Model Power - 8635 - Passenger Car, Heavyweight, Pullman, Observation - Canadian National - 5086

Model Information: Lima introduced North American heavyweight passenger cars in their 1969-70 catalog, in 3 body styles: Coach, Combine and Observation.
It is inspired by the prototype of the PRR P70 coach car, with major differences though, starting with 3-axle trucks instead of 2 for the prototype.
First distributed in North America by AHM and PMI, it was later distributed by Model Power under their brand name. After Lima vanished in the mid 1990's, Model Power continued to produce a copy of these cars in a Chinese factory. All in all this model has been produced over 4 decades, with very few changes. The last versions released by Model Power in the late 2000's were fitted with dummy knuckle couplers instead of the original Rapido ones. Depending on year and origin of production, the wheels can be either nickel-silver plated metal or injection molded plastic.

Prototype History: Pullman was the leading producer of heavyweight coaches during the 1st half of the twentieth century. They were known for the quality and luxury of the passenger cars. The observation car was a common sight on heavyweight consists during 1920s and 1930s.

An observation car/carriage/coach (in US English, often abbreviated to simply observation or obs) is a type of railroad passenger car, generally operated in a passenger train as the last carriage, with windows on the rear of the car for passengers' viewing pleasure. The cars were nearly universally removed from service on American railroads beginning in the 1950s as a cost-cutting measure in order to eliminate the need to "turn" the trains when operating out of stub-end terminals.

Road Name History: The Canadian National Railway Company (reporting mark CN) is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec that serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad". CN is a public company with 24,000 employees. It had a market capitalization of 32 billion CAD in 2011. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding to its privatization in 1995. Bill Gates was, in 2011, the largest single shareholder of CN stock.

CN is the largest railway in Canada, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, and is currently Canada's only transcontinental railway company, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia. Its range once reached across the island of Newfoundland until 1988, when the Newfoundland Railway was abandoned.

Following CN's purchase of Illinois Central (IC) and a number of smaller US railways, it also has extensive trackage in the central United States along the Mississippi River valley from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, CN owns about 20,400 route miles (32,831 km) of track in 8 provinces (the only two not served by CN are Newfoundland & Labrador and Prince Edward Island), as well as a 70-mile (113 km) stretch of track (see Mackenzie Northern Railway) into the Northwest Territories to Hay River on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake; it is the northernmost rail line anywhere within the North American Rail Network, as far north as Anchorage, Alaska (although the Alaska Railroad goes further north than this, it is isolated from the rest of the rail network).

The railway was referred to as the Canadian National Railways (CNR) between 1918 and 1960, and as Canadian National/Canadien National (CN) from 1960 to the present.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: Founded in the late 1960's by Michael Tager, the 3rd generation business specializes in quality hobby products serving the toy and hobby markets worldwide. During its 50 years of operation, Model Power has developed a full line of model railroading products, die-cast metal aircraft, and die-cast metal cars and trucks.

In early 2014, Model Power ceased its business operations. Its extensive portfolio of intellectual property and physical assets are now exclusively produced, marketed, sold, and distributed by MRC (Model Power, MetalTrain and Mantua) and by Daron (Postage Stamp Airplanes and Airliner Collection).