McCoy Trains That McCoy Never Made

Steve "Papa" Eastman posted:

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

Thanks Steve.  The ends under the hopper really are a pain.  You run the risk of the paint dripping on the outside surfaces.  Lots of light coats, and still the inner area is little more than fogged with color.  How did McCoy paint these?  They didn't dip the bodies did they?

David, the conversions are neat.  I have a pax car that I am converting into a doodlebug.  I am really struggling to gain inspiration on HOW to make the mods.  But I will add it here when done....

hojack posted:

Steve "Papa" Eastman posted:

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

Thanks Steve.  The ends under the hopper really are a pain.  You run the risk of the paint dripping on the outside surfaces.  Lots of light coats, and still the inner area is little more than fogged with color.  How did McCoy paint these?  They didn't dip the bodies did they?

I think they used an electrostatic type paint.

Steve

Very, very impressive work on these car-thanks for sharing.

Parker Higby posted:

Very, very impressive work on these car-thanks for sharing.

Thank you Parker, I have been following your threads on McCoy trains as well.  McCoy certainly holds a unique place in the pantheon of Modern Era Standard Gauge.

d

Are those made with peal offs or are they silk screened?

I have repainted a couple of the tankers-it is really hard to get into the inside of the ends to get paint to stick. 

hojack posted:

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

Very nice indeed!

Nice stuff you made there

here is my McCoy its not modified but I like them just the same 

kevin

All McCoy is great fun!

Nice way to spend the day

Here's aPrideLines repro of a #2 trolley with a Lionel truck frame and an Ira Keeler McCoy motor. 

Speaking of McCoy trains that they never actually made... 

I am trying to research exactly what reproductions of Lionel and
American Flyer trains were really made by Bob McCoy. I have seen several
items being offered for sale at train meets and on-line that are being
sold as McCoy because they have McCoy motors in them, and have McCoy
wheel sets, but I know that Williams Reproductions offered their
Lionel Reproductions as dummy units, and people have installed McCoy
motors in them, so they think that they are made by McCoy, as the
motor housing and pick-up say 'McCoy Manufacturing, Kent, Wa.' 

Besides the Lionel Standard gauge #5, #7 and the American Flyer
Standard gauge #4694, and the 2 7/8" Lionel, were there other McCoy
reproductions made?

The items I see misidentified as McCoy the most often are the Williams
reproduction Lionel #9, the Williams reproduction #381 and the
Williams reproduction 408E's. Did McCoy ever actually reproduce those?

Harold-I totally agree with you-just the cost of the stamping equipment would have made this a very expensive venture for McCoy to deal with, and I believe McCoy only made the AF and the #7 but did make a few earlier piece of Lionel.  In fact the AF body's were cast for McCoy by a company in Japan and sen to them for finally assembly.

Parker Higby