Tyco HO Trains

It may as well have been me on the cover, entirely enthralled by my HO train. If I recall correctly (and that's a big "if"), the set I received was No. T6521A, the Freight Hustler, in the PRR scheme. Hard to believe that a complete train set was only $25! Not long afterward I got No. 862, the automatic coal unloading trestle with operating hopper, $6.98.

When I was allowed to commandeer an old disused ping-pong table (a.k.a. a four-by-eight sheet of ply), I started my first genuine railroad empire—as much as an oval and one siding can constitute an empire, anyway. My most vivid memory of that layout was the mountain on one end, which started as window screen stapled to a wooden frame. I kept wanting to make the mountain bigger, and so I kept piling on more and more plaster of Paris; I think it must have weighed 60-80 pounds by the end of the exercise.

Tyco trivia: After changing names and ownership several times between 1930 and 2001, Tyco was in 1988 the third largest toy manufacturer in the US; as a company it now no longer exists. Mattel sells RC products under the Tyco R/C brand name, and Model Power still sells a small assortment of model trains that were released under the original Mantua name in the late 90s.

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