Con-Cor - 1681F - Boxcar, 50 Foot, Grain Loading - Borden's Farm Products - 32284

Specific Item Information: CON-COR molded into bottom of frame.

Model Information: This model appears in the 1979 JMC catalog but not the 1973. I suspect it was introduced around 1976, but I would love confirmation. It was produced in Con-Cor's NEW Jersey facility and features a die-cast underframe and a standard 1st-generation injection-molded body. The tooling was likely moved to China as at least one modern Christmas Car was produced with this tooling.

Prototype History: Grain-Loading boxcars were variations on standardized boxcars built with specialized doors. Grain doors were the term used for the wooden, or in later years cardboard inserts mounted inside the regular doors to keep the grain from spilling out when the main door was opened. These allowed any suitable car to be used in grain service.

These cars were typically rebuilt from older cars and modified such that the door was boarded up from the inside and the grain was blown in over the top of the boards. These cars were all made obsolete by the appearance of specialized covered hoppers in the 1980s. At this point some of these cars were adapted for MOW service.

Road Name History: Borden, Inc., was an American producer of food and beverage products, consumer products, and industrial products. At one time, the company was the largest U.S. producer of dairy and pasta products. Its food division, Borden Foods, was based in Columbus, Ohio, and focused primarily on pasta and pasta sauces, bakery products, snacks, processed cheese, jams and jellies, and ice cream. It was best known for its Borden Ice Cream, Meadow Gold milk, Creamette pasta, and Borden Condensed Milk brands. Its consumer products and industrial segment marketed wallpaper, adhesives, plastics and resins. By 1993, sales of food products accounted for 67 percent of its revenues. It was also known for its Elmer's Glue and Krazy Glue.

After significant financial losses in the early 1990s and a leveraged buyout by KKR in 1995, Borden divested itself of its various divisions, brands and businesses. KKR shuttered Borden's food products operations in 2001, and divested all its other Borden operations in 2005. The Borden dairy brands are currently used by both Dean Foods and Grupo Lala (as Borden Milk Products) for milk and by Dairy Farmers of America for cheese.

From Wikipedia

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.