Con-Cor - 0001-007012 - Passenger Car, Lightweight, Pullman RPO - North Pole & Southern - 2022

Specific Item Information: This an “N” Scale car, and comes with N Micro-Trains couplers that will match up to all common brands sold in the USA. Car will run on 11″ inch radius. It is a Railway Post Office Car (RPO) and will be the first in a planned group of 4 annual passenger cars that will continue on for the next few years.

Series Information: Several manufacturers have a tradition of releasing an annual Christmas car.
- Con-Cor has been making an annual “N” Christmas Collectors Car since 1975.
- Bev-Bel has been making Christmas and Holiday cars at least since 1978 (until their end of business).

Model Information: This model was designed by Con-Cor in the 1980s. It is modeled after the Pullman Standard RPO-Baggage built for GN in 1947. It has has 3 double-windows, located at one end of the car, and 2 doors. This model is still produced by Con-Cor.
It is not to be confused with an older RPO designed by Con-Cor and that is no longer produced. The older model has 5 windows in the middle of the car, and 3 doors.

Prototype History: When lightweight cars came to the Pullman fleet in the early 1940s, their smooth sides lent themselves to classy, colorful paint schemes. Baggage cars operated on everything from premier trains to mail runs from coast to coast, normally mixing with the head-end cars of connecting lines.

RPO cars were built to government specifications by the railroads, which owned these cars and were paid by U.S. Post Office contracts per mile of running time. They were staffed by specially-trained, armed U.S. Postal Clerks, who referred to their runs by the cities between which they operated: north to south or east to west, with north-south taking precedence.

Road Name History: Fictitious railroad created by Bachmann Trains for a series of holiday themed trains and rolling stock.

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.