Typical of most R-T-R (Ready-To-Run) manufacturers, TYCO's Streamline
Passenger Cars are all a bit shorter than prototypical length. Standard length for a passenger car is 85-feet, these cars
measure about 72-feet. This is likely done to accomidate operation around the sharp curves of 18"-radius most commonly offered
by TYCO. All cars in this series are lighted with electrical pick-up via the cars trucks. The cars featured a strip
of paper that was inside and attached to the car's window sections that had silhouettes of passengers. A metal antenna
is found running down the roofline of the Observation car. Though never deocorated with a train name or logo, the Obs
tooling included a drumhead on the rear that had a snap-in clear round plug. The last roadname TYCO produced for the
steamliners was Amtrak Phase II paint and it is last cataloged in 1981 as part of The Broadway Limited train set.
Streamline Passenger Car
Coach
Amtrak (Light Blue Stripe; not pictured)
-No.521N
Amtrak (Phase II)
-No.521N
Santa Fe
-No.521D
Streamline Passenger Car
Observation
Amtrak (Light Blue Stripe; not pictured)
-No.522N
Amtrak (Phase II)
-No.522N
Santa Fe (not pictured)
-No.522D
The Lost Passenger Cars...
Pictured below and taken from a mid-'50s TYCO catalog, the following
bodystyles did not find themselves available by the early 1960s. These cars were offered in aluminum constructed bodies, which
switched to plastic around 1960. MANTUA would later resurrect these carbodies and the aluminum construction for its own line
of products around 1980.
