So, my cousin visited today and as usual, we headed down to the layout after a while. I have a very realistic, prototypical layout with the best and latest equipment. That being said, there is nothing wrong with going back to being a crazy kid every once in a while. So, out came the old 1970’s vintage TYCO Amtrak set. This thing ran at full-bore all around the layout for well over an hour ( says something good about my trackwork)… Complete with the typical teen-age antics such as full-throttle reverse/forward slams, putting “matchbox” cars on the track in front of the train, etc… I haven’t laughed that hard in a very long time! So my advice is to just lighten up every once in a while. Run your layout like you would have at 12 years old…( I just turned 45)… . You can put away the TYCO set tomorrow and get back to “serious railroading” after the laughter subsides… Really, try it, good relaxing therapy for anyone going through a “mid-life-crisis”…
there is nothing wrong in letting the kid in us out once in a while and have a train zoom around our layout. Life is too short to be taken serious all the time and if you are having a blast, running an old train set at full speed - well, why not do it?
You ran WHAT? Tycos?! Gasp!! (clutches chest) That’s just crazy talk.
Next thing you’ll probably say is that you DIDN’T develop a switch list, DIDN’T have any other trains in staging, DIDN’T follow train order rules. I’ll bet that train even had (dare I say it?) horn-hook couplers! Didn’t you realize that those Matchbox cars you laid across the tracks aren’t even to scale?
Your layout has been fouled and is unclean! You must immediately cleanse it with disinfectant (diluted 50/50 with matte medium) and beg it to forgive you. You must also purge yourself of any more unprototypical thoughts by scratchbuilding a dining car and coal tipple, setting them up on a custom diorama and photographing them for a competition. Act quickly, there is no time to lose.
Did you give oversized people rides in your hoppers and gons? Or in the Tyco box cars that have doors you can open and close?
Seriously, I need to clean up some trackwork and fix the trucks on that dang baggage car, but I look forward to running my trains around at full speed just to see that it all works.
Oh for crying out loud. That’s it. I’m looking for another forum. You people are just not serious enough. This is exactly why the hobby is dying, you’re not doing it right.
Toy trains at full speed pu-leeze. (Probably didn’t even fit the era.)
I’ve got a 4x 4 oval test track down the cellar that gets a real workout whem the great nephews and neices are visiting. I keep and old Tyco F3 that they run full out. It’s hit the floor a couple of times, but that doesn’t seem to effect it. They build tunnels out of boxes and basically just let their imaginations run wild. And boy, do they have fun. One of the boys keeps looking at some engines in a display case though, and suggesting we should run those guys. Right, like that’s going to happen. I keep telling him we will do that on his 35th birthday.
Oh, my! I agree! Here I struggle in the limited space I have to have a very small, but serious HO layout, and you people have to go and do something like THAT! Full speed? and they stayed onthe track? shows you just how “full speed” Tycos are- grinding along! C’mon Todd…lets start our own serious forum…
Oh my! I FEEL your pain brother! TYCO’s??? even, I with a cheap low-life budget would never think of running those!
Oh, I HAD to read beyond that line…especially to see what “fun” on his serious-all-the-best-layout had to it! I thought having a good layout onto which to have fun was what this hobby was all about! BUt to run Tyco’s at full speed! Even in my childhood I never woulda thunk it!
{To the OP SUrely you know we jest as I assume you were about “childhood fun”}
Okay, now I feel vindicated about re-staging the famous train wreck scene from UNION PACIFIC where a water tower is knocked over on a speeding train, LOL! I used my old AHM V&T “Inyo” and some old AHM 1860 rolling stock and ‘let fly’ for my nephew, a couple of years ago.
The water tower hit the locomotive, bounced off and the train just barrelled on through. My nephew gave me a very baleful look and said, “It didn’t happen that way in the movie, Unc.”
Obviously, you did read enough to get the gist of his post as his track work was mentioned half way through, and not in the context with which you restate it.
He didn’t say any of his stuff was better than yours so lighten up and realize he stated it to contrast how people with ‘expensive’ and ‘best’ equipment generally don’t treat it like toys, yet he had such items available to relive his younger years.
So… jealous much, or just woe-is-you?
OP… sometimes you just have to act silly to stay sane
I have an old tyco loco sitting on the shelf beside me. It’s about 35 years old and hasn’t been run in 31 years. You’ve got my curiosity up but I’d have to get a DC source. I’d also need a couple of bands for the traction tires. Any reliable sources for them?
Ok only problem with that scenario about letting your self be a kid again is first you have to grow up and be a serious adult and I totally refuse to join that club ah ha no way not me…
Okay, I get the Dimitredon chasing the giant spiders (I would too, if I were any kind of self-respecting Paleozoic lizard), but what in the Holy Heck is that thing clinging to the inner roof of the cattle car? Looks like a giant snail that came out of that wonderful B-movie THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD.
Sounds like fun, I mean even the Gorre and Daphitid had a Stegasaurus as a switcher in the yard. [8D] Couldn’t get her to use the ash pit though. [(-D]
You know whats funny, I think I had just as much fun as a kid in the 70’s with my Athearn blue box BN U28 and Tyco rolling stock as I do today with my Bachmann Spectrum with Tsunami controlled by DCC.
It took me a while. I’d like to think I would have thought of a giant snail. But alas, it is part of the landscape framed by the tapir in the cattle car.
