The old Tyco junk of the '70’s was a sign of the times in American history. We had bad hair, very bad fashion, bad industry, bad cars. We had Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis, double-digit inflation, and the energy crisis (with the death of every house being lit up at Christmas). There was an overall malaise that led directly to the advent of Disco music. Basically, nothing made in America was worth the trouble of throwing it away. Across the board, what had previously been good quality was cheapened and over-economized (can anyone forget that 1975 Ford Mustang?) Tyco was simply following suit.
There really are three (or more) Tycos, and it is unfortunate that the “hate” for the worst Tyco gets carried over to the better Tyco.
Initially, Tyco meant nothing more than ready to run versions of Mantua steam engines and cars. They were high-end train set quality, durable and worth the money, and modelers who progressed from train sets to real scale model railroading could still run the Tyco stuff without shame. One problem for the scale modeler was that Mantua/Tyco used an entirely proprietary type of freight car truck mounting.
Then came a line of Tyco that was not taken from Mantua. There was some OK stuff in that line. They had a nice 50’ flat car with a separate deck that looked like wood that in many respects was one of the better plastic flatcars available for many years. The Tyco gondola, which was not the same as the Mantua gondola, has been the subject of advanced kitbashing articles.
They gradually cheapened the line more and more with chrome plated engines, etc. It was meant to be (and priced to be) played with and thrown away.
A Tyco F7 from the early 1960s, or a Tyco metal Pacific or Mikado or 0-6-0 would be a decent piece of equipment. Their phony GG-1? Lowest end train set.
Dave Nelson
Toyco is what we called it. Tyco was more toy than model. Athearn and Roundhouse were the top of the line back then. Remember Revell? They had some model trains as well as the plastic models.
AHM was a sensation when the SP Cab Forward could be had for $25. Athearn had the HI-F drive with the rubberbands that either broke or slipped and stops were an interesting sight.
Most of the motors were a three pole truck mounted thing that would barely pull the locomotive much less a train of any length.
Tyco did have the GP20 a mostly correct model and the Plymouth switcher. I have a Plymouth switcher and with the addition of a paint job, handrails and some detail parts is dosen’t look half bad. It is a Tyco and has just two speeds Dead Stop and Race.
Just a couple of memories of the “Good Ol’ Days”
V:
Marklin was just a leetle more expensive than TYCO was. Don’t you think that might have been part of it? If you want a comparison, try the Lima locos with the pancake motors.
Before CF, Mantua-Tyco wasn’t just adequate stuff, it was very good. Mantua was a huge innovator in the 1950s and 1960s. Did you know that the early Booster had a plastic frame? It didn’t stick around, but it does show how Mantua was always ready to try something new.
Even under CF, Tyco had some good points. The PT truck wasn’t good, no. The rolling stock wasn’t bad. Some cars actually looked nice, like the flatcar. The 40’ box and 40’ tank were in some ways superior to their Athearn counterparts, especially the tank car. The Tyco snap-in trucks with metal axles roll better than most trainset trucks, too, and even the one-piece couplers seem more reliable than some (which isn’t saying a whole lot, I know.)
As some on the Tyco forum have pointed out, Tyco knew how to build a set, adding accessories and little extras to make it more fun. They also had “themed” sets, where other manufacturers still tend to just throw together some cars and assign a random name like “Golden Rails”. Very few manufacturers in HO offered so many operating accessories.
I do think some people were turned off by the running quality, but at the same time I have to wonder if these people would ever have Experienced Trains at all if there wasn’t inexpensiv
[quote user=“C&O Fan”]
Could be, but you couldn’t GIVE me one in place of a newer car!
Tycos were TOYS, not model trains.
Hi,
I certainly don’t “hate” Tyco or any other MR company, but can say that Tyco represents the “toy” image of model railroading that most of us sophisticated modelers abhore. We want our hobby and us to be taken seriously, and the Tyco image doesn’t promote that. In contrast, Athearn - the Athearn of the 60s and 70s - promoted “realism” and quality performance in a low priced format. Hence, they became a major force in the industry.
Mobilman44
Mr. SP:
That’s weird - I have two Tyco Plymouths and they can both run slowly if you don’t advance th throttle to warp speed. You have to keep the wheels clean, and it helps to run them in for a while. They have the usual MU-2 droning sound.
Running in can do a lot for any old loco. I have a Life-like sidewinder F that cost me virtually nothing. It was a little cranky when I acquired it, and I’m not a huge diseasel fan, but it ran fine at top speed, so I cleaned the brass wheels and used it to pull the track cleaning car. This involves continuous running at almost full speed for an hour or so. After a lot of that, the thing will now run along steadily throttled down to 10-30 smph (and probably slower than that; I haven’t really checked). It doesn’t exactly creep, and it does make gear noise, but for what it is…not bad.
For me, I don’t hate Tyco. I think it’s just that I’ve outgrown it. Looking back at the Tyco stuff I used to have, it was basically toy trains, which I’ve outgrown. As I’ve gotten older, I wanted more realism in my trains, not something that speeds around a circle or figure 8 at the speed of sound. Granted, Tyco, for me, brings back good memories of my childhood when I was getting into trains. Before Tyco, I had (and still have), my Lionel. It was Tyco that got me started in HO scale.
Kevin
Tyco was built as a toy train and their quality was very low. Their locomotives were engineered to only run for 72 hours. They built them that way to keep the costs down and once the locomotive motor failed, a parent wasn’t likely to take the train set back to the department store after it ran that long. I don’t hate Tyco, but i don’t try and use to many of them. I do have some tyco rolling stock on the layout, but they are totally re-vamped with metal grab irons, metal foot sturrups, metal wheel sets, and Kadee couplers. I wouldn’t dare use Tyco wheel sets on the layout. They are so light and cheaply made that they usually pop off the track when going thru a turnout…chuck
TYCO trains are so out of date it aint even funny. They were awesome in the 70s becuase that was the standard. Now Athearn, Atlas and the newest generation of models and manufacturers are the industry standard.
mobilman,
I agree with you completely. I have a sentimental fondness for my 1963 F7, but it operates far from realistically. It has a very high starting speed (wheelies may be possible) and it only picks up power from 4 of the 8 wheels. The paint is so-so. I can’t even say it got me started in the hobby.
I remember in the ‘70s that TYCO was hardly ever mentioned in articles; you see it in ads, but they were the “economy” hobby dealers’ ads. I dismissed it as toylike and my F7 resided in a storage box for 30 years. I got it out when my wife asked about setting up a train to run around the Christmas tree. I was happy to have a toy train to accommodate her (she thought it was sweet that it was the same engine and cars that I got for Christmas as a child. It spends most of its time in a box, making an appearance at Christmas.
Is the company still in business?
-Phil
It’s not still in business…Model Power bought the parent Mantua line a few years ago (around 2000 IIRC) and now make some RTR “Mantua Classic” engines and cars.
One thing about Tyco in the seventies is it was available in many places. Department stores and such that wouldn’t carry upper end train stuff would carry Tyco so it was sometimes just more accessible to people - especially if they weren’t regular hobby shop customers.
TYCO may have been a quality name at one time, but when I first got into the hobby as an adult back in the late 1970s, it was bottom of the barrel junk. It looked awful and ran awful. At the time, not having developed a critical eye for quality and not knowing any better, I bought a lot of it. Within I couple years, as I began accumulating good stuff, I began to realize just how poor TYCO equipment was. I wouldn’t even put it on the layout and gave most of it away.
I have fond memories of my first 4x8 layout, running a Tyco 10 wheeler and a Tyco prairie with brass Atlas track and Atlas buidlings. It was a lot of fun. I was hooked on the hobby. I added some MDC cars, built a LaBelle flatcar, and built a Bowser K4. And so it goes.
Enjoy
Paul
TYCO was definetly a mixed bag. Their starter train sets were pure crap, I had that POS GP-20 set, it ran for about a week then died, never to run again, but I later had an F7 than ran well, and later a Tyco labeled Mantua 10 wheeler and a Plymouth that ran like a champ.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t most brands of trains run like crap in the 60’s-70’s?? Even brass?? Unless you spent hours tuning them to run right?
I know as a kid I didn’t even know the difference in brand quality. I just bought the stuff that looked cool. I could have cared less if they were prototypical or not.
Gotta LUV that detail![:P]They actually had pretty crisp paint jobs on them.
Hate? That’s a strong word. Lets just call it a lack of Love for the Product.
To sum it up, the brass track that came with the sets sealed the deal.
You are probably right. I modeled in N scale in the '70s and I was frequently frustrated at the unreliable performance and zero to sixty in milliseconds acceleration. I remember talking to HO modelers who were frustrated with performance, too. The advent of transistor throttles helped a bunch (I still use one of these), but I think you’re right: in that era, manufacturers put less emphasis on operation and more on visual appeal.
From what I’ve seen, both facets get equal emphasis these days. We have better motors and better gears to go with great looking models, and DCC has opened a bunch of new doors. Even the best that TYCO ever offered would not have survived in today’s model railroad market. I do think TYCO contributed to the good of the hobby for a while, but they failed to keep pace and fell by the wayside. It’s the way that business mirrors nature - the creatures/businesses who can’t adapt go extinct.
-Phil
I cannot remember the date but I was about 14 at the time the 2-8-0 choo choo came out, It had smoke and a bridge and tresle with the set. It included a bottle of oil for the smoke unit in the loco and the tiny pancake motor in the tender. Got it for Christmas in the 70’s, I already had some AHM, and the older 8 wheel drive Bachmann’s that seemmed like they could do stump pulling and the first Atlas GP series. But this was the first steamer I owned. The motor lasted about 2 days pulling the five cars on my 4 by 8 layout, smoke unit worked great though. Guess I should not have put the bridge and tresle up on my grass mat.
The AHM C-Liners were great, they did make allot of low bass noise, that was the built in sound unit, it was neat. LOL!
I never hated the older cheaper stuff it had its ups and downs, but it was fun.