This site is being created to preserve some of the earliest examples of plastic diesel models up until around
the year 2000, when the number of models and variants became too difficult to collect and too expensive to
try and find an example of every kind. I have a lot of items, some donated, that will be featured. Where
possible, I've tried to find undecorated shells as well which best show the tooling work, but I'll also have
painted shells and complete units. I try to avoid stripped models or custom paint jobs or faux railroads
unless it's the only example I can find of a particular model. Many of these are shells only. I am not trying
to show every road name ever produced. This is not a collector site, nor am I going to be placing any value
on these models. Just trying to produce an electronic record with some detailed photos of as many plastic
diesel shells as I can get hold of from the beginning in the early 1950s, when plastic first came on the scene,
until 2000 when plastic ruled everything and even pushed aside brass as the medium of choice for serious
modelers. That guy in the 1968 movie "The Graduate" was right when he said "PLASTICS".
Example shown is a mint condition Sears Tyco C630, also known as the TycoRossi because of it's Hong Kong
made copy of the Rivarossi U25C drive. It is NOT made by Rivarossi and while it copies the general layout and
look of the U25C drive, it doesn't have any common parts and is a totally different animal. These were sold only
in Sears train sets around 1973, and a few singles made it to the market. Tyco eventually released this "Super 630"
as they called it, with the first incarnation of their infamous Vampire power truck. This version is certainly better looking
than the Vampire. There were only 10 high nose C630s built, all for the Norfolk and Western. Only five of them
had Alco Trimount trucks. These GE trimounts are really not correct but they are similar in overall design. The other five
N&W units had Fairbanks-Morse Trimount trucks from traded in Train Masters. Tyco did a nice job on the shell for
the time, why they chose the N&W prototype is one of those corporare mysteries but it probably was just the first plan to land
in their lap. Tyco never produced this model in any paint scheme of the only road that owned it.
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