apologizing drunk on next.
So while were ranting Clyde how 'bout this… REAL INFORMATION. Not just vaque ideas and hints. Your becoming less and less significant. You have nothing really to say that matters anymore. Until Lionel feeds some REAL information or I guess maybe when Lionel PR wants to add something of importance, just keep copying reviews from the forums. That is the most helpful part of the site.
It’s just a rant. He probably needed to vent. Not the best written “steam release” I have read…
I believe it is indeed a grade A rant. TMCC2 is described by what Clyde
says isn’t in TMCC and DCS. It is meant to provoke, both thought
and the leadership of at least one company :). No pain, no gain
apparently.
It does neither. It is just garbage. The vaque hints if that’s what it’s supposed to be is getting tiresome.
Well, Clyde does rant on, doesn’t he? I read what his little tirade several times, and still don’t see the point of it all. Wants toy trains to do more? Geez! Too bad he can’t get his DCS to work because I’ve found that the system does just about everything you could ever want or realistically make use of in a toy train control system (and a bit more, in my opinion). Just what is the fellow looking for? And who does he think is going to shell out the money to pay for whatever it is that he wants?
But ya gotta love Clyde! He’s about as innovative a shill as I’ve ever seen in the hobby, and he has a captive audience. He could stand to slack off on the “dangs” though–needs a new and somewhat less backwoods identity feature or tag.
Go get 'em, Clyde. . . whoever it is you’re trying to get! [;)]
The only thing that DCS is lacking right now and TMCC isn’t that much better at is controlling animated cars. Lionel has done a few, cabooses, Aquairum cars come to mind. Once DCS enters the operating car arena then it will be doing much more. That is about the only useful thing in the rant is more control over operating cars.
Oh, I think that the point is that there are things we might really enjoy having in the toy train world, features and ideas, that we have not even thought of yet. And, maybe TMCC 2 will incorporate those features. There have been other threads in the past on various forums that ask what one might want from a command control system and lots of people say they have all they want right now. BUT, what if there are great ideas that we have not thought of yet? What if they were available? Would we still say we have all we need right now? Remember the rotary dial telephone? We thought we had the pinnacle of high tech communication features!! We did not need or want for anything more advanced or feature-laiden.
Anyway, realizing that I may be in the minority of the people who read this forum, I agree with Clyde’s assessment of how toy trains could, and I agree that they SHOULD, be more train-like. More real to true train operations. As I said, it is just my opinion and other people might have another way of looking at the same situation. To each his own.
Clyde speaks, more or less, for Neil Young, or those close to Neil Young, IMO. If you want corporate clarity and non-mystical takes on things, you’re asking for it from the wrong guys. These guys are artists and visionaries. Spreadsheets aren’t their tools.
My take is that Neil Young is quite impatient with Lionel not moving ahead with technical improvements, particularly the TMCC enhancements his group has been working on. He’s none too pleased with the general focus on competing by lawsuits that has become the rule rather than the exception in the industry. It’s not that complicated to me, but perhaps I’m wrong. 
Remember the rotary dial telephone?
Not only do I remember them it’s what I’ll answer on if you call Steeltoys… My wife and kiddies all have wireless, cell, call mystifiing, electronic wizbangs gadgets but I’ll speak to you on a genuine 1950’s version black bakelite with 3 foot fixed coil cord…
Yer Dang Tootin’, I run my trains with them black ZW handles and my business with a genuine Western Electric [swg]
"Remember the rotary dial telephone?
Not only do I remember them it’s what I’ll answer on if you call Steeltoys… My wife and kiddies all have wireless, cell, call mystifiing, electronic wizbangs gadgets but I’ll speak to you on a genuine 1950’s version black bakelite with 3 foot fixed coil cord…
Yer Dang Tootin’, I run my trains with them black ZW handles and my business with a genuine Western Electric "
If anyone calls me, I’ll answer on any one of 11 of them strategically placed around the house. Yes, 11, that’s correct, although they don’t all ring. They’re all but 3 Western Electrics, too.
You might even catch me in the middle of running trains with my CAB-1 and hoping that the next version of TMCC will show up sometime soon.
Ben
P.S. Western Electric never made a bakelite telephone. The E-1, F-1, and G-1 type handsets are the only bakelite parts WE ever made. 302 and 500 type telephones both had thermoplastic shells, and all older telephones were brass. The only all-bakelite telephones I know of are the Automatic Electric types 34 and 40. Yer dang tootin’, I have one of them, too.
Yeah, this hobby really needs more electronic doo-dads that have be sent back to the service center several times so they run as they were suppose to out of the box.
The hobby needs $2,000 locomotives… it won’t matter because those who don’t think prices are too high never pay list: they wait for blowouts and buy mailorder. More local shops close, meaning fewer and fewer newcomers since local shops tend to be where they go at first. Meanwhile the median adge of the hobby gets older, fatter, more bald and a lot more demanding and spoiled rotten. Meanwhile the kids that could have been interested in this hobby 10 years ago, aren’t in it.
Wasn’t that Lionel catalog a few years ago a dang hoot with young kids holding a $1,200.00 steam engine. YEAH, that happens all the time. Wonder what those folks were smokin’ when that catalog idea was suggested?
I for one would like to see no more scale trains or no more digital control until it is cheap, affordable and reliable. There have been more variety of scale sized trains made in the past 10 years that the enitre variety of trains made during the entire preceeding period.
Whatever happened to imagination anyways? My affordable non-scale trains look pretty darn real to me and I can’t be bothered counting the rivets on my little 027 box cars to be sure they’re correct. Nor do I suspect any of us a generation ago counted rivets or wondered if the Helicopter Launching Car was prototypical???
I thought I was nuts… the adult scale operation end of this hobby makes me seem like the most sane person out there.
It’s funny with the Neil Young reference, because he is well noted for being one of the die-hard hold outs AGAINST technology in the recording business… while everyone else and their mother has gone digital in the studio (and has for years) Neil still insists on analog.
So I suppose the next new innovations will be:
LionSmell: Trains emit real diesel fume smells or actual
This hobby has never been cheap nor affordable except for the upper middle class. The only reason so many people owned three rail trains in the 1950s was that families were willing to sacrifice half a week’s pay to buy a train set. That’s no longer the case. Whizzier toys like the XBox don’t cost half a week’s salary for most people. Toy trains are fun and kids and adults mostly love them. But they are probably never going to be cheap and affordable, IMO. Neither are large scale (G) trains either. Only HO and N are affordable, but not to kids of 12 years of age who don’t earn enough from household chores to buy $100 locomotives with DCC without Mom and Dad’s help. So this is a hobby that requires adult intervention financially, just like everything else. People choose to spend $500 on XBox and Playstation plus DVDs but will not spend that on toy trains, for the obvious reasons that the play value is less and kids aren’t asking for it.
Lionel, and others are trying to serve both ends of the market. There are several $100 or so locos in the new Lionel catalog along with the three or four $1,000-2,000 locos. Why would any sensible vendor only try to appeal to one end of the market? Complaining about Lexus because not everything is a Hyundai or low end Toyota doesn’t make a convincing argument to me. If there were bundles of money to be made selling $85 locos in three rail, someone would be doing it already. There isn’t.
I just got done reading Clyde’s “rant”. Wow. He couldn’t have been sober when he wrote that! Some have said that he’s starting to sound desperate, and after reading that, I would have to agree. Maybe Lionel really is on its last legs under the current ownership.
And what’s with all the stuff about wanting more ozone? Can motors have been the prime mover in Lionel engines for more than a decade. You’d think he would be used to going without ozone by now. To borrow a phrase from Hank Hill, “That boy ain’t right.” [%-)]
And the sequel:
CLYDE COIL ENTERS REHAB
Founder of CCA escorted by concerned
friends to local facility…
by D. Railer
August 28, 2005
CCA founder Clyde Coil entered into rehab last night in the company of friends, some of them CCA writers. Coil was reported in fair condition after being found sleeping with a 671 turbine locomotive on the roof of CCA headquarters.
Mumbling about ozone repeatedly and complaining about the lack of realism in today’s world, Mr. Coil appeared to be confusing reality with modeling and was not communicating directly with this writer. At one point of lucidity, Mr. Coil said “Yer gonna have to make these things work better than they do now.” It was not clear what “things” Clyde was referring to.
Anyone wishing to send encouragement or support to Mr. Coil during this time can send a message to info@coilcouplers.com.
We thank you for your continued support.
I like Clyde and his newspaper. I like toy trains and I like the idea that some people are trying to make them even better than they are now. I like the fact that there are trains priced throughout the spectrum from less expensive to most expensive. I don’t care who does or does not play with trains or want to play with trains. If more kids play with XBox and less with trains, there will be less demand for trains and the prices will come down. I like trains and I am happy about trains. Some people seem to be a little sad about train stuff, and that’s a shame. Maybe more time playing with your trains, and less time playing with your computer keyboard would help get you out of your funk. By the way, look around you next time you hop in the car to drive somewhere. Look at what other people are driving these days and ask yourself how many of those people actually own those fancy cars and big SUV’s. Imagine the interest that accumulates over the life of those 7 year car loans. Then drive over to your buddy’s house and look at his or her $3,000 TV set. The point is that plenty of people are plenty happy to spend plenty of money on plenty of things. If you personally don’t want a locomotive costing $1,000 then don’t buy one. I personally think that spending more than $500 on a TV set is absolute absurdity. so, maybe you and I will have different TV sets and different locomotives. That’s fine, really, that’s fine. So let’s look on the happier side of things and let’s not get wrapped up in sad stuff or worrying about what someone else is buying.
From my earlier post…
Boy I nailed that one.
People who want to enjoy and understand Clyde Coil’s melodrama need to remember
that when you go to see Hamlet you don’t dismiss the whole play because you don’t believe
in ghosts or there isn’t perfect correlation with reality as we know it. 
Clyde speaks, more or less, for Neil Young, or those close to Neil Young<
I think it is Neil Young, regardless of anyone refuting it.
Clyde Coil / Neil Young / Rocker& Drug user - I cannnot discern any difference.
Clyde has definitely been drinking too much of something, but I don’t think it’s coffee! [;)]