Life-Like - 7369 - Boxcar, 50 Foot, Steel, Double Door - Elgin Joliet & Eastern - 62999

Specific Item Information: Car bottom shows Life Like Made In China. Body is similar to Minitrix 50' Double Door Boxcar.

Model Information: Made for Life-Like in China by Sanda Kan. Sanda Kan also produced these same cars for Industrial Rail. The Life-Like packaging claims these models are "Hi-Cube" boxcars, but they aren't the right dimensions. These cars can be terrible runners. The trucks just don't roll well.

Prototype History: The 50-foot boxcar made its first appearance in the 1930s and steadily grew in popularity over the years, which further improved redundancies by allowing for even more space within a given car. Today, the 50-footer remains the common boxcar size. After the second world war ended, and steel became once again readily available, steel became the go-to choice for construction of boxcars. Pullman Standard and ACF were some of the most prolific builders of these cars.

Double Doors were frequently an option for most of the major North American railcar manufacturers in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. These cars were slightly more expensive to produce and maintain, but for many applications allowed faster loading and unloading times.

Road Name History: The EJ&E dates from 1888. For most of its history, it was owned by US Steel whose Gary Works is near the east end of the line. Another company owns the mill now.

The EJ&E traces a wide arc around the Chicago area between 30 and 40 miles from the city center from Waukegan on the north, around Walker and Joliet, then east as far as Porter, Indiana. Because of this, the EJ&E was known for years as “The Chicago Outer Belt.” It also had the nickname, “The J”.

EJ&E’s two biggest missions have been moving steel and acting as a transfer road for all of Chicago’s Class 1’s and shortlines. As a result, the line was heavily trafficked with 100 locomotives required to serve just 230 route miles. In addition, EJ&E had over 10,000 freight cars, a huge fleet for a line that size.

In the early diesel days, EJ&E stuck mostly with Baldwin and EMD with a few Alco RS2’s thrown in. The J had more Baldwin center cab transfer engines (DT 6-6-2000) than anyone else, in fact more than just about everyone else combined. Ballasted EMD SD7’s painted in green over orange were also used in transfer service. EMD NW2’s were the primary switchers. In 1970, the Baldwins were replaced by EMD SD38-2’s, delivered with dual controls to they could just as easily run long hood forward. By that time, EJ&E had gone to solid orange with silver trucks and fuel tanks with various striping and logo placement variations over the years. They would also toy with gold and yellow and green and yellow schemes.

In 2009 the Elgin Joliet & Eastern was acquired by Canadian National in order to link their former Wisconsin Central, Illinois Central, Chicago Central & Pacific, and Grand Trunk Western lines. These lines approached the city from different directions and had required trackage rights and terminal roads to reach each other so acquiring the EJ&E was a logical move.

Brand/Importer Information: Life-Like Products LLC (now Life-Like Toy and Hobby division of Wm. K. Walthers) was a manufacturer of model railroad products and was based in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was founded in the 1950s by a company that pioneered extruded foam ice chests under the Lifoam trademark. Because ice chests are a summer seasonal item, the company needed a way to keep the factory operating year round. As model railroading was becoming popular in the post-war years, they saw this as an opportunity and so manufactured extruded foam tunnels for model trains. Over the years, Life-Like expanded into other scenery items, finally manufacturing rolling stock beginning in the late 1960s. At some point in the early 1970s, Life-Like purchased Varney Inc. and began to produce the former Varney line as its own.

The Canadian distributor for Life-Like products, Canadian Hobbycraft, saw a missing segment in market for Canadian model prototypes, and started producing a few Canadian models that were later, with a few modifications, offered in the US market with US roadnames.

In 2005, the company, now known as Lifoam Industries, LLC, decided to concentrate on their core products of extruded foam and sold their model railroad operations to Wm. K. Walthers.

In June 2018, Atlas and Walthers announced to have reached an agreement under which all Walthers N scale rolling stock tooling, including the former Life-Like tooling, will be purchased by Atlas.

Read more on Wikipedia and The Train Collectors Association.

Manufacturer Information: Established in 1973, Sanda Kan was originally a venture (subsidiary?) of Life-Like products. In 1979, Mr. Wai Shing Ting, formerly of Cox Hong Kong, joined Sanda Kan and took over as de facto CEO. At some point ownership of the venture changed hands and Mr. Ting became the primary owner. In 2000, Ting sold Sanda Kan to ZS Fund. The company was later resold to Kader Holdings, the venerable Hong Kong based toy manufacturer. The original location of the Sanda Kan facility was in Hong Kong, but after the liberalization of the mainland Chinese economy, the primary manufacturing site moved to Guang Dong (Canton), while the administrative offices appear to have remained in Hong Kong. At its height, Sanda Kan operated in 10 factories across Guang Dong with over 10,000 employees in 1.2 million square feet of space.

Sanda Kan is a highly recognized developer and manufacturer of precision models. It produces a full range of model train locomotives, from the very small 1:220 scale to the large 1:22 scale products. Other hobby items include electronic slot racing cars, sophisticated digital controls as well as accessories such as scenery, promotional cars and trucks. It continues to work closely with some of the world’s leading brands from concept to mold construction through to final production.

Sanda Kan’s unique structure allows for maximum flexibility. Its production facilities are located in Songgang, Shenzhen and Wanjiang, Dongguan. Each location is outfitted with mould shops providing full service on-site mould construction and maintenance. Both locations are also sub-divided into individual factories capable of manufacturing complete products, which are comprehensively equipped with injection moulding machines, tempo printing and spraying facilities, and dedicated assembly lines. This arrangement provides our clients with the dedicated capacity, service and privacy levels that they may require.

In 2008, Sanda Kan was acquired by Kader Holdings, the parent company of Bachmann and Tinco, but remains in operation producing model trains for numerous clients including: Atlas, Lionel, Aristo-Craft, Micro-Ace, S-Helper, Hornby, Brawa, Marklin and Tomix.

For more on Sanda Kan and Mr. Wai Shing Ting, please visit the Atlas Model Trains article on Wai Shing Ting.