Con-Cor - 0001-040195 - Passenger Car, Lightweight, ACF Observation Lounge - Via Rail Canada - Shasta Park

Prototype History: American Car & Foundry was a prominent player in the post-war lightweight streamlined era. They produced many different models for most of the major players in the passenger space. Most of these cars were of the 'Smoothside' style. Being lightweight, they were equipped with 2-axle high-speed bogies. One example of this period is the Observation-Lounge car built for the Great Northern by Pullman Standard in 1951 for the Empire Builder as the “Mountain” series observation cars. The cars were configured as 2 Roomette-buffet-lounge-observation units. These cars were moved to other GN trains such as the Western Star in 1955, and replaced by the “Coulee” series 6-4-1-observation cars.

Road Name History: Via Rail Canada (reporting mark VIA) (generally shortened to Via Rail or Via; styled corporately as VIA Rail Canada) is an independent crown corporation, subsidized by the Minister of Transport, mandated to offer intercity passenger rail services in Canada.

On January 12, 1977, CN spun off its passenger services as a separate Crown corporation, VIA Rail Canada. At its inception, Via acquired all CN passenger cars and locomotives. Following several months of negotiation, on October 29, 1978, Via took over operation of CP passenger train services, and took possession of cars and locomotives. Passenger train services which were not included in the creation of Via Rail included those offered by BC Rail, Algoma Central Railway, Ontario Northland Railway, Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway, various urban commuter train services operated by CN and CP, and remaining CN passenger services in Newfoundland.

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.