HO Scale Tru-Track?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Here’s a question for those of you older than me…and I’m not a spring chicken. I was looking at an old copy of MR from 1963 and saw a ful page ad for Tru-Scale. They show a line of sectional HO track with plastic ties. Not the old stuff with the milled wood roadbed that everybody knew them for. I did a quick search and found some pictures like this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a5/ba/a3/a5baa36407d1a597595d3b0e61fa873c.jpg

My question is…does anybody know anything about this stuff? Did they actually make it? Did they import it from somewhere?

Also, interestingly, their ad says “Tru-Scale, a subsidiary of Aurora Plastics Corp.” So they became part of Aurora who made slot cars and a zillion plastic model kits?

Of course, none of this is important, but it did pique my curiosity.

Jim

2

I am certainly older than you. Kid.

I remember Tru-Scale track. I even bought a circle of 20" radius roadbed with ties (no rail). But I don’t remember that stuff. Maybe I blinked.

It REALLY looks like Atlas made it. It looks like Snap Track. The “switch machines” look like Snap Track.

But I have no answers to your four questions.

Ed

3

I agree, it sure looks like Atlas Snap Track. But if you look closely, the ties are slightly different. Unless they revised their molds at some point.

I wish I was a kid. [*-)]

Jim

4

5

Thanks for showing the pic!

Jim

6

Well, I’m only 61 and I remember it, but I started woring in the local hobby shop at age 13…

Not sure if Atlas had any part in manufacturing it, but it was different. Ties were staggered, controllers worked different, etc.

My own layout at that time was TruScale wood roadbed track.

I worked in the hobby industry from 1970 until 1982, and I know this much about TruScale, it was sold, and resold, and divided up, and resold, and so on many times over.

As most of you know the plastic kits went to Trains Miniature and then to Walthers when they bought TM.

The wood freight cars also made it to Walthers and later Ye Old Huff and Puff.

The wood roadbed track went in other directions and was available from Trout Creek Engineering, who also made BK turnout kits, for many years. They seem to be gone now?

Aurora Plastics was also buying, selling, being bought and being sold by that time in history. I have no specific info on how long they owned TruScale, but their move into trains in general only lasted thru the 60’s and very early 70’s.

Sheldon

7

Model Power and Life-Like both had very similar track like Atlas in the late 50’s.

I had some of the TruScale with the ballasted roadbed and track for display only. Could not afford to build a layout with it in the 50’s, but I used their 24’’ plain milled roadbed for My curves to hand lay the Atlas track and fiber ties that the rest of the layout consisted of. I was already in My teens in the mid-50’s.

A 1959 pic’ of part of My two level layout in parents basement:

I was a big fan of John Allen back then:

Take Care! [:D]

Frank

8

I remember it - the ties were molded so they were not perfectly square, like the Atlas track. The advertisers it as more realistic. The track system was compatible with Atlas Snap Track.

9

The December 1962 Model Railroader “In the News” column said “Aurora Plastics Corp. has acquired Tru-Scale Models, Inc. Augie Kniff, model railroad pioneer and founder of T-S, will stay on to manage this division for Aurora.”

The January 1962 MR has Tru Scale’s ad for the plastic switch (turnout). It appears the more complete line of plastic sectional track, terminal track (lighted with hobo!), re-railer track, lighted bumper, and so on came out in 1963. But the big deal for their plastic tied turnout was that it was continuous rail with closed frog pivot, and had a built in electrical polarity switch-over built into the switch machine. One could argue they were butting heads with the electrical contact deficiencies of the Atlas “snap track” turnout as well as the wiring challenges of the older Atlas traditonal turnouts, while retaining the derailment avoidance of the traditional Tru-Scale turnouts. They also had a block control system and in November 1962 advertised that you could have a four-block sectional layout ready to roll in one evening. The photo showed a happy youngster, suggesting “so easy even a child can do it.” Of course now we realize that the claim should be “so complex only a child can do it.”

Speaking personally I sure could use a happy youngster to help wire my layout if it could be done in an evening.

Dave Nelson

10

Looking at the photos above, I’m not seeing a hint of a “closed frog pivot”. The only pivoting I see is the switch points. I do recall that their earlier non-plastic track switches had a central pivot and that it closed the frog gap:

And the also-noted built in electrical polarity switch-over would not seem to be related to track polarity, as there doesn’t appear to be a way for the connection to happen.

I do see the Atlas-style switch machine “mover piece” that moves the machine farther from the track. And I see that the ties on the track switches don’t have that rather nice staggered effect that the straight track does.

11

We had 2 turnouts on our old layout that looked exactly like those. However, the control box was a large black plastic square with two buttons, one for normal and one for reverse, and there was also little window in between the buttons where a piece of plastic moves side to side that had pictures of the two positions molded into it, so you could look and see which way the turnout was last set (unlike the blue button Atlas boxes that you slide and then press). These may have been Tyco, or something - all but one of the rest on the layout were Atlas Snap Track and those had a different control box. These two could daisy chain together like the Atlas ones, but they were much larger and couldn;t connect right to Atlas, so we always had a short pair of wires linkign the chain of Atlas boxes to these two.

Aurora’s foray into trains also includes N scale - they called them “Postage Stamp” trains, most were made by Minitrix. That was our first N scale train set, one with the lil’ Donkey 0-6-0 which was very much a European style loco.

–Randy

12

So ultimately, someone spent a good deal of time and money developing that line of track that wasn’t around all that long, relatively speaking. I wonder if the deal with Aurora allowed them to make those plastic products? But apparently, that arrangement didn’t last too long since, as Sheldon said, Tru-Scale was sold, resold and broken up. The same with Aurora too.

Thanks for all of your comments. It was interesting to learn that.

I wonder if any of the old Aurora HO buildings will ever show up again? It’s hard to trace the history of every kit, but I think most of them last appeared under the Tyco name.

Jim

13

I do see that in the photos but it is not shown in the ad photos in MR. This makes me suspect that their were changes made – since later they also stopped advertising the “continuous rail” claim.

Dave Nelson

14

Many of the old structures show up over and over as the toooling get sold, and sometimes modified. Revell, Tyco, AHM, etc structures are in many cases still available from someone else, likely Heljan or Walthers.

The track - well, once one company had an idea for easy to use sectional track, everyone jumped ont he bandwagon and the hobby is just not big enough to support dozens of different brands of track. Outside of trains set stuff, Atlas by far ended up the most popular.

–Randy

15

Thruscale had wood kits for cars too, these were sold to Campbell at one point.

16

Sort of. Heljan doesn’t seem to have any presence right now in the US. They seem to be concentrating more on European trains. Most of the Revell buildings haven’t been on the market for years. It’s my understanding they may never be run again by anyone. Walthers has some older kits in their line, So does Model Power (who is now part of MRC). But as far as I know, nobody has any of the old Aurora buildings.

Jim

17

Structures - The original six TruScale structures (wild west theme) later went to Train Miniature.

The other TruScale plastic structures (modern school, factory, suburban house, etc) were tooled and produced by Aurora and marketed by Aurora after they sold TruScale.

The Revell structures - (bakery, newspaper, farm house, barn, farm out buildings, station, school house, suburban house, summer theater, maintenance shed, interelocking tower, freight station, yard office, sand house, engine house, etc) have been passed around quite a bit.

It seems no one after Revell has controlled or produced all the items, but various items have been produced by TYCO, AHM/IHC, ConCor, and others.

I have most of them on my layout in some form or another…

The Revell buildings represent extremely fine detail for their 1958-1960 tooling.

Most remained available well into the 70’s or early 80’s under one name or another.

Today at the Greenburg Show, I saw a number of those items “new old stock”, some in original Revell boxes…

Sheldon

18

The switches show a tie arrangement common in Europe, but not in the US. That could be a sign pointing towards European manufacture of the track. My best guess would be Rivarossi.

19

Yes, they still hold up amazingly well. Especially the fine brickwork.

I don’t know if this is true, but I was told by a pretty reliable source that the Revell kits will probably never be run again. He said the way Revell designed those molds, they can’t just be stuck into any molding machine. That it would take some modifications and that would raise the cost beyond what most folks would want to pay. The last I heard, they were sitting somewhere in China.

Thankfully, as Sheldon says, a lot of them are still pretty easy to find at shows or online.

Jim

20

That is very possible.

But it is also possible that Aurora made the track. They had extensive injection molding abilty. At the same time, Aurora was developing HO slot cars, so making HO train track would have used similar tooling and equipment.

Sheldon