Rapido Trains - 501039 - Passenger Car, Lightweight, Pullman, Duplex Sleeper Plan 4124 - Canadian National - 1149 "Essex"

Model Information: The Duplex Sleeper is available with partial skirting or with fixed steps, as appropriate.

• Super-detailed underbody
• Body-mounted Micro-Trains(r) couplers
• Fixed steps or partial skirts, as appropriate
• All air, steam and electrical lines represented Insulated 36″ metal wheelsets (no pizza cutters!)
• "Easy-Peasy" battery-powered interior lighting
• Flush windows with painted gaskets and shades
• Full interior detail including armrests and headrests
• Diaphragms with etched brass end gates
• Painted metal roof grab irons applied at the factory
• Multiple car names and/or numbers per paint scheme
• Will operate smoothly on curves down to 9-3/4″ radius
• Super-detailled 41-N-11 Inside Swinghanger or 41-BNO-11 Outside Swinghanger trucks as appropriate for each roadname and car type.

Prototype information: The Rapido Trains Inc. Duplex Sleeper is everything you need for your overnight passengers, from your branchline, backwater mail train to your hot Limiteds. It features the three most common forms of overnight accommodation - open sections for the budget-minded, roomettes for private day and night travel, and double bedrooms with comfortable seats. Bedroom seats have see-through armrests, and roomettes have curtains for privacy. Public restrooms at the A end of the car include a vanity for the ladies and dental bowls for hygiene.

The Duplex Sleeper is Pullman plan number 4124, a CN and Great Northern prototype with 4 sections, 8 duplex roomettes and 4 bedrooms. Several railroads throughout North America had similar duplex sleepers, and our car is painted in a variety of paint schemes.

Prototype History: The Pullman plan 4124 duplex sleeper is everything you need for your overnight passengers, from your branchline, backwater mail train to your hot Limiteds. It features the three most common forms of overnight accommodation - open sections for the budget-minded, roomettes for private day and night travel, and double bedrooms with comfortable seats. Bedroom seats have see-through armrests, and roomettes have curtains for privacy. Public restrooms at the A end of the car include a vanity for the ladies and dental bowls for hygiene.

Pullman plan number 4124, was used by both the CN and Great Northern railroads. It featured 4 sections, 8 duplex roomettes and 4 bedrooms. Several railroads throughout North America had similar duplex sleepers, and this car was painted in a variety of paint schemes.

Road Name History: The Canadian National Railway Company (reporting mark CN) is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec that serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad". CN is a public company with 24,000 employees. It had a market capitalization of 32 billion CAD in 2011. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding to its privatization in 1995. Bill Gates was, in 2011, the largest single shareholder of CN stock.

CN is the largest railway in Canada, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, and is currently Canada's only transcontinental railway company, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia. Its range once reached across the island of Newfoundland until 1988, when the Newfoundland Railway was abandoned.

Following CN's purchase of Illinois Central (IC) and a number of smaller US railways, it also has extensive trackage in the central United States along the Mississippi River valley from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, CN owns about 20,400 route miles (32,831 km) of track in 8 provinces (the only two not served by CN are Newfoundland & Labrador and Prince Edward Island), as well as a 70-mile (113 km) stretch of track (see Mackenzie Northern Railway) into the Northwest Territories to Hay River on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake; it is the northernmost rail line anywhere within the North American Rail Network, as far north as Anchorage, Alaska (although the Alaska Railroad goes further north than this, it is isolated from the rest of the rail network).

The railway was referred to as the Canadian National Railways (CNR) between 1918 and 1960, and as Canadian National/Canadien National (CN) from 1960 to the present.

Read more on Wikipedia.

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.