MPC Fan Thread

Looks like "you" (or me) could be the potential new owner of the trademark for those obscure Gould XL70 trucks. Read here:

 

http://www.trademarkia.com/gould-72433066.html

A few of the early SS sets were like that.  I thought it was a cool idea.  

 

I think the Milw set (73), CP (75) NP (76) & B&O (77) were also like that

Here's a question for anyone knowledgeable about MPC trains;

 

Are the black stripes and numbers on the Rio Grande 8464/8465 F3s pad printed or painted on, or are they heat stamped?

 

Heat stamping makes a noticeable depression in the plastic shell while printing/painting can often look raised.

Jim, 

 

They  are a decal on the nose, but along the body they seem to either be painted on or screen/pad printed. 

 

See if you could tell from this shot - 

Thanks, Christopher. If you think to, would you check them to confirm tonight when you get home?

 

Will do!   

 

The stripes from in front of the cab ladder to the nose are a decal. I know that much.  I'll check the body when I get home.  I recall it being pretty smooth to the touch, but I'll let you know

Jim, I just checked out the F3s. The stripes, number and road name are as smooth as silk. Hope that helps

Thank you. I might be repainting a set, but not if there were impressions left by heat stamping.

You should be able to strip them cleanly. Repainting to B&M?

Yes.

One of the best looking geeps from the era is the MoPac GP-20 from 1975.

In this case I have it leading a string of MoPac K-Line streamliners.

 

Ken

Was the GP20 first done by MPC? If the U36 was the first completely new diesel they did was this before or after the GP20. Because the GP20 seems to be a retool of the GP9 and not totally new.

 

The GP20 seems to be the Lionel engine that gets the least respect.

The ATSF and LI were the first Lionel ANYTHING ith a low nose.  Actually, they had athe bodies of a GP 7 hich a special die hich could make the low nose.  MPC units.

The GP20 was first seen in the 73 catalog pulling the top of the line set - Golden Arrow I think. It was in Santa Fe Markings. The U36B showed up the next year in UP & Chessie markings. The GP20 was made by just inserting a plug in the GP7/9 mold. The U36B was an all new mold. Both share the same frame though.

I have both the Long Island and the Chessie MPC GP20s. Both new MIB. Raffle prizes from a club I was in. They are in storage for now but I want to give them the once over before I run them.

 

I did get the newer Conrail version from a couple years ago and I do like to run that.

Since we're talking about the first MPC GP-20, I thought I'd share a few photos. (Plus I need to give the forum's new photo posting process a try.)

 

 

These pics show the prototype for the 8352 Santa Fe GP-20 from 1973. Because the tooling had yet to be modified, a model maker in the MPC model shop chopped the front of the original GP-7 high nose, resulting in a process very similar to ones that the real railroads performed. Note the sand-fill bump on the low hood and the side horn placement, two things that didn't survive into production. The headlight housing and windshield front were entirely scratchbuilt.

 

After the modifications were performed, the model was painted in Santa Fe colors and heat-stamped (highly unusual for a prototype) on one side only using the left-over dies for the first 8250 Santa Fe GP-9. This is the very sample from the 1973 Lionel catalog seen pulling the 1388 Golden State Arrow set.

 

Enjoy the photos!

Todd

I don't think any MPC or later product have used heat stamping on anything. It was a pretty touchy decorating system, too little heat and the decal fell off, too much heat and the piece got branded like a cow. I think that it died with The Lionel Corporation in 1969. Does anyone know differently?

Cool!

I can state with absolute certainty that hot stamping (in addition to other decorating methods) was used up until the very last days of US production in spring of 2001.

 

Regards,

TRW

I know they used electrocals which used heat but that is not the same. Which items used heat stamping that melted the decal into the plastic? It couldn't be on nearly the scale of postwar.

As Christopher mentioned, the noses on the 8464/8465 Rio Grande F-3s are water-transfer decals that can be removed fairly easy. (Most of them are flaking anyway.)

 

The sides, however, are decorated using a heat transfer process. In this case, the graphics (black stripes, cab number, Rio Grande logo and the silver bottom stripe) are pre-printed on a roll of transfers, which are then applied using heat. Think of an iron-on transfer for a T-shirt and you get the idea. See the pic below of a Rio Grande heat transfer applied to a Baltimore & Ohio body and you can see exactly how the graphics were done.

 

 

 

What will this mean for a repainting? My guess says that you won't have any big problems painting right over the decorated area. Because a solid block of steel is used in the transfer process, there should be a nice even finish unlike that of normal hot stamping where the lettering tends to get "branded" into the piece.

 

I'll be curious to hear how things turn-out if you give repainting these a try.

 

I hope this helps-

Todd

Folks interested in how trains were decorated should take a look at the video: "The Making of the Scale Hudson".
It has a section on decorating.
Processes were also described in volume IV of the series put out by McComas and Touhy. Here is a  "Buy it now" offering from Ebay:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LIONEL-1970-1980-VOL-IV-A-COLLECTORS-GUIDE-HISTORY-BY-TOM-McCOMAS-/390387425010?pt=US_Nonfiction_Book&hash=item5ae4e75ef2

 

The books were published both in hard cover and soft cover.

 

I have studied a number of paint masks that came from the Lionel auction. I can positively state that some stripes were painted. In some cases this was done by having a very narrow slit in the mask. In other cases, a progression of masks were used, with the masks differing by the width of the stripe.

Those GP20 mock-up pics are great, Todd. Interesting to note how many times Lionel chose Santa Fe as the roadname to bring out a new/modified locomotive design. I have that engine and the dummy (and the horn still works). I think this diesel was a step in the right direction as chop-nosed locomotives were about all you saw on the real railroads. Something else to appreciate MPC/Fundimensions for.

 

I'm also a fan of their 3-axle EMD Flexicoil truck (moreso than the later domestic HT-C truckside). MPC inherited the GP7/9 and took baby steps over the years working their way up to the SD40 in '82.

I had both the Long Island power and dummy units and can still remember how impressed I was with that first electronic diesel horn.

Archaic by today's standards but generations ahead of anything prior to it..

Never could figure out why MPC didn't include it in future releases..

Joe 

The GP20 prototype pics are cool!   I've always liked the MPC GP20.  I only have the Santa Fe pwd/dummy & yes the horn works!  I'd like the Chessie one day too.  

 

I think they stopped using the horn b/c of problems with the controller.  It would get stuck & cause the horn to burn out.  

 

A lot of the early freight cars were hot stamped. You could see the depression in the plastic where the graphics are

Sorry I missed your response earlier. It's mostly on target, but let me elaborate a bit.

 

Heat transfers (of which ElectroCal was one company that manufactured them) are applied using the same equipment that would apply traditional hot stamp graphics. In traditional hot stamping (sometimes called leafing), the die is engraved with the graphics to be applied and then it's pressed through a colored gel tape to transfer to the car. With a heat transfer, a die "blank" that's sized to the general area is heated, and then the transfer with all the graphics is applied to a piece.

 

Lionel used both of these methods, in addition to traditional pad printing, up until the end of domestic production in 2001. While the process still has limitations (applying to a non-flat surface can be done but is very tricky) and can be difficult to control, hot stamping is great for simple decoration schemes. In Lionel's case, pad printing was always preferred, but because of capacity issues in the pad printing room, some things were hot stamped but with a MUCH better quality than what could be found in postwar.

 

Now that I think about it, even SandaKan in China occasionally would hot stamp something for a particular project. If you ever see something with shiny, foiled graphics (the 36769 4th of July boxcar from 2003 comes to mind), it was applied with a hot stamp.

 

I hope this helps!

Todd

Added another car in my attempt to put together a Minneapolis & St. Louis Service Station Set. I now have all the rolling stock, and just need the GP9 diesel.

 

Here's the Erie Lackawanna Box Car, and I think this is  a really cool looking car. The bright blue with the white lettering really stand out. It's an unusual blue, too, almost a metallic color I guess you'd call it.

 

 Are you going to look for the dummy GP9 also?     A fun fact about the 2 units is the powered & dummy have different handrail types.   I like the EL boxcar. Wonder why they picked blue - was there a prototype EL car painted like that?  Mine seems very glossy.

I have the same ? about the EL blue box.  Also, the dummy unit is 6-8867

Christopher,

 

I'm still an MPC novice and had no idea about the dummy GP unit. May have to put that one on the list!    Mine is also glossy but didn't show up too well in the photo.  Interesting question about the prototype. Will have to check it out.

 

Dominic - Thanks for the number!

johnstrains,

In my opinion your Chessie crane car is the sharpest paint job Lionel applied to their crane car.

Thanks, Jim. I like the Reading version also, but agree that the Chessie is a winner!

I like the EL boxcar. Wonder why they picked blue - was there a prototype EL car painted like that?

 

The short answer is "Yes."

The log answer is that General Foods bought them and then leased them to the EL in order to insure that GF had an adequate supply of boxcars for their products. The cars were painted in GF corporate color blue. That shade is actually closer to the Great Northern Big Sky Blue, so these cars are a little off. They still make for a very nice looking car that stands out in a sea of boxcar red.

 

Chris

LVHR

The blue of the EL box looks like the color of the B&O double door auto box!

I think it's a bit darker than GN Big sky blue & a tad lighter than the B&O boxcar.

Can anyone shed some light on the 8020 Santa Fe Alco in blue & silver ?

Its hard to tell in the photo, but the Alco on the second shelf is an 8020.

Photo is from the 1979 Greenberg guide.

 

 

I've never seen a blue 8020 before!

my wife has acquired around 50 MPC cars in mostly billboard box cars.

The Blue 8020 was part of a department store special back in1970-1971 ( I think JC Penny) They are scarce but I have seen them before.

The 1974 catalog also shows the blue Santa Fe Alco "A" unit with the number 8351 on the side of the cab. It is in a set, not offered for seperate sale.
According to my old online database, it was offered from 1973 to 1975.

 

Update: I probably wrote about the wrong engine, these comments are on the blue and silver Santa fe, not the all blue one.