Lima - 4XX - Stock Car, 50 Foot, Steel - Armour and Company - 216

Model Information: This body style was first produced by Lima for AHM in the 1960s. It was later imported using Lima's own branding. It has also been imported by PMI. It shares a common underframe with several other Lima toolings including a gondola and reefer. It has annoying clip-attached trucks that make them hard to upgrade to MTL couplers.

Prototype History: Steel stock cars were in general use after the Second World War when steel became readily available.

Road Name History: Armour & Company was an American company that was one of the five leading firms in the meat packing industry. It was founded in Chicago, in 1867, by the Armour brothers, led by Philip Danforth Armour. By 1880, the company had become Chicago's most important business and had helped make Chicago and its Union Stock Yards the center of America's meatpacking industry. During the same period, its facility in Omaha, Nebraska, boomed, as well, making the city's meatpacking industry the largest in the nation by 1959. In the 1980s, the Armour brand was split between shelf-stable meat products and refrigerated meat products. Today, each is owned by different entities.

The Armour Star (shelf-stable) brand includes meat-based lard and canned entrees, including hash, chili, stews, and potted meats. The rights to the Armour Star food brand are owned by Pinnacle Foods. The Armour brand for refrigerated meats is now owned by Smithfield Foods of Smithfield, Virginia, through their affiliate, Armour Eckrich LLC. The Armour brand for use in the pharmaceutical industry is owned by Forest Laboratories.

From Wikipedia

Brand/Importer Information: Lima N scale European models were numbered with 3 digits until 1978. They were renumbered after 1978 by adding "320" before the previous number. e.g. "306" became "320306".

Manufacturer Information: Lima S.p.A (Lima Models) was a brand of railway models made in Vicenza, Italy, for almost 50 years, from the early 1950s until the company ceased trading in 2004. Lima was a popular, affordable brand of 00 gauge and N gauge model railway material in the UK, more detailed H0 and N gauge models in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States as well as South Africa, Scandinavia and Australia. Lima also produced a small range of 0 gauge models. Lima partnered with various distributors and manufacturers, selling under brands such as A.H.M., Model Power, Minitrain and PMI (Precision Models of Italy). Market pressures from superior Far Eastern produce in the mid-1990s led to Lima merging with Rivarossi, Arnold, and Jouef. Ultimately, these consolidations failed and operations ceased in 2004.

Hornby Railways offered €8 million to acquire Lima's assets (including tooling, inventory, and the various brand names) in March of the same year, the Italian bankruptcy court of Brescia (town near Milan, last headquarters of Lima) approving the offer later that year. In December 2004, Hornby Railways formally announced the acquisition along with the Rivarossi (H0 North American and Italian prototypes), Arnold (N scale European prototypes), Jouef (H0 scale French prototypes), and Pocher (die-cast metal automobile kits) ranges. As of mid-2006, a range of these products has been made available under the Hornby International brand, refitted with NEM couplings and sprung buffers and sockets for DCC (Digital Command Control) decoders.

From Wikipedia