Reproductions by Joe King
Joe King started "HO Reproductions" back in 1999 at about the same time
he discovered EBay. In those days, you could communicate with other
buyers. A small group including Joe became good friends over the
internet and via phone. One day, Fred Alles and Joe were
discussing the lack of stickers for the cars. They compared the
pieces they had with and without stickers and between the two of them,
determined that they had all the cars with paper stickers. Using a
flatbed scanner at a hi-res, the different stickers were all scanned in.
Joe redrew them and printed them out on his inkjet on Avery self
adhesive label stock and adhesive photo paper. He started selling
them on eBay for $1.00 a pair shipped.
Eventually Joe bought a
top of the line Alps MD series printer that printed photo realistic
quality prints, drastically improving the quality of the stickers and
giving him the ability to do waterslide decals, even in white and
metallic ink. This allowed him to expand into other realms including
custom work.
At first, he wanted to expand the stickers into
other brands, including early Mantua/Tyco, Pennline, Hobby line and
others. At about that time, he took on a restoration job for a
L1001 engine that was damaged. After completing that and talking
with Bruce Gripkey, they decided that a few experimental cars would be
worth trying. Bruce supplied Joe with new old stock shells and he
redecorated them into Sunset Limited Vista Dome and Observation cars and
Cities Service and Sohio tank cars. He would buy up broken
streamlined cars for the chassis and vista domes and tank cars for the
chassis, ladders and trucks. He even reproduced the silhouettes.
At the same time, he bought a large amount of undecorated Varney shells
from Bob Nazian and made a few dummy A units and B units for both the
Sunset Limited and Eagle passenger sets. Bruce and Joe had some
long conversations and talked about Bruce supplying shells and parts to
build some of the cars on Maury Romers IBM list and a couple of fantasy
cars also. Not too long after that, Joe had to stop due to other
obligations. At the end, a complete running 105 Inspection Car
was in final running prototype stage. Also planned were new parts
such as railing sets for the Alco diesels, vista domes, tank car chassis
and D&H containers.
Listed below are the cars that Joe made and the quantities
produced.
-
Cities Service tank car (12)
-
Sohio Tank car (10)
-
Sunset Limited Vista Dome (12-14)
-
Sunset Limited Observation (10)
-
Southern Pacific B unit (8)
-
Southern Pacific dummy A (3)
-
Missouri
Pacific B unit (3)
-
Missouri Pacific dummy A (2)
-
Complete reproduction FY&P set (loco, two coaches and one combine) (2)
-
FY&P combine (8)
-
HO Washington loco and combine (2)
-
Orange 125 Shell Tank car (3)
-
Northern Pacific Hay-Jector (4)
-
Union Pacific Hay-Jector (2)
-
Orange
plastic New Haven hopper, pikemaster (2)
-
Lackawanna passenger 4 car
set (2)
-
C&O 3 car passenger set (1)
-
L1002 C&O dummy A (2)
-
701
Cheshire station, (3)
-
Pikemaster Southern Pacific "Black Widow" A
unit (1-2)
-
Green Great Northern Reefer (like S gauge) (1)
-
105
Inspection Car. 1 white running prototype. (Whereabouts
unknown)
All of these reproductions were marked as such either on
the bottom or inside the shell. In addition, Joe used paint
color variations to make sure the copy wasn't mistaken for an original,
as he did on the Cities Service tank car.
Joe picked some of the above items based on requests he had
received. Some of the items, though, came about simply because he
didn't want to ruin his original by running it, fearing a derailment or
other mishap. That actually happened with his original FY&P
Franklin. He placed his original on the track and it ran but never
made the first curve. The rubber driveshaft was petrified and
didn't allow the engine to articulate. The resulting crash broke
the cow catcher on the FY&P loco. The L1002 was made so his
original wouldn't meet the same fate.
While some of the items listed above were never made in HO,
they were related to existing items or
based on American Flyer S gauge production. Growing up around S
gauge, he had developed a love for the Alco PA and some of the other
motive power. He made a chromed Athearn PA into an HO version of
the 405 Silver Streak, using 80' Herkimer aluminum cars behind it.
He also had painted but never decorated an HO Rocket, Comet and Silver
Flash ABA consist. Using a rare Varney bronze Streamlined boiler
and a derelict Gilbert 443, he made an HO Circus Engine with matching
Gilbert Flat cars and a New Haven style circus coach. He also
turned a
couple of AHM C-Liner shells into an EP-5 electric.
Other
Reproductions
Washington Set
I found this reproduction on
display at the Flyernut meeting during York week in October 2014.
It isn't a reproduction of recreation because this set was never made in
HO. It is probably best termed a "fantasy" item. It was
beautifully made and nicely displayed. I was able to get a
few shots of it and they are displayed here.
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