Micro-Trains - 512 51 020 - Boxcar, 50-Foot, Combo, No Roofwalk - RailBox - 50006

Specific Item Information: Road Numbers: 50006, 50050, 50073, 50110

Series Name: Runner Pack

Road Name History: RailBox Company (reporting marks ABOX, RBOX, TBOX, FBOX), founded in 1974, was created to address a boxcar shortage in the United States in the 1970s.

The concept behind RailBox, as evidenced by their slogan "Next Load, Any Road!" was that since Railbox was owned by many of the railroads as a privately owned cooperative, their boxcars were not subject to load/empty rules. Railbox cars could be assigned for service anywhere in Canada, Mexico and the United States on lines where an AAR Plate-C loading gauge is permitted. Railbox purchased boxcars from many Manufacturers including American Car and Foundry (ACF), Farmers Machinery Company (FMC), and Pullman-Standard (P-S).

Under the ICC car routing rules in effect at the time, cars owned by operating companies were supposed to be routed back to their owning road as soon as possible or the host road would have to pay demurrage(car storage and handling) charges. This was the cause a shortage of available cars and not an actual shortage of boxcars numerically. As empty cars were required to be routed back to their home railroad instead of being loaded and routed to another destination.

RailBox cars are all boxcars and are painted yellow with black doors. RailBox cars had a bold graphic side logo, which was a stylized X made of red and blue intertwined arrows to symbolize free flow. During the 1970s many railroads had old fleets of railcars. Due to the poor financial state of many railroads these cars were dirty and grimy. Railbox cars stood out with their bright yellow paint and large logos. The company's car reporting marks, as noted above, ended in the letter "X". Under FRA designation reporting marks ending in "X" are assigned to private owner cars.

As of 2015, many RailBox cars are still in service. The rise of intermodal containerized freight (which began in the late 1980s and early 1990s) has reduced the demand for full carload boxcar service. Also deregulation in the 1980s eliminated the legacy car routing rules, reaching its peak with the elimination of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1995.

RailBox (and the similar Railgon Company) are currently subsidiaries of TTX Company.

From Wikipedia

Brand/Importer Information: Micro-Trains Line split off from Kadee Quality Products in 1990. Kadee Quality Products originally got involved in N-Scale by producing a scaled-down version of their successful HO Magne-Matic knuckle coupler system. This coupler was superior to the ubiquitous 'Rapido' style coupler due to two primary factors: superior realistic appearance and the ability to automatically uncouple when stopped over a magnet embedded in a section of track. The success of these couplers in N-Scale quickly translated to the production of trucks, wheels and in 1972 a release of ready-to-run box cars.

Micro-Trains Line Co. split off from Kadee in 1990 to form a completely independent company. For this reason, products from this company can appear with labels from both enterprises. Due to the nature of production idiosyncrasies and various random factors, the rolling stock from Micro-Trains can have all sorts of interesting variations in both their packaging as well as the products themselves. When acquiring an MTL product it is very important to understand these important production variations that can greatly enhance (or decrease) the value of your purchase.