I disagree on the Tyco trains. They got a lot of folks including me started in model railroading. They were affordable and mine ran pretty well.
Enjoy
Paul
d.c.c.
Haha, how about “lump tunnels” like the one on the package there? Every time I’ve seen them, they look absolutely terrible.
How about Lone Star’s old rubberband drive N Scale locomotives? In all fairness, these did actually give rise to N Scale as we know it.
Having a laugh aren’t you. How do you figure DCC fits the “terrible/hilarious/just plain bad ideas” when it has been gaining steam for well over 20 years now and most loco’s are either DCC ready or have DCC installed. Uh huh, thought so. Enjoy yourself.
Yet those “lump tunnels” got Life-Like into the ice chest business (now called Lifoam)
Don’t be dissing the Tyco brand - yeah, some of their stuff was rubbish, but lots could be upgraded to nice looking daily runners with some effort, and the structure kits improved with some paint and rework.
Sadly, their line of freight cars with fantasy corporate branded liveries was in retrospect pretty silly, although probably very effective in catching a parent’s/grandparent’s eye when looking for a neat gift for little Johnny’s trainset at the local Woolworths or Korvettes.
Of course, in today’s modeling marketplace, no serious manufacturer would ever consider producing freight cars in fantasy corporate liveries…
Gotta stick up for the NMRA horn hook couplers - as weird looking as they are. Prior to them, each manufacturer kind of did their own thing. When the NMRA developed the horn hooks (early 60s???), many companies adopted them and all of a sudden we could buy to much more equipment that could be readily used with one another.
Even with the advent of KDs, horn hooks were still a god send for the hobby. After all, they were “free” with Athearn and other kits, where as KDs were pricey (for that time of course). I still recall my first venture into installing KDs back in the early 1970s. It took me years to convert all my cars, and always had a couple of connector ones in service with NMRA on one end, KDs on the other.
Folks, neither Tyco or horn hook couplers were a bad thing for the hobby. I was wanting to hear about seriously awful things like the asbestos plaster that only few remember. Or the silly-named railroads/industries.
Yes, there have been some railroads or businesses on layouts that are puns or a play on words, but I don’t think they ever really died out.
There is a guy who posts on another site whose railroad is the Ruphe & Tumbelle and for the images I have seen of it, it is a really nice layout.
One of the guys who posts here has a liqour store on his layout, Beaver Liqours. I can’t help but to chuckle everytime I see it. If you just look around you still see it.
One thing I always thought that was bad were any of the Tyco automated items; operating crane unloader, coal unloading trestle, log dump unloader.
Rubber-band diesel engines broke too often from overheating. Good thing many of us got “free replacements” when we got our teeth-braces!
BLI’s animated Water tower has to be a silly idea.
While quite new to this hobby (OK obsession or 2nd mortgage), I would also add plastic wheel sets. They along with horn-hook couplers are just awful/
When I was a kid, I had a “voice control” thing for my Lionels. It had a “microphone” that you would talk into. It wasn’t really a microphone, just a momentary-off switch that would open on a bit of air pressure when you spoke into it. It interrupted the voltage to the track, thus triggering a cycle of the Lionel engine’s “E-unit.” So, if the train was running and you said “Stop,” it would stop. Unfortunately, of course, the E-unit would then back up the engine on the next cycle, so to maintain the illusion you had to tell the microphone “Reverse” or something, although, of course, saying “Beer” or anything else would have the same effect.
Ken,Those X2F couplers was needed in their day and when properly body mounted they worked quite well.
You see back then we had couplers,couplers every where that wouldn’t mate with other brands and most worked quite poorly.
The X2F was a good idea at the time but,the X2F turned bad when companies like Tyco,Mantua,Life Like and other like manufacturers cheapen them and placed them on the trucks instead of the body.
We have crappy couplers on the market that’s worst then the X2F.
I had both the vertical launch missile, complete with a gantry tower that pulled back and a crane to lower the missile on to its launch pad, and the flatcar mounted “tactical” missile that I could shoot across my layout and hit … the exploding box car!
Far from being bad ideas, though, these were good toys that added play value to my Lionels. Is a giraffe car stupid? No, not if it brings a smile to the face of a child.
The Yard Dog track cleaning thing it had a round cotton roll in front to clean the rails not enought weight to clean.
IMHO any track/roadbed system that has propriatory fastners. Makes it difficult to interface with other manufacturers. Good for first company, bad for hobby.
Dave
Love those Tyco brand name cars, nicely painted and as a buyer for a grocery chain ( since retired ) I dealt with all of the companies listed. I may have to look some of them up next time I’m at a train show.
Tyco 2-6-6-2 logging engine. MR said it would be a classic on every model railroad as I remember but sales never took off.