McCoy Trains That McCoy Never Made

David,

Well said.

I for one enjoy seeing all the trains you have created.  There are several "projects" I want to complete.  Seeing your work is inspirational for me to give it a try.

Looking forward to seeing your pictures as well as other pictures from some of the other talented hobbyists on this forum.

Joe

Bravo, very well said.

I have no problem with resteraitions of tinplate so long as it's represented as a repaint and not original. I have done many resteraitions on O and standard gauge but it has been on something that needed it and I like clean and shiny tinplate not chipped and rusted.  To take a beautiful original and strip and repaint is where I draw the line.  There will always be a market for pristine original pieces and in my opinion they should stay that way.  To take an old tired MC Coy or any other brand and restore it to something beautiful I think is a tribute to the original piece and the company who manufactured it!   I would even buy a repainted piece if it was done well.     This is a Hell gate that was in sad shape when I got it.  I striped it to bare metal and restored all the hardware which was all there. The brass name plates were even hand painted over!  

The Real McCoy that is not all the real McCoy still.

McCoys convention cars still show up a shows and ebay for $30 or so.

My only McCoy left is a SF convention Cable Car.

I had more but need the space for other Standard Gauge Models,

For those who may be concerned that repainted or modified McCoy trains might at some time in the future be confused with original McCoys: I feel that, in principle, there is some validity to that concern. We need to be responsible to be sure these are identified as later modifications:

The TCA has stickers available to its members to identify reproductions and repaints. TCA standards call for members to use them. Of course they have no real enforcement power. This is something that any body interested in "rare variations" and "paint samples" should keep in mind.

Awhile back, I purchased several McCoy cars from a collector who had suffered a fire in his train room that left most of his trains fire and water damaged. You'll see several of these trains in these posts, and the Chicago Great Western car is one of these. The paint was burned off this car and it was very rusty from the water.

I use water-slide decals to decorate the trains I re-do; McCoy almost never used decals (with a few rare exceptions like the Bonner cars), so this helps to avoid any confusion with McCoy originals. I use some commercially-made decals when they work, but usually I make my own: partly because I like to do some off-beat road names, and partly to get the exact size I need. The big drawback of making my own decals is that a home printer cannot print white; and they have a transparent background, so that the car color shows through. What this means in practical terms is that if you put my homemade decals over dark paint, you pretty much can't see them.

 McCoy used tinplate placards attached to the cattle car with bent-over tabs, which is perfect for my use: I can paint the car any color I want, and then paint the placards off-white so the decals show up really well.

 I'm an Ives fan, and I scanned the graphics for this car directly off my Ives O Gauge 125 herald boxcar.

The decals for the CNR caboose are white, so you can tell I purchased these. I am really pleased with this color combination, I was surprised how well the red and yellow turned out together. I have a small blasting cabinet and I clean all the cars down to bare metal, then prime and paint with rattle-cans, mostly with DeRusto or Valspar because that's what is available locally. I'm not usually trying to match any vintage color, so I don't need to go to Collector's Colors or get paint mixed for these. The rattle-can paint jobs are another thing that clearly distinguishes my work from original McCoy; their paint finish is obviously different, and they used silk-screened graphics.

I wanted to do a covered gondola: not as fancy as MTH's "new tooling" covered gon, this just has a McCoy roof snapped on it, but it's still a different look. The car is more yellow than the pictures show. I originally printed the decals in color but re-printed them all in black: Phoebe Snow aside, this is a gritty coal-route car so I didn't want it to look too fancy.

I want to credit Steve Eastman with getting me started on this project. Steve, when you posted pictures of some of your "beer car" series made from McCoy convention cars, a light bulb went on. Bob McCoy of course did several beer cars of his own, so we're continuing the fine tradition. I haven't done many, but this is one that just had to be done... really Steve, no St. Pauli?

 The decals for this took a lot of hours in Photoshop to get right. The Derusto "Meadow Green" for the roof and doors was a very close match.

You're going to see a lot of trains on this thread that are more than just repaints. McCoy made a wide range of car types, but there's some he didn't get to.

 This depressed-center flat car is made from two McCoy cars. The first was cut in half and forms the ends and the sloped angles; the other was a flat car with low sides that makes the lower center section. Quite a soldering project, there was a lot of that. This whole thing got really tricky: there are space tolerances that have to be respected. But in the end, the center well does not drag even going over bridges; the wheels turn clear of the frame; and although the car is 16-1/2" long, much longer than a standard McCoy 12" car, it runs just fine on all Standard Gauge track including 42 curves.

 I scratch-built the cable drum using a 3" drum sander cylinder for the core and winding some cable around it; and the ends are 1/4" luan cut out with a 4" diameter hole saw. The chains have small springs, hidden where the chains go through inside the drum core, that keep tension on the chains. I thought I might have to glue the reel down or something, but the chains hold it very solid, it doesn't move at all.

 This was fun. There are a lot of O Gauge tinplate depressed-center cars, but it's not one that has been done in Standard Gauge, to my knowledge.

david

Awesome job on the cars Dave! If I could do my own decals I would do some Sam Adams beer cars. 

Very Nice!  I like them!

very nice work guys! old trains, old cars, buyer beware. do your homework, and know what you are buying, or seek out those who have the knowledge.

C.W Burfle:  I think you are right, and the whole question of one-offs is the tricky one: there is more room for error there than with regular production runs which are well known.  I guess we have to do the best we can and pay attention and not make any assumptions, is maybe the best we can do. 

Chris, you do really fine work, I have admired some of the locos and other tinplate you have restored or reworked and been inspired by it.  You always do it right and don't take short cuts.  The bridge looks great in original colors, but you have re-done some locomotives in great new color schemes that I think are very successful.

david

As a long time McCoy collector I really appreciate the re-purposing of the ultra-ubiquitous convention cars.  Especially the tank cars.  2500 cars!  What were they thinking?

There is no way anyone with a hint of McCoy knowledge could mistake the repaints for the real McCoys.

What are your opinions about Bob McCoy Jr.'s cars?  Are they the real McCoy's?

Don

Not much time goes by on the OGR forum before you see another thread with somebody asking about the Roma Wine tank car. Talk about an iconic car from the 1930's tinplate era! Whatever other liberties you take in reproducing this car, it has to be a 6-dome car, that's not something you can skimp on, it wouldn't be right. So I had to wait until I'd found 3 McCoy double-dome cars, to raid the domes off them.

The lettering fell just above and just below the railing, which was good, but the ladder and platform would have spoiled the design, so it was left off. Also, you may notice something else. There was no way I could get 6 domes on that tank with the two bands going around over the tank. There just wasn't enough room, and the spacing was all wrong. The bands had to go. But the bands physically hold the tank on the car, so I had to remake some shorter bands that went under the tank instead of over it,. Screws from that shorter band into the bottom of the tank hold it in place.

The proportions of the tanker are obviously foreshortened, but I think it's a decent rendition – for tinplate!

Getting the A-1 to B-3 lettering on the domes correct on both sides of the car (outside to inside, left to right and right to left, and opposite that on the other side...) messed with my head for a bit, but I got it on the third try.

This Southern Pacific flat car started out as the skeleton frame of one of the tank cars that was a dome-donor for the Roma Wine car. This is a nod towards American Flyer Standard Gauge machinery cars with their placard sides. It's a different design flatcar, that McCoy never produced, but could have, had he been so inclined.

Love the Colorado Midland car.

CArolina Shagger posted:

What are your opinions about Bob McCoy Jr.'s cars?  Are they the real McCoy's?

Don

I do have to say, the tugboat car is one of my favorites!

TimDude posted:

Love the Colorado Midland car.

Tim, at one point a few years ago I came across this:

...which is a mock-up by Bob McCoy Sr. for a Colorado Midlands car that he never did produce. So I thought it would be nice to do a Midlands car for him, although I decided to make it a reefer. This is another of those smaller railroads with colorful heralds that are fun to see running on your layout.

Along with the St Pauli beer car inspired by Steve Eastman, this Colorado Midlands car inspired by seeing McCoy's original art work was the other early car that got me started on the whole "McCoy Trains That McCoy Never Made" thing. It was one of the first cars I did, and I didn't dare get into stripping and repainting the reefer doors with their latches, so they are the original silver of the McCoy car. Later reefers, I did the doors too.

Love the wine tank cars!  There were also 4 dome tank cars.  The most interesting was the Gibson Wine Co. with the peacock on the side of the tank.  Would make a stunning car!  And as prototypical as tinplate can be.

These are the Protocraft decals: http://www.protocraft.com/cate...09&Categoryid=35

Keep the repaints coming.

Don

One theme for the cars I redecorate is Bob McCoy's predilection for small, local, (and often Canadian) by-gone railway heralds.

This Toronto, Hamilton, and Buffalo car is the kind of thing I like to think he would have done, if it had been in his part of the country instead of mine.

 In addition to the THB heralds for the boxcar, I found online what I think must have been a letterhead engraving that was quite Victorian-ornate. I made a decal of it and put it on the car, even though it probably would not have been painted on a railroad car - it's a pretty amazing piece of 19th century art.

 Another recurring theme with the cars I choose to do, is to try to give to Standard Gauge some of the really iconic heralds that are reproduced in O Gauge, HO, and even G Scale by many companies. 

The white Magnolia Oil tank car is one of these: there probably isn't a major manufacturer of model trains in any scale - except Standard Gauge - that hasn't done a version of this car.

 The traditional graphic for this has the large lettering "MAGNOLIA" right across the mid-level of the car. The McCoy tank has the handrail right there, which didn't interfere with the visibility too much, but the McCoy ladder and platform would have obscured most of the herald, so I decided I was justified leaving them off. I soldered in the slots in the tank that were for the ladder.

McCoy made a Katy caboose... and this was one:

Unfortunately, it had been squashed. The roof was bent half-way and then must have popped off, because the body was pretty well flattened - sideways. I really think somebody stepped on it! Needless to say, I got it cheap. In putting it back together, my research showed that MKT had some green cabooses. So this one was done with a tip of the hat to Lionel's prewar pea green 517 caboose. Pea green for me is really the color cabooses should be, because that's what my dad's Lionel 517 was.  

 Once tinplate is bent, it's hard to straighten. The roof was the worst, and it still shows some wrinkles. The body mostly bent at the corners, so I was able to square it up again without it showing too much.

 I purchased the decal for the herald (it has white in it, which I can't print), but I made the "Katy 127" decals and the handrails and "watch your step", which were silkscreened on the original McCoy version. The red McCoy was numbered #30, but the green Katy caboose I found online was #127.

David,

I really enjoy seeing your work.  It's quite impressive. So far I particularly like your depressed-center flatcar.  That was a great idea and it looks fantastic.

Joe

I made a couple of Standard Gauge electric locomotives from McCoy cars;  Here's a video to watch –

Okay, this one may take some explaining, but if you're into European tinplate you'll recognize it. I don't know how prototypically accurate they actually are, but they're kinda the European equivalent of the Roma 6-dome wine car.

Several European tinplate companies (Marklin, Hornby, JEP) made ones with either tin or wooden barrels; sometimes painted red, sometimes left natural wood. The French call it a Wagon Foudre, and the idea of huge wine barrels on their sides rolling down the rails just strikes me as so outrageous that I had to do a Standard Gauge version.

 It took a while to find wooden barrels the right size: these were sold as penny banks, with slots in one end which I covered with the red wine labels. The bunkers are cut out of blocks of wood and painted red. Since I bent a frame piece for this out of 18 gauge sheet metal, the only McCoy parts here are the trucks; and the ladders, between which I soldered an inspection platform. The darn thing is pretty hefty, but it's comical – and it may be the only Standard Gauge Wagon Foudre in existence!

Okay, this next one just HAD to be done in Standard Gauge. If you're familiar with the original Lionel postwar dark green 3972 Giraffe Car, you will see what I'm doing here.

I brainstormed for a while and did a cardboard mock-up of a trip mechanism, and in the end decided to keep it simple. I just left the roof off the McCoy stock car, and the giraffes don't duck. I have high clearances on one loop of my layout, and the big Schleich giraffes slide into the tunnels and under the walk-over with just the thinnest of margins.

And the Bronx Zoo logo actually has giraffes on it, what more could you ask?

And then, here's a 2-car set I worked on, off and on, for a long time:

Finding a crane mechanism the right size took several tries. This cab and boom are salvaged off a derelict Marx pressed-steel Crane Truck from the 1950's. I tried a few others, and this really fit well and has the tinplate feel I wanted. The boom is raised by putting the ends of the wire brace into any of a row of holes down the roof of the cab: a decidedly Marx tinplate low-tech solution. I made the black frame for this, so the only McCoy on this is the trucks.

 The accompanying boom car/ crane tender/ work caboose (whatever you want to call it), on the other hand, is 100% McCoy: it was made from a McCoy drover's style caboose, cutting it off just along the line of the bottoms of the windows. Cool, huh? In the down position, the crane boom just clears not only the caboose's front panel but also its roof – so that worked out!

 The crane's boom is really long, and it swings out wide when the train goes around corners. So I tethered it to an eye in the deck of the boom car. When the two cars take a corner, the boom gets tugged back over the center line and spares the trackside buildings.

 When I started to make this, Amtrak had just had their derailment, with lots of media coverage, up here in Vermont, and so I made this a Central Vermont rig.

Great stuff!  Love the crane and wine car! 

Thanks Chris!  You've creatively re-done various tinplate trians, do you have any McCoy to show us?

Anybody else?

Don, thanks for the link, I didn't know about the Gibson car.

david

hojack posted:

Thanks Chris!  You've creatively re-done various tinplate trians, do you have any McCoy to show us?

Anybody else?

Don, thanks for the link, I didn't know about the Gibson car.

david

 

No McCoy yet but thanks to you that may be changing!   

I guess since this is about McCoy modifications, we should probably include in this thread the Rail Bus, made from McCoy yellow and brown TCA passenger cars:

And then to round all this out, here is a video of the re-done McCoy freight running on the layout:

Thanks to all of you for your support, it's been fun.

david

Great stuff Dave. Love it.

Steve

hojack posted:

 

Great thread. Wonderful re-configurations of McCoy products.

ARNO

Steve "Papa" Eastman posted:

Great stuff Dave. Love it.

Steve

Ditto Dave.  Love it! 

Thank you for all the encouraging comments everyone, you guys are great.

Arno, that's about the sleekest Wagon Foudre I've seen, and I take back what I said about mine being the only one... South American Standard Gauge?  I had no idea...   That's very cool.

Here's a few more...

Here is one of my favorites, it was made to accompany the Little Chief 0-4-0 McCoy loco and the shorty Black Diamond Railroad cars that McCoy made in the 1990's. I need to find all the pieces to get a real picture, but for now you can just imagine.

It was made by Ira Keeler in California. Seen here with one of the McCoy cars.

ARNO

moderneraSG posted:

hojack posted:

 

Doggenweiler, from South America, in Standard Gauge.... late 1940's(??)

Great thread. Wonderful re-configurations of McCoy products.

ARNO

Arno, are those embossed rivets on the side sills, or are they pins? The detail is great.

I believe they are embossed but I do not have them in front of me. The trains were mass produced (in low numbers), so I expect they opted for the easier option.

If I remember correctly, they are cast bronze and very heavy. I misspoke earlier, this car dates to the early 1950s as all cars came in the color red. A few years prior they painted some in other colors, but by the 1950s they liked red. Here are a couple other offerings:

a 0-4-4-0 loco, again made of cast bronze and VERY heavy! The motor unit itself, with nothing else attached to it weighs in around 8 pounds. This dates to the mid-late 1940s.

a flat car.... painted red.

a gondola.

and a coach car.

ARNO

Arno, you had told me about Keeler's mini-tender for the Little Chief,  but I had never seen a picture of it.  I can understand your enthusiasm – it's a nicely crafted little gem.

The Doggenweiler stuff is very cool.   What they remind me of most are the Edobaud cars from prewar France that I've been looking for lately... similar kind of realistic detailing and use of a wide variety of materials in construction.  

It never ceases to amaze me, the Standard Gauge stuff that is out there that most of us have never heard of.  Thanks!

d

some great stuff!

hojack posted: 

It never ceases to amaze me, the Standard Gauge stuff that is out there that most of us have never heard of.  Thanks!

d

Thanks very much for all these views of your inspiring models and layout, Hojack. I never get tired of looking at them!

David,

I am thinking about a project to repaint one of the McCoy reefers.  Since I do not have one in my possession yet I was wondering if you could answer two questions.

1 - When you repainted this reefer, were you able to remove the doors easily and then reattach them?

2 - What about the trucks?  Are they attached with cotter pins or rivets?  Do you remove them and reattach after painting?

Thanks.

Joe

Joe, the McCoy reefer doors fit into small sockets or stanchions which in turn are tabbed into the car sides.  Provided you use the usual care with bending the metal tabs, the door parts are easily removed for painting and re-installed after.

As for your second question, see my initial post in this thread where I mention cutting the McCoy solid rivets for the trucks and couplers, and how I re-attach them.

Have fun, and be sure to show us pictures!

d

Thanks David,

I reread the thread before posting but must have missed the part about the trucks which I see now.  Thanks for the answers.

Joe

A few more recent additions to the fleet... nothing too dramatic, just some neat classic designs I wanted to do.  

I have a couple more ideas for old reefer designs in the pipeline for whenever the opportunity comes along...

david

Great as usual David. I just did a custom hopper and found it to be a real PIA to paint in the end openings.

Steve