Rapido Trains - 509051 - Passenger Car, Lightweight, Osgood Bradley - Long Island Rail Road - 7545

Model Information: Available in partially or non-skirted versions, the Rapido Trains Osgood Bradley Lightweight 10-Window Coaches have full under-body detailing, end diaphragms with etched metal gates, newly designed 41-E trucks with metal wheel-sets, full interior details, Easy-Peasy battery operating lighting, metal side grab irons, and accurate paint and lettering schemes.

Prototype History: In 1934 Pullman-Standard’s Osgood Bradley plant in Worcester, Massachusets began construction of one of the first true lightweight coaches for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. These cars were used on both long distance and local trains and served well into the 1970’s.

For clarity’s sake, let’s get the nomenclature right. Due to copyright issues, we’re not allowed to call these cars by their popular name. The popular name for the cars, named after an A.C. Gilbert S scale model in the 1940s, was coined by Arthur Dubin in his book More Classic Trains in 1974. In the interests of historical accuracy, let’s return these cars to their original name: they are Pullman-Standard’s lightweight Osgood Bradley coaches, or Osgood Bradley coaches for short.

Road Name History: The LIRR was established in 1834 as part of a ferry-rail-ferry-rail route linking New York City with Boston. Within a few years, an all-rail route (later becoming the New Haven) was completed and LIRR’s through traffic evaporated. In the 1880s, the LIRR absorbed all of the other railroads on the island and settled in to a life of dependable local service. This included what may have been the first WOFC (wagon on flat car) service.

In 1900, Pennsylvania Railroad bought control of the LIRR and began incorporating it into their plans for Penn Station in Manhattan. This included electrifying certain routes on the west end of the LIRR with 600 volt DC third rail. The steam locomotive fleet began to take on a distinctly Pennsy look. Over the next 20 years, Long Island began to develop into a bedroom community for New York City and the LIRR stepped in to become the transport of choice for tens of thousands of daily commuters.

However, running commuter trains is an inherently dodgy business. It requires large investments in equipment and facilities that are used for two brief windows of time during the day, then sit idle for the rest of the time. The problem was made worse by the state of New York who froze ticket prices at the end of the First World War and left them there until after the Second World War. The LIRR slipped into bankruptcy. Parent PRR and the state came to an agreement. New York’s onerous property taxes were relaxed, ticket fares were allowed to rise and PRR began modernizing the LIRR. Steam was replaced with diesels primarily from Alco and Fairbanks-Morse. EMD’s joined the party in 1976.

In 1966, a state agency (later called the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) bought control of the LIRR from the Pennsylvania Railroad. Under state control, the LIRR gradually lost interest in their freight service and in 1997 freight operations were turned over to the New York & Atlantic Railway. The LIRR remains today America’s largest passenger hauler, moving over a third of a million passengers on a typical weekday.

Brand/Importer Information: Rapido Trains Inc. is a high-end manufacturer of model trains and accessories in HO, OO and N (North American 1:160 and British 1:148) scales. The firm's mission is to recreate the entire rail travel experience, from fully-detailed interiors and under-frames on models to fully-wired telephone poles for model railroads.

The name RAPIDO was introduced by Canadian National in 1965 to headline the railway's high-speed intercity passenger services. Until the mid-1980s, RAPIDO stood for fast schedules, frequent trains, and superb service.

Today, Rapido Trains continues the RAPIDO concept with state-of-the-art models and attention to fine detail. This company is not related to the venerable (and now defunct) German manufacturer Arnold Rapido, nor the present-day Arnold (which is owned by the United Kingdom's Hornby), Canadian based Rapido Trains was founded in 2003.