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Micro-Trains - 135 00 052 - Container Car, Single Well, Gunderson Husky Stack 48 - Northwestern Oklahoma - 210152

11  of these sold for an average price of: 23.4523.4511 of these sold for an average price of: 23.45
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N Scale - Micro-Trains - 135 00 052 - Container Car, Single Well, Gunderson Husky Stack 48 - Northwestern Oklahoma - 210152 Image Courtesy of Micro-Trains Line and irwinsjournal.com
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Stock Number135 00 052
Secondary Stock Number135 00 052
Original Retail Price$28.90
BrandMicro-Trains
ManufacturerMicro-Trains Line
Body StyleMicro-Trains 135 Container Car Husky Stack
Prototype VehicleContainer Car, Single Well, Gunderson Husky Stack 48 (Details)
Road or Company NameNorthwestern Oklahoma (Details)
Reporting MarksNOKL
Road or Reporting Number210152
Paint Color(s)Brown
Print Color(s)White
Coupler TypeMT Magne-Matic Knuckle
Wheel TypeInjection Molded Plastic
Wheel ProfileStandard
Announcement Date2017-06-01
Release Date2017-06-01
Item CategoryRolling Stock (Freight)
Model TypeContainer Car
Model SubtypeWell
Model VarietyGunderson Husky Stack
Prototype RegionNorth America
Prototype EraNA Era V: Modern Diesel (1979 - Present)
Scale1/160



Specific Item Information: These 70’ husky stack well cars are brown with white lettering and run on ACF Ride Control trucks. Built in the 1990s, these 210100-210249 series Northwestern Oklahoma Railroad well cars are part of a fleet of lease cars. The Husky-Stack® well car was first introduced in 1990 at the International Intermodal Expo in Atlanta, GA.
Model Information: Micro-Trains first introduced this body style in February of 2017 and represents MTL's first venture into modern Intermodal railcars. This model features new ASF Ride Control Trucks.

There are some issues fitting 48 foot containers into the well. We suspect that Micro-Trains's measurements were extremely accurate in calculating the width of the well, but that some of the older container designs were not so accurate. Unfortunately this has resulted in some containers simply being to wide to sit in the well without filing or modification. We tested Walthers, Deluxe, Con-Cor, Micro-Trains and Kato containers. The Kato's, the MTL's and the Con-Cor containers all fit nicely. The Deluxe smooth side 48's and the Walthers rib side 48's are too wide. We also tested these same containers with the MDC-Roundhouse-Athearn GHC model as well as with the Walthers Thrall well car, and the same containers fit well in these other cars.
Prototype History:
Double-stack container trains first hit the rails for regular service in 1981. The Southern Pacific Railroad had developed the idea to provide service for the Sea- Land maritime shipping company. SP's pioneering double-stack service let Sea- Land's containers take a shortcut from the west coast to the Gulf of Mexico bypassing the Panama Canal. From prototype car to production order, the SP spent a little over four years on the double-stack development project. The SP's double-stack cars featured unwieldy bulkheads on each end to prevent the loose top container from blowing off of the car. A new group at Greenbrier Intermodal designed a similar bulkhead car, even as other companies were starting to leave the bulkheads off of their stack cars. The support for the upper container came from inter-box connectors (IBCs) which had been used for years in oceangoing container shipping. Greenbrier and their car builder, Gunderson, wanted to get in on that market, and did so with their Maxi-Stack cars. But there was another new market out there: developing a single, two-truck stack car. Almost all of the existing cars in service were articulated, with the exception of one SP prototype car.

David DeBoer, a co-founder of Greenbrier, had been seeking to fill this single-well stack car niche, despite the "intermodal experts" at Trailer Train Corp. insisting that the only single-well car that could ride smoothly was a European-style 2-axle car. (In fact, it was DeBoer who wrote the reference book I used for much of this background. His Piggyback and Containers is a highly recommended read, and it was my first review item for MRN.) DeBoer sought advice from his retired former boss at the SP. This pitted the Doubting Thomases at TTX up against Bill Thomford, who had developed the SP's double-stack prototypes. Thomford laughed off Trailer Train's existence, pointing out that his own single-well, two-truck stack car had a million miles of reliable service under its belt. DeBoer went back to Greenbrier and the company got to work designing the car that TTX said was doomed to failure.

In 1990, Gunderson turned out the Husky Stack. Test engineers proved Thomford right, and the cars tracked perfectly. Trailer Train ended up reversing their initial claims and ordering 150 Husky Stack cars built with 48-foot wells in 1991. The Burlington Northern also ordered 75 cars and other buyers lined up later. The original 1991 model cars are still going strong for many different owners, including Trailer Train.

Husky Stack development has continued today, with the introduction of 53-foot wells and the "All-Purpose" Husky Stack, with trailer hitches on each end. In Greenbrier terms, the car is named the HS53 for the 53-foot well version.
Road Name History:
NOKL was established in 1973 to take over operation of the 9 mile former M-K-T line connecting Fisk, Woodward and Warner, Oklahoma. Customers include a grain elevator and a railroad car repair shop. They currently lease out their reporting marks so the many thousands of freight cars lettered NOKL actually belong to the First Union Rail car leasing operation and not this shortline.

This begs the question, why a leasing company would bother to lease a shortline’s reporting marks when they could just use their own (something ending in X such as NDYX, also used by First Union.) There is a difference between private owners and railroad owners in how car-hire is billed. Private owner cars are billed by the mile. Railroad owned cars are billed by a complex formula including per diem, the age of the car and the mileage. Therefore, depending on the service, the leasing companies earn more by using a railroad reporting mark for a car and other times they are better off running the car as a private owner.
Brand/Importer Information: Micro-Trains is the brand name used by both Kadee Quality Products and Micro-Trains Line. For a history of the relationship between the brand and the two companies, please consult our Micro-Trains Collector's Guide.
Manufacturer Information:
Micro-Trains Line split off from Kadee Quality Products in 1990. Kadee Quality Products originally got involved in N-Scale by producing a scaled-down version of their successful HO Magne-Matic knuckle coupler system. This coupler was superior to the ubiquitous 'Rapido' style coupler due to two primary factors: superior realistic appearance and the ability to automatically uncouple when stopped over a magnet embedded in a section of track. The success of these couplers in N-Scale quickly translated to the production of trucks, wheels and in 1972 a release of ready-to-run box cars.

Micro-Trains Line Co. split off from Kadee in 1990 to form a completely independent company. For this reason, products from this company can appear with labels from both enterprises. Due to the nature of production idiosyncrasies and various random factors, the rolling stock from Micro-Trains can have all sorts of interesting variations in both their packaging as well as the products themselves. When acquiring an MTL product it is very important to understand these important production variations that can greatly enhance (or decrease) the value of your purchase.

Please consult our Micro-Trains Collector's Guide
Item created by: gdm on 2017-06-01 10:06:27. Last edited by George on 2024-01-26 20:29:05

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