Deluxe Innovations - 105303 - Gondola, Woodchip - Duluth & Northeastern - 3 numbers

Specific Item Information:
DNE 6023
DNE 6031
DNE 6052

Model Information: This model comes in both "Smoothside" and "Shallow-Rib" variations.

Prototype History: Although they are one of the lightest loads carried by rail, they require one of the biggest cars! Wood chips are big business for today's saw mills and lumber operations. Once burned as scrap or fuel-on-site, these by-products of the lumber industry are purchased by paper companies and used to make paper.

Specially designed for the pulp and paper industry, these cars can hold up to 6,800 cubic feet of pulpwood chips. Open-top gondolas without doors, end doors or bottom gates are designed for top loading. Unloading can be performed by top, end or bottom, depending on car design.

Road Name History: The D&NE was born in 1898 to build a 75 mile line between Cloquet and Hornby, Minnesota ostensibly to haul logs. As the area around Hornby was logged over, the D&NE got shorter, becoming a 10 mile line to Saginaw by the Second World War. Potlatch Corporation bought the D&NE in 1964 to feed raw material to their paper mill in Cloquet. In 1991, D&NE got another haircut, down to just 6 miles of line in the Cloquet area. In 2002, Potlatch sold the paper mill and the D&NE to Sappi Paper who reorganized the D&NE as the Cloquet Terminal Railroad.

Cloquet Terminal Railroad is owned by the Sappi Paper Mill and took over the operations of the Duluth and Northeastern Railroad on May 13, 2002.
The Duluth & Northeastern, while the last operating logging railroad in Minnesota, had abandoned most of its route in the 1940s and the line between Cloquet and Saginaw, Minnesota in the 1990s.

Brand/Importer Information: DeLuxe Innovations is a "wholesale manufacturer" of model trains. We manufacture scale replica train models and sell them to hobby shops and distributors worldwide. 2013 marked the 20 year anniversary of DeLuxe Innovations brand trains. There are over 25 body styles in our product line and all of the cars in our single and multi-car packs have different road numbers. DeLuxe Innovations, Inc. is owned by Dave Ferrari, founder of Squeak N Products. We are located in Midland Park, New Jersey. When Dave purchased the business it was located in Burbank, California which would have been a bit of a long commute so the move to the East Coast was planned. Our first East Coast location was in Whippany, NJ along the Whippany River.

The business was started in 1993 by George Johnsen and Roberta Liebreich in Burbank, California. They had a philosophy that just wouldn't allow using a coal car as a "stand in" for a woodchip car, or printing any and all boxcar paint schemes on a PS-1. Starting with the release of the first ever etched metal parts for a ready to run car (1994's Twinstack's metal walkways) through the full dimension underframe and etched metal roofwalk (1996's 1944 AAR Boxcar) to the challenging RoadRailer system (2000), our products have been accurate to target the modeler or enthusiast.

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