Many Tyco sets in the 70's and early to mid 80's came with the so-called "Tru-Steel" track that was absolute crap. It was hard to keep the joiners (very cheap) from bending out of shape and even harder to keep the track clean, as it seemed to get dirty at the drop of a hat, any hat. Even Bachmann's brass track, available at the time, was an immense improvement. To me, the biggest thing that did Tyco in was that cheap, unreliable and crappy Power-Torque drive that put the motor, gears and drive all in one truck, with the cheap soft plastic gears in full view and completely unprotected on the outside of the power truck. nine times out of ten, the drive gear on the motor would come loose and go flying off into the seventh reach of the unknown. I had a couple of Tyco locos in the mid 60's and they were well-made and were good runners, equal to any BB Athearn loco today. When they went to pot was when the company moved it's production facilities to Hong Kong. Very quickly, Tyco locos weren't worth the plastic they were made from.