LCCA Texas Special train set arriving on hit CBS television show

Well, Sheldon is from Texas, so this set feels VERY appropriate.

Glad to hear such a wonderful opportunity came to fruition, Derek. The Big Bang Theory continues to be one of my favorite shows on right now, and not just for the trains popping up, though that certainly does help.

I offer the san diego 3 railers layout for the big bang theory to come down and run that train!!!

18 Seconds of Sheldon Cooper running a RailKing set.

Video - He always says. "HO Scale is half the fun of O Gauge".

Gary - Cheers from The Detroit and Mackinac Railway

OGR is certainly excited about this for everyone concerned but we are especially proud to have Derek on the OGR team as our Social Media Manager thus he will be posting this on our Facebook page as well..!!  Thanks Derek for all of the hard work you do for the hobby and congrats on helping make this happen!!

Alan

Note it's not an MTH Railking set. 

Jan

This is great, I am really looking forward to this episode.   I hope Shelly gets to set up the train, not just look at the box, but we shall see what the script has.

Well done Derek !!

Bob V.  LCCA 20588

this is like the Lionel sets seen in I LOVE LUCY, and CAPTAIN KAGAROO!

Hey, the show's producer could have contacted me directly, 'cause I have this LCCA set for sale at an unbeatable price over on the buy/sell sub-forum!    (I'm parting with my Texas Special freight items -- just keeping the passenger goodies.)  They wouldn't even have needed to return the set after filming the show.  

David

Congratulations Derek!!

Hi Derek - Very cool model train story. Looks great on the Notch 6 Facebook Page.

Gary - Cheers from The Detroit and Mackinac Railway

The Big Bang Theory is such a great show. Its great that they are putting a LCCA product on it. Should be good for the hobby. Its also nice that Meemaw comes to see her little "Moonpie"

RadioRon posted:

I wonder how/why they wanted that particular set?  

What happend to the set afterward?    It would be good to see it in the TCA Museum!!

I'll be happy to explain all of those things after the show airs. In fact I think I'll tell the story as part of the February episode of Notch 6

Very cool, 

RadioRon posted:

I wonder how/why they wanted that particular set?    Someone there obviously really knows something about O gauge trains.. as they couldn't have located this one by simply breezing through the catalogs on Lionel.com

What happend to the set afterward?    It would be good to see it in the TCA Museum!!

do you watch The Big Bang Theory?

Sheldon is from Texas.

We hope that the producers bring the set and Sheldon on a road trip to run the train on our layout.

cant wait. already marked the calendar.

For what it's worth a friend of mine went to a taping of Big Bang Theory. He briefly met both "Penny" and "Leonard" in the parking lot afterwards. He said they are the nicest people you would ever want to meet. Very gracious and thoughtful of the people that came to watch.

Seems like the train set show is not on.  At least not in Houston.

Dominic Mazoch posted:

Seems like the train set show is not on.  At least not in Houston.

It is...very briefly.   Sheldon snags the box from his grandma's suitcase, and brings it out to the living room.   He then excitedly tells Amy what it is, and...... scene...

 Basically what you see in the picture at the top of this topic is all you see on the show.

This was CERTAINLY played up excessively!    What is seen in the photo above was essentially IT!  Our only hope is that we may may actually see the train in an upcoming episode.   What a bunch of unnecessary HYPE!  

Yes, quite disappointing for the hype!

You guys crack me up. Hype?  All that was said was a train set was going to be on the show. Derek was pretty excited as was the LCCA. With most thing in television, what get shot, etc doesn't make it to air. If anything I think we impose a certain amount of expectations that the whole show would be Sheldon playing with the train. 

Be happy the set made an appearance. Derek has a very unique piece now and the hobby got a little exposure. 

In all fairness, no one ever said to what extent the train set was going to be used within the show.  I'll admit that I was a little disappointed that it was just Sheldon holding the box.  I was expected to see the set in action, but it was still a nice plug for that specific set.

It still does the hobby some good, though.  If someone is interested in that set, they'll just need to Google the set name that Sheldon mentioned in the show and it should lead them to something to do with Lionel or the LCCA within the first 5 search hits.  The job still gets done, in my opinion.

Big Bang is done differently than you're typical sitcom. It's a combination of a script and improv.

The actors perform the script in front of a live audience. If the audience doesn't find it funny they break and rewrite the scene. Then perform it again in front of the audience. So it's a continuous improvement approach that makes each episode fresh and interesting. 

I'm presupposing here but they may have scripted the train scene ahead of time, but it didn't hit the audience right. So they left a short piece in instead.

Hype? Call it what you will. Bottom line is Lionel Trains on a primetime network TV show. Slow down for a second and think about that. When is the last time that has happened? I'll take our short five seconds and run with it. 

Sometimes there are much bigger things at work than many folks realize. All they see is a short clip and the disappointment that it did not meet the expectations they created in their own mind.

Be happy. Enjoy the moment. Things like this don't happen every day in this hobby. 

I had never watched this show, although I see promos for it plus the hype on this forum.  It was mildly amusing.  Hard to believe it is a top rated show.  What killed it for me was the insufferable laugh track.  Lesson learned.  Never again.  Good for the Lionel plug, however.  That's always a good thing.

RadioRon posted:

Notch 6 posted:

Hype?  Call it what you will. Bottom line is Lionel Trains on a primetime network TV show. Slow down for a second and think about that. When is the last time that has happened? I'll take our short five seconds and run with it. 

Yeah, I'd call it hype.  ...   given that it is a train set of extremely limited availability, those who might search Ebay for it & find it (IF they also know to plug the Lionel name in) will certainly be turned off by the price.

Hey now, Ron.  I know where folks can get that set for a TERRIFIC price!!! 

REALITY CHECK:  If anything, this should be a reminder that the things WE think are important don't even rate a second glance by the average Joe or Jane.  We're all living lives in parallel, and only once in a blue moon do we cross paths with folks who truly share similar interests. 

I didn't watch the show, but it sounds like a typical use of Hollywood props, and the empty set box would have done the trick.  If the train(s) didn't even rate 5-seconds worth of air time, then I'd be hard-pressed to say the train set was "featured" in this TV episode.  So in hindsight, I guess that qualifies as "hype".  More likely folks here who cared have probably replayed the short snippet several times to get their money's worth given all the pre-broadcast "hype".  For everyone else, they probably forgot about it already.  

Any chance the train will re-surface in a future episode?  As I said, it's not a show I watch, so I have no clue what may or may not happen down the road.

David

Well that was a bust. If you weren't expecting it, you'd never have known it was LCCA, let alone Lionel (or even O gauge). And while I enjoy the show, the scene (and pretty much every scene involving Sheldon and trains) just sent the message that model trains are not suitable for adults, only children. Amy asserted too that Meemaw needs to stop treating Sheldon like a child, which would imply bringing him children's toys (i.e. trains here).

You got all that over a few seconds screen time?  I just thought it was funny and cool to see something train related even for a short time. 

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Gary - Cheers from The Detroit and Mackinac Railway

Either way IMO for such a big hype, it was a bust!

Slugger posted:

Well that was a bust. If you weren't expecting it, you'd never have known it was LCCA, let alone Lionel (or even O gauge). And while I enjoy the show, the scene (and pretty much every scene involving Sheldon and trains) just sent the message that model trains are not suitable for adults, only children. Amy asserted too that Meemaw needs to stop treating Sheldon like a child, which would imply bringing him children's toys (i.e. trains here).

Okay, I have to respond to these points...

• You weren't supposed to be aware who made the train set. That wasn't part of the plot at all! I was surprised that Sheldon even said the name of the set aloud on screen.
• Toy trains were originally made for kids. Hence, the word, "Toy" at the front.
• Most adults don't play with toy trains. Can we please, just this one time, accept that fact and move on?

Remember the episode where Leonard and Sheldon got matching MECO Star Trek transporter toys from Penny? Those were built for kids and it was funny, in the big picture, to have them making such a big deal about not opening them in the box (come on, that’s got to sound familiar to any of you classic 3-rail types). I somewhat doubt that toy collectors got nearly as offended as many of you do every time they suggest that a hobby that’s not overly popular today and originally intended for kids is viewed as exactly that.

Thank you Derek and the LCCA for bringing this special project together, Well done. I am also in favorite of any project that brings our hobby to the main stream, but as us model railroaders would say, putting the hobby on the main line.  "The A Train"

The show about the Napa Valley Wine Train was better!

But the plot lines of this series makes the Amtrak SUNSET LIMITED look like a French Bullet Train!