Red Caboose - RN-17629-1 - Gondola, Steel Coil, Evans 48 Foot - Missouri Pacific - 950003

Model Information: These models are both wonderful and awful at the same time. They have wonderful detail and printing, but the "RTR" versions are not.

They model an Evans 100-Ton Type-4 Steel Coil gondola car, and they do a pretty nice job. They show better underframe detailing than most Red Caboose models and the flexibility to run them with or without covers is nice, as long as you get the kit form.

Unfortunately if you get the Ready-To-Run (RTR) version, you don't get coils. And they are not truly Ready-to-Run because since they come with the covers glued to the Gondola, you are required to glue on the roof details or they will look wrong. Furthermore the roof details come on tiny sprues that need to be carefully cut apart. Then the attachment points where the details come away from the sprues need to be shaved. Then trying to glue these parts onto the coil covers is a feat worthy of neurosurgeon level dexterity or glue will get all over the covers.

Get the kit version if you can. You get the coils. You have to do the hardest part of the assembly job either way, and if you run them with the coils exposed, then you do not need to bother gluing the ding-dang roof details on the covers anyway.

Prototype History: The increased volume of coiled steel transportation gave rise to a new purpose-built freight car. Previously rolls of coiled-steel had generally traveled in specially equipped gondola cars. In the 1960s a lighter type of car emerged specifically for hauling coils of steel in an integral trough. The car type gained popularity and eventually over 17,000 cars were built. One common model was the 48 foot design from Evans.

The new commodity-specific coil-steel car were built with a 100-ton capacity using a trough frame and body. The early designs were refined during the 1960s and eventually Evans adopted a 48-foot length as standard. Production lasted well into the 1970s.

Road Name History: The Missouri Pacific Railroad (reporting mark MP), commonly abbreviated MoPac, with nickname of The Mop, was one of the first railroads in the United States west of the Mississippi River. MoPac was a Class I railroad growing from dozens of predecessors and mergers, including the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway (SLIMS), Texas and Pacific Railway (TP), Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad (C&EI), St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway (SLBM), Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf Railway (KO&G), Midland Valley Railroad (MV), San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad (SAU&G), Gulf Coast Lines (GC), International-Great Northern Railroad (IGN), New Orleans, Texas and Mexico Railway (NOTM), Missouri-Illinois Railroad (MI), as well as the small Central Branch Railway (an early predecessor of MP in Kansas and south central Nebraska), and joint ventures such as the Alton and Southern Railroad (AS).

In 1967, the railroad operated 9,041 miles of road and 13,318 miles of track, not including DK&S, NO&LC, T&P and its subsidiaries, C&EI and Missouri-Illinois.

On January 8, 1980, the Union Pacific Railroad agreed to buy the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Lawsuits filed by competing railroads delayed approval of the merger until September 13, 1982. After the Supreme Court denied a trial to the Southern Pacific, the merger took effect on December 22, 1982. However, due to outstanding bonds of the Missouri Pacific, the merger with Union Pacific become official only on January 1, 1997.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: Originally Red Caboose was a manufacturer of HO and N Scale model railroading items. It was located in Mead, Colorado, and was founded in 1990 by Leon Fairbanks. Red Caboose manufactured highly accurate, well detailed N, HO, and O Scale freight cars and locomotives.

Red Caboose closed its doors in January of 2015. Red Caboose N Scale has been sold to Fox Valley Models and HO was sold to InterMountain Railway. Many of the Red Caboose toolings have seen re-releases from Fox Valley since the acquisition. We just wish they would clean up the underframes. Red Caboose always went light on the details where they thought people wouldn't look.

Manufacturer Information: While they were in business, Red Caboose split its production runs between the US and China. Which models were produced where was a function of which body style and which run. Furthermore, which Chinese company was used for production is something we would love to find out.