Athearn - 17197 - Boxcar, 50 Foot, FMC, 5077 - East St. Louis Junction - 7748

Specific Item Information: N RTR 50 foot FMC Double Door Box/Weathered, ESLJ #2

Model Information: Boxcar, 50 Foot, Offset Double Sliding Door, Rib Side, Without Roofwalk, FMC. Originally designed by MDC Roundhouse, this tooling was acquired by Athearn in June of 2004. It has since been re-released with Accumate and/or McHenry couplers. This body style has two doors offset from center of the car.

Current versions features: Scale profile brake wheel; Roller bearing trucks; Fully-assembled and ready-to-run out of the box; Accurately painted and printed; Highly detailed, injection molded body; Machined metal wheels; Screw mounted trucks; McHenry knuckle couplers; Weighted for trouble free operation; Clear plastic jewel box for convenient storage; Operates on Code 55 and 80 rail; Minimum radius: 9-3/4".

Prototype History: In the 1970's with the growth of the Per Diem business model, FMC produced a series of 50 foot box cars in different configurations. The single-sliding-door configuration is one of the best known and used widely by many different railroads. These cars were produced using the Gunderson metal works which FMC had acquired in 1965. In late 1975, FMC began producing a 5,077-cubic-foot Plate B box car for IPD and Railbox service. FMC's 5077s have seven panels to either side of the 10-foot door, an X-panel roof, and non-terminating ends that are slightly different from those used on FMC's earlier cars. Note how the sidesill is notched all the way back to the bolsters, a key feature of FMC's mature design.

The main difference between the 5077 cu. ft cars built by FMC vs the 5277-5347 cu. ft cars built by the same manufacturers is the overall height of the car, the smaller 5077 cars were Plate B while the larger 5277-5347 cars were Plate C. Over 4,300 cars were produced from 1975-1979 by FMC's Portland, Oregon plant. The cars were delivered in numerous colorful shortline paint schemes, as well as the nationwide car pool fleet of Railbox. Many secondhand cars were later seen in Class 1 railroads and large leasing company fleets under additional shortline reporting marks.

Road Name History: The ESLJ was established in 1918 by the National Stockyards Company to operate the parent company’s 26 miles of track serving the stockyards in National City in the northwest corner of East St. Louis, Illinois. The parent company had first built track in 1872. In addition to the stockyards, ESLJ served packing houses of Amour, Hunter, Morris and Swift as well as a few cold storage warehouses. During the particularly busy month of October, 1920, ESLJ was switching 450 loads per day. Of course, livestock and reefer traffic was among the first business lost to the trucking industry. In 1975, part of the ESLJ line was leased to Chicago & North Western. The last big ESLJ customer was Hunter Packing and they closed in 1982. To add insult to injury, in 1986 a major fire destroyed the stockyards office building, taking with it all of ESLJ’s company records. Union Pacific took over operation from C&NW of the leased segment following their merger and UP filed to abandon it in 2003.

Brand/Importer Information: Athearn's history began in 1938, when its founder-to-be, Irvin Athearn, started an elaborate O scale layout in his mother's house. After placing an ad selling the layout, and receiving much response to it, Irv decided that selling model railroads would be a good living. He sold train products out of his mother's house through most of the 1940s. After becoming a full-time retailer in 1946, Irv opened a separate facility in Hawthorne, California in 1948, and that same year he branched into HO scale models for the first time.

Athearn acquired the Globe Models product line and improved upon it, introducing a comprehensive array of locomotive, passenger and freight car models. Improvements included all-wheel drive and electrical contact. One innovation was the "Hi-Fi" drive mechanism, employing small rubber bands to transfer motion from the motor spindle to the axles. Another was the double-ended ring magnet motor, which permitted easy connection to all-wheel-drive assemblies. Athearn was also able to incorporate flywheels into double-ended drives.

The company produced a model of the Boston & Maine P4 class Pacific steam locomotive which incorporated a cast zinc alloy base and thermoplastic resin superstructure. It had a worm drive and all power pickup was through the bipolar trucks that carried the tender. This item was discontinued after the Wilson motor was no longer available, and was not redesigned for a more technologically advanced motor.

Athearn's car fleet included shorter-than-scale interpretations of passenger cars of Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad prototypes. The company also offered a variety of scale-length freight cars with sprung and equalized trucks. The cars could be obtained in simple kit form, or ready-to-run in windowed display boxes. The comprehensive scope of the product line contributed to the popularity of HO as a model railroad scale, due to the ready availability of items and their low cost.

Irv Athearn died in 1991. New owners took control in 1994, but continued to follow Athearn's commitment to high-quality products at reasonable prices. Athearn was bought in 2004 by Horizon Hobby. Athearn was then moved from its facility in Compton to a new facility in Carson, California. In mid-2009, all remaining US production was moved to China and warehousing moved to parent Horizon Hobby. Sales and product development was relocated to a smaller facility in Long Beach, California.

Read more on Wikipedia and Athearn website.