Con-Cor - 4311D - Passenger Car, Pullman, Semi-Corrugated, Sleeper 10-6 - New York Central

Model Information: These cars were originally manufactured for MRC by Röwa (Germany) in the end 1960s-early 1970s. Röwa also sold them under its own brand. Post-MRC, Con-Cor distributed them for a while under its brand name and attempted to acquire the tooling in order to set up production of these cars at Rivarossi. However, said tooling was eventually lost (or confiscated) and these models subsequently vanished from the face of the earth. They have metal window frames, close-coupling, diaphragms and venetian blinds in the windows. Some come equipped with interior lighting.
This model was made after the Pullman 10-roomette/6-bedroom sleeper built for the C&O in 1950.

Prototype History: The Pullman built cars ordered by Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) after WWII were semi-corrugated, i.e. corrugated on the lower half, but smooth on the upper half and roof.
Some of these cars ended up on a few other railroads because C&O backed away from their plans for expanding their service putting the excess cars on the market. D&RGW took some of the sleepers and some of the blunt end observation cars ended up on the B&O. Two of the coaches wound up on the SP. But C&O had some or of all of them so that would be the road to decorate them in. Note that the Pere Marquette, Nickel Plate, and other road's semi-corrugated cars look like the C&O cars but actually have more corrugations under the windows and so are not an exact match.

Coach: The car is in two sections divided in the center. Fifty-nine coaches in the 1610-1668 series were delivered to the C&O by Pullman in 1950 for service on most C&O trains, including the George Washington. Eight of these cars were sold to the D&RGW. C&O removed the corrugations in 1967.
Sleeper: This is the Pullman 85' 10-roomette/6-bedroom sleeper built for the C&O in 1950 in the “City of…” series, and 56 were made. Some C&O cars were used on the Pere Marquette. Cars were also sold to ACL, B&O, D&RGW and IC. The Nickel Plate also bought 13 of these 10/6 cars new in 1950 from PS, also named “City of…”.
Observation: This is the Pullman 85’ 5 double bedroom, buffet, 26-seat lounge, blunt end observation car (floor plan 4165) built for the C&O in 1950. Eight cars were built in the “Club” series and used on several trains by the C&O. Some of the C&O cars were modified for mid-train operation. Some were later sold to the B&O, who used them on the Capitol Limited.

Road Name History: The New York Central Railroad (reporting mark NYC), known simply as the New York Central in its publicity, was a railroad operating in the Northeastern United States. Headquartered in New York City, the railroad served most of the Northeast, including extensive trackage in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Massachusetts, plus additional trackage in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St.Louis in the midwest along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Detroit. NYC's Grand Central Terminal in New York City is one of its best known extant landmarks.

1853 company formation: Albany industrialist and Mohawk Valley Railroad owner Erastus Corning managed to unite ten railroads together into one system, and on March 17, 1853 executives and stockholders of each company agreed to merge. The merger was approved by the state legislature on April 2, and by May 17, 1853 the New York Central Railroad was formed.

In 1867 Vanderbilt acquired control of the Albany to Buffalo running NYC. On November 1, 1869 he merged the NYC with his Hudson River Railroad into the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. Vanderbilt's other lines were operated as part of the NYC.

In 1914, the operations of eleven subsidiaries were merged with the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, re-forming the New York Central Railroad. From the beginning of the merge, the railroad was publicly referred to as the New York Central Lines. In the summer of 1935, the identification was changed to the New York Central System.

In 1968 the NYC merged with its former rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad, to form Penn Central (the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad joined in 1969). That company went bankrupt in 1970 and was taken over by the federal government and merged into Conrail in 1976. Conrail was broken up in 1998, and portions of its system was transferred to the newly formed New York Central Lines LLC, a subsidiary leased to and eventually absorbed by CSX and Norfolk Southern. Those companies' lines included the original New York Central main line, but outside that area it included lines that were never part of the New York Central system. CSX was able to take one of the most important main lines in the nation, which runs from New York City and Boston to Cleveland, Ohio, as part of the Water Level Route, while Norfolk Southern gained the Cleveland, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois portion of the line called the Chicago line.

At the end of 1925, the New York Central System operated 11,584 miles (18,643 km) of road and 26,395 miles (42,479 km) of track; at the end of 1967 the mileages were 9,696 miles (15,604 km) and 18,454 miles (29,699 km).

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: Con-Cor has been in business since 1962. Many things have changed over time as originally they were a complete manufacturing operation in the USA and at one time had upwards of 45 employees. They not only designed the models,but they also built their own molds, did injection molding, painting, printing and packaging on their models.

Currently, most of their manufacturing has been moved overseas and now they import 90% of their products as totally finished goods, or in finished components. They only do some incidental manufacturing today within the USA.

Important Note: The Con-Cor product numbering can be very confusing. Please see here in the article how to properly enter Con-Cor stock numbers in the TroveStar database.

Manufacturer Information: Röwa was founded in 1961 by Willy Ade and Horst Röchling, the company name being an acronym of their combined names. For several years, much of Röwa’s energies were directed toward developing products for other model train manufacturers, notably Trix of Germany and, on occasion, Roco of Austria.

Production of model trains under the Röwa name began in the late 1960’s, ca. 1968. Much of the company’s products were in H0-Scale, but there was some interesting production in N-Scale.

The Röwa American-prototype N-Scale items were marketed in the United States by Model Rectifier Corporation (MRC) for a period of a few years. Both the locomotives and passenger cars were subsequently marketed by other companies in successive years. For example, Brawa and Con-Cor marketed the N&W Y-6b Mallet-type, and the Berkshire may have also been marketed in the same way. Con-Cor owned the passenger car tooling for a period of time, producing until the die-molds went out of production tolerances.

Röwa ended production around 1974 and the manufacturing tools and dies used to produce the trains were sold to other companies.

From this website.