Rapido Trains - 109063 - Passenger Car, Lightweight, Osgood Bradley - Undecorated

Body Style Information: Available in fully, partially, or non-skirted versions, with or without roof hatches (as appropriate), with GE or Frigidaire air conditioning equipment (as appropriate), the Rapido Trains Osgood Bradley Lightweight 10-Window Coaches have complete and accurate interior detail (including bulkhead mirrors), correct, tubular cross section flush windows with painted frames, full under-body detailing (with separate air, steam, and electrical lines), brake hoses and end gates, exquisite 41-E trucks with chain detail and metal RP25 wheel-sets, Easy-Peasy battery operating lighting, factory installed, separate grab irons, and accurate paint and lettering schemes.

Precisely scaled from the original factory blueprints, with several car numbers for each paint scheme offered, the models have a minimum operating radius of twenty-four inches.

Prototype Information: Designed by Walter Dorwin Teague in the early 1930s, beginning in 1934, the attractive, lightweight, rounded aircraft style bodied Pullman Standard Osgood Bradley passenger cars were manufactured in Pullman Standard's Osgood Bradley plant in Worcester, Connecticut.

The line's first truly lightweight coaches, the New York New Haven and Hartford Railroad was the largest customer of these 10-window cars.

Osgood Bradley's were used on long distance and local passenger trains and saw continued use well into the 1970s.

Prototype Information: 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/Company Information: Although they may be molded in color, unpainted and unlettered, undecorated products are marketed to modelers who seek to custom decorate their models for private roads and/or road and/or company names that were not commercially produced by any of the major manufacturers.

Undecorated models are frequently also unassembled or only partially assembled and required modelers to be comfortable with glue, paint and sometimes solder in order to prepare their models for display. Materials for these models can vary but often include plastic, pewter and resin. Models may or may not come with decals or other decorations such as plastic signage, railings and ladders to enhance the appearance of the final product.

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.