please post your favorite tyco locomotive or car!
mine is the santa fe “super 630”
Their C-430. Pretty decent locomotive, considering. I think I’ve still got my New Haven one in a box in the garage.
Of course, when the Bowser ones came out, I bought several. But the inspiration was that old Tyco.
Ed
PS: I also rather like their operating hopper car. Not as elegant as the Ulrich triple, but, from what I hear, very reliable. And sorta kinda almost looking like a real car. For the kids, I wouldn’t mind having a string of about 20 that would dump their loads smoothly. FOR THE KIDS!
Honestly… The “Old Dutch Cleanser” covered hopper car.
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Everytime I see one it reminds me of being a kid a Christmas. I should buy one someday.
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-Kevin
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I’m not very fond of Tyco but I do like their operating twin hoppers and the old 40’ hopper painted as Reading Blue Coal. Bowser has done that car in recent years too.
Roger Huber
Deer Creek Locomotive Works
Yeah, the operating “clamshell” hoppers. No contest.
My only Tyco Rolling Stock,
Did a similar conversion job to the one Cody did in MR this month. In this case I removed the cast metal frame with the poorly executed air tanks etal and replaced it with a frame and weight from an Athearn Box Car. Removed all the cast grabs and replaced with wire Tichy Grabs and replaced the sill steps (not stirrups Cody), with A-Line sill steps. Painted and decaled.
Rick Jesionowski
1890 4-6-0 Sante Fe. My first engine when I got into the hobby as an adult.
Paul
Have 32 of them.
Hello all,
The 34-foot Operating Hopper!
I have about 24 of them that have I upgraded to body mounted Kadee’s and HGC trucks. Six of them are fitted with the covered hopper option.
These are the basis of my entire pike.
Hope this helps.
Post Script: My second would be the crane and tender.
j.j.
I still run a few Tyco cars. All of them have body mounted Kadee couplers. The Morton Salt cover hopper fits right in with my covered hoppers from Athearn. I overlook the fact that it has both hatch and trough opening on the top. The piggyback flatcars which were my favorites as a kid have had the trailer anchors and the brake wheel removed and are now standard flatcars. The auto carriers had the auto racks removed and had a fifth wheel added and have become intermodal trailer on flatcars which carry a single trailer. The Virginian hopper is just another hopper. So what if it’s the wrong livery. I still use the tankers just to have more cars.
I don’t use any of the boxcars because they had roof walks but the 60’ Union Pacific was my favorite. I used to love the stock cars because I could put the cows inside.
I have a couple of the short flatcars with the pipe loads. One day I’m going to buy a bunch of them to form a pipeline train because who orders just three of those pipes. I think a dozen of them in a row would look cool.
I still occasionally run the Amtrak passenger cars as the Coast Starlight. The locomotive died just months after I got it so it was replaced with an Atlas locomotive. I used to love my Santa Fe F7 but it only lasted a few short years. I have bought some used replacements for it but they have all been dead on arrival.
I almost forgot the crane and tender. It has some extra decals on it.
Hello all,
Great idea!
Hope this hellps.
I was kinda fond of that one, too, although for me, it was all about the price. I dropped into a hobby shop that I visited only infrequently, and they had that car, laying on a shelf, with no box. It had been on display in the window, and the sun had warped the body. “How much for this one?”, I asked. “Oh, that. You can have it.” I did buy a couple of other items, but I saw some possibilities in that damaged car. I had recently purchased, via mail order from Hobbies For Men, a Bachmann Santa Fe Northern. I wasn’t a Santa Fe modeller, but being Canadian and aware that the CNR had the largest roster of Northerns, I jumped at the chance to get one at a reasonable price, and thought that I could Canadianise it somewhat, although as a freelance locomotive rather than CNR.
I added a few details, then built a vestibule cab over the existing cab, cutting away any vestiges of the original that were visible through the windows. The giant Santa Fe tender got shortened, and I then combined it with part of the covered hoppers body shell to create the rolled bottom edge, as seen on a centipede-type tender. The original trucks were modified and then combined, and, after filing off all of the detail except the journals, I overlayed the assembly with one-piece styrene sideframes, traced from a photo ad of a PFM model in an issue of MR. I added springs (made from the covers of Kadee coupler boxes) and added wire spring hangers. The front truck on the tender is from an MDC, or perhaps Athearn, passenger car…
My latest favourites from Tyco are a number of gondolas. I had one only, which I had put in MoW ser
Tyco Royal Blue, drive was utter rubbish, but she is such a good looking toy train. I have 2 of them, one is mint with its seperate sale box. I have cleaned it up and ran it about 3 feet to prove it runs. Its in my display case. I have a second one that looks almost as nice and will get a NWSL gear box an can motor in place of the smoke unit so she runs as good as she looks. The Royal Blue holds this honor as it was my first train set as a young child. My grandparents got me the Deluxe Royal Blue set from Sears via mail order when I was very young. While the drive lasted only a day(killed it the day I go it!), I later got another one once I was old enough to know how to constantly clean and maintain the motor. Here soon I will make one run they way it should have back then. Other than the lack of smoke, it will look like a standard RB. Where the smoke cam is in the frame is where I will put the NWSL idler gear box. Mike
My favorite TYCO cars are the Center Flo and the PS-2 covered hoppers,and any of the flat cars.Names oncars do not matter as they will be stripped and repainted for my Grande Valley Railway or one of my friends free lanced railroads.All cars also get body mounted couplers.
I have 40 Tyco Flat cars made up for Southern Pacific’s MUG Trains.
My favorite is the 50ft anniversary Tyco boxcar.
Similar here. The Morton Salt car, with the Ajax car a close second.
In my case, I would have to say their GP20s and the cabooses that were sometimes bundled with them. They are the backbone of my freelanced railroad’s fleet. (Eight of both the 20s and cabooses.)
On the engines, I only used the shells and the add-on metail handrails from the 20s. (The drive and the stanchions are from an BB Athearn GP35.)
The cabooses have a set of Walthers Cushion coupler pockets added to the underframe and the trucks were changed to Athearn caboose trucks. But I still used the shell and underframe.
There are a couple of versions of the 40’ gondola from Mantua/Tyco that have been kitbashers’ delights for decades. I will go with the 50’ flatcar with removable “wood” deck that is one of their better detailed items, and again, readily kitbashed or improved.
Dave Nelson