RailSmith - 41101-2 - Passenger Car, Lightweight, Pullman, Sleeper, Duplex - Northern Pacific - 2-Pack

Specific Item Information: Two Prototype Sleepers – North Coast Limited Sleepers #350 & #352 – Loewy Scheme Built in 1947 by Pullman-Standard, these cars were part of an eighteen car order, the first cars for the streamlined North Coast Limited. When delivered, they were painted in the ‘Streamliner’ scheme, also more recently called the ‘Pine Tree’ scheme. They were also delivered with skirts which were later removed. In 1953 they were given the striking scheme created by the designer Raymond Loewy. Known as the Loewy Scheme, this two-tone green made for a stunning train consist. With two of these cars assigned to the 1954 NCL, many of these sleepers also saw service on trains like the Mainstreeter, and the Alaskan, as well as the Spokane Portland & Seattle Streamliner (Trains 1 & 2). This is a Prototype car and to the era of this paint scheme, has no skirts.

Model Information: RailSmith released sets of mixed body styles in the Pullman lightweight series starting in 2019.

Road Name History: The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States from Minnesota to the Pacific Coast. It was approved by Congress in 1864 and given nearly 40 million acres (160,000 km2) of land grants, which it used to raise money in Europe for construction. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in western Montana on Sept. 8, 1883.

The railroad had about 6800 miles of track and served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. In addition the company had an international branch to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The main activities were shipping wheat and other farm products, cattle, timber and minerals; bringing in consumer goods, transporting passengers; and selling land.

The company was headquartered first in Brainerd, Minnesota, then in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It had a tumultuous financial history, and in 1970 it merged with other lines to form the Burlington Northern Railroad.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: RailSmith is a brand launched by Lowell Smith in 2019. Lowell acquired the toolings from Walthers.

With each release, RailSmith will bring passenger cars from across the spectrum of North America’s railroads, with the goal of building entire trains over a period-of-time. It is our plan to release cars that might be for a specific train, but you can use these cars as you see fit, as did the railroads.

Production plans are grand, but we believe they are also achievable. We do not have the capabilities to release an entire train at once, but being able to focus on one release (two-or-three cars at a time), we can build a train over time.