Con-Cor - 0001-01471D - Boxcar, 50 Foot, Steel, Plug Door - Burlington Route

Model Information: This body style was designed by Kato for MRC. However, since MRC used elements of previously designed Con-Cor owned toolings, Con-Cor was able to claim that they owned this derived model as well. The rights to the tooling were transferred to Con-Cor and MRC turned to Lima for a replacement tooling for this one. After acquiring the rights to the tooling, Con-Cor had Kato produce the first runs of this car with Con-Cor branding. Perhaps this was out of convenience or perhaps it was part of a legal settlement. Later on, Con-Cor brought the tooling back to the United States for continued production. Likely the tooling was later moved to China in the 1990s, but as of this writing, I am unsure if Con-Cor has produced any Chinese-made runs of this model.

Prototype History: The 50-foot boxcar made its first appearance in the 1930s and steadily grew in popularity over the years, which further improved redundancies by allowing for even more space within a given car. Today, the 50-footer remains the common boxcar size. After the second world war ended, and steel became once again readily available, steel became the go-to choice for construction of boxcars. Pullman Standard and ACF were some of the most prolific builders of these cars.

In the 1960s, the flush, "plug" style sliding door was introduced as an option that provides a larger door to ease loading and unloading of certain commodities. The tight-fitting doors are better insulated and allow a car's interior to be maintained at a more even temperature.

Road Name History: The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (reporting mark CBQ) was a railroad that operated in the Midwestern United States. Commonly referred to as the Burlington or as the Q, the Burlington Route served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and also in New Mexico and Texas through subsidiaries Colorado and Southern Railway, Fort Worth and Denver Railway, and Burlington-Rock Island Railroad.[citation needed] Its primary connections included Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver. Because of this extensive trackage in the midwest and mountain states, the railroad used the advertising slogans "Everywhere West", "Way of the Zephyrs", and "The Way West". It merged into Burlington Northern in 1970.

In 1967, it reported 19,565 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 723 million passenger miles; corresponding totals for C&S were 1,100 and 10 and for FW&D were 1,466 and 13. At the end of the year CB&Q operated 8,538 route-miles, C&S operated 708 and FW&D operated 1362. (These totals may or may not include the former Burlington-Rock Island Railroad.)

Information sourced from Wikipedia

Brand/Importer Information: Con-Cor has been in business since 1962. Many things have changed over time as originally they were a complete manufacturing operation in the USA and at one time had upwards of 45 employees. They not only designed the models,but they also built their own molds, did injection molding, painting, printing and packaging on their models.

Currently, most of their manufacturing has been moved overseas and now they import 90% of their products as totally finished goods, or in finished components. They only do some incidental manufacturing today within the USA.

Important Note: The Con-Cor product numbering can be very confusing. Please see here in the article how to properly enter Con-Cor stock numbers in the TroveStar database.