Join the discussion on the following article:
The Roundhouse: Episode 19
7/3/14
Just watched round house about tin plate. The subject of imagination while running the trains reminded me of the movie scene from “The Adams Family” when he went to the attic to run his O gauge train and the shot of the engineers face in the cab as he roared by Mr. Adams. For me that scene sums up what I imagine as I run my trains over the rails. Imagine looking forward from the control seat as the landscape goes by.
Why are Lionel, Marx and other Tinplate and post war O scale trains and accessories accepted as toy trains and held up with such esteem. But early HO scale Tyco, Mantua and Athearn trains with hook horn couplers, Lionel, Life-Like and Bachmann accessories not even recognized in the same toy train circles? Just looking at the Classic Toy Train web site, the magazine only focuses on O and S scale toy trains? One of the very first articles on the web site is about a 1961 Lionel car. Athearn was producing HO trains in earnest by 1958. It seems we always see the stories about the large Lionel collection toy train layouts, but we’ve never seen a large HO scale Athearn toy train layout? I’m talking about a HO layout were everything is still equipped with X2F couplers, Atlas brass rail and snap switches, Bachmann pressure operated crossing gates, Plasticville structures and Lionel HO scale operating search lights. Why is Lionel help up and early HO shunned? Same could be said for early N scale or TT scale?
Being Australian this discussion immediately takes me to a book called “Spring Spark and
Steam” (Eveleigh Press) which goes back to when we could not import easily from USA and many small companies digressed into toy train manufacture. Alas, they are no longer in existence but some of their trains are.
While I do not count/pick nits (Close is good enough - and other appropriate remarks), to me (MY OPINION) “tin plate” is ANYTHING that is not an actual “scale” model. “SCALE” in this case meaning ratio of model to prototype. Power distribution has (next to) nothing to do with if a model is tin plate or not - think here any of the electrified districts of any of the Class 1’s. While I may simplify it tooooo much, toy or scale.
What no ROUNDHOUSE OVERTIME! One thing I think the boy’s missed was the smell or fragrance of the electric motors! There is that certain smell of the motors and maybe old grease that brings back memories, also. We as humans remember a certain smell even though we have not sensed it in 20 or more years. If we have only smelled it once in our lifetime, it has been locked in forever. Like the smell of old vacuum tubes that haven’t been turned on for years. Remember always let you imagination run wild!!