Wow! I’m having flash backs. A friend of mine use to own a local hobby shop. He somehow bought one of these back in about 2005 from a closed Chuck E Cheese in Oak Lawn, IL. He had a plan to use it as a store front window display. I helped him pick it up, and I remember even as a first impression that the whole thing was just worn out as if from running, not abuse. It had MTH starter set track in a figure 8 that’s similar to Lionel Fastrack. Just as the manual says, I remember the tracks were soldered together, but rails were loose in the plastic “road bed”. The train would always derail due to rails out of gauge, and there was no replacing just any one section of bad track. There were two locomotives, which were both MTH Amtrak F40’s with all electrons removed and a bridge rectifier wired. I recall both were saturated with gummy grease. There was one hopper car. No caboose, no passenger cars. I recall it also wasn’t just a flat green board with grass mat or something. It had nice scenery with hills and stuff. It came without the coin, ticket, and whatever control hardware. For sure no circuit boards with dip switches. I remember it was an all day ordeal to get this thing, load it, get it to the store, unload, and get it in, and THEN reality set in that he bought this over built worn out starter set layout that needed an overhaul anyway. We had a good laugh that the hopper and this kit of spare bulbs were the only decent parts of the whole package. Here’s a picture of what I was paid for my labor that day. I still use it for accessory bulbs. The plastic case shown reads “Chuck E Cheese’s spare parts kit”.
