Trix
Twin Railway : Battery run trains part of Trix History in
Pictures
© Copyright 2005
- 2011 Garry Lefevre all rights reserved
The box for the
TTR Battery set in which train sets were sold
Battery Trains
· Making cheaper Trix Express Trains for children
· Easy to set
up, safe and simple to use led to battery run trains
·
Soon Trix Twin in England followed the lead.
At
about the same time as Trix introduced DC for the three rail system, Trix Express in Nuremberg started in 1953 to
produce a 4.5 - 6 Volt motor for a
simple battery train. One of the major
aims of Trix, was to reach children and juveniles of the fifties with an easy
to handle and low-priced train set, in the hope they would be won as future
customers for their main DC system. In
cooperation with the toy manufacturer Distler, who had developed the famous
Distler Motor, Trix Express produced several variations of battery trains up to
1960 (e.g. the “Dieselzug” TE 7/900 and the “Sandbahn” TE /601).
|
These two photos show the
1954 goods and passenger sets |
In
England Trix Twin Railway took up the
idea, to produce a special train for youngsters. Two years latter in 1955 TTR offered the
Trix Junior train set, in two variations: the "Junior Goods”
set and the "Junior
Passenger” set.
Both sets included an 0-4-0 as a black-coloured British Railways tank
loco, fitted with the German
Distler-Motor. The "Junior
Passenger" set contained two tin plate Bogie BR Coaches and the "Junior Goods" three tin plate wagons (1 Goods Brake and 2
Open Wagons). Both sets included a
circle of track in the bottom of the box.
This example of the Junior
set was recently found unopened at a fair near London. The loco still has the
original shrink film wrapping. The
coaches are fixed to a cardboard backing by a cord. Underneath there were unopened boxes of track
To
reduce expenses still further instead of batteries or mains adaptors, the TTR
sets contained a crank-handle driven Dynamo (also made by Distler), to energise
the trains. Depending on the direction
of rotation of the dynamo, you could change the running direction of the train
automatically. But after a short time, (
just one year), this hand operated dynamo procedure became unpopular, hence the dynamo soon disappeared
from the market. (See middle of box
above)
TTR
introduced the Cadet set which did not include the dynamo but a simple
controller to connect to the battery and then the track. Cadet sets were produced as passenger and
goods sets using the same plastic bodied locos and coaches or goods wagons.
The Cadet goods set produced
up to 1960
In
Germany the Trix Express train sets were
fitted with a small blue-green Distler-Controller, in which you could insert
a 4.5 – Volt battery as power unit (see Photo).
But the better solution was to buy the suitable mains adaptor, also produced by
Distler. After installation the power
unit, the controller had to be connected to the terminal rail.
Controllers and mains
adapter for TE |
The Distler motor used in
both TTR and TE engines |
The Best of the
Battery trains from Trix Express
Soon
after the introduction of the above train in 1960 , just one year later, the
battery trains disappeared completely from the range of Trix products.
Or