Post by highwayman97 on Jul 8, 2018 16:36:37 GMT -5
Hello I am new the Depot, but have been involved with Tyco US-1 for around 8 years and bought my first Tyco train stuff just last month!
My interest is in combining trains with model roadways on table top layouts and I began doing this in the 1980s with British Tri-ang Railways, and Minic Motorways. I also added in the various buildings that Tri-ang sold too.
This was enjoyable as no one else was doing it back then. We even had the crucial rubber insulating strip made to make our Minic track work as good as new!
www.tri-ang.co.uk/Tri-ang%202011/James%20D%20Alresford%202002.jpg That is me, in red, nearest to the camera
That was such good fun that I thought it would be a good idea to attempt something similar with Playcraft Railways, Highways and buildings.....
The only issue was that as a system Playcraft Highways was not developed much, so Aurora Grade Crossings were added for some spice! (Aurora MM and Playcraft Highways are fully interchangeable)
Then we aded Aurora intersections too!
Meanwhile my wife bought me a Life-Like High Iron and Burnin' Rubber set and a chum suggested that I do something similar with that. Well although I tried, and even did a couple of shows, I don't really like magnetic sot cars - The can be ridiculously fast and very difficult to make run slow to look good as a roadway. However the idea of combining Life-Like trains and builings with US-1 appealed more, so:
We threw some Faller in too!
Anyway, then a chum stumbled on a video of guy in Germany running his Carrera slot cars in his garden with his LGB and as I owned some LGB and Playmobil we did this....
To be fair, I can't take all the credit. I have a very clever electronics chum who made the stop go modules for the grade crossings and the signal stop modules. Another chum made the Intersection module, whilst a superb engineer made the G scale grade crossings and squeezed modified T Jet chassis into the Playcraft car bodies, so the awful Vibrator type chassis (like early Aurora) could be set aside.
I have some great chums and we have a lot of fun. Others have taken up running Minic with Tri-ang now, so mine has all been sold, but I love my US-1 and my T Jets!
James
