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Life-Like - 7980 - Caboose, Cupola, Steel, NE - Chesapeake & Ohio - 90353

2  of these sold for an average price of: 10.6010.602 of these sold for an average price of: 10.60
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N Scale - Life-Like - 7980 - Caboose, Cupola, Steel, NE - Chesapeake & Ohio - 90353
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Stock Number7980
Original Retail Price$6.50
BrandLife-Like
ManufacturerLife-Like
Body StyleLife-Like Caboose Cupola NE
Prototype VehicleCaboose, Cupola, Steel, NE (Details)
Road or Company NameChesapeake & Ohio (Details)
Reporting MarksC&O
Road or Reporting Number90353
Paint Color(s)Yellow and Red
Print Color(s)Blue
Additional Markings/SloganFor Progress
Coupler TypeRapido Hook
Wheel TypeChemically Blackened Metal
Wheel ProfileDeep Flange
Release Date1996-01-01
Item CategoryRolling Stock (Freight)
Model TypeCaboose
Model SubtypeCupola
Model VarietyNE
Prototype RegionNorth America
Prototype EraNA Era II: Late Steam (1901 - 1938)
Years Produced1924-1948
Scale1/160
Track GaugeN standard



Model Information: Life-Like first introduced this body style in the 90's. They have metal wheels and truck-mounted Rapido couplers. The caboose design is based on a common prototype used by many Northeastern roads.
Prototype History:
The Northeast or NE style caboose was introduced by the Reading Railroad in 1924. The design was an all-steel version of a USRA design. The acquisition of these new cabooses was prompted by proposed Pennsylvania legislation requiring larger, more structurally sound caboose for use in through freight consists. The original set of cabooses was ordered from AC&F, but other manufacturers also adopted similar designs.

The Reading selection was made after the consideration of several designs. The original purchase was for 10 cars in 1924, but the design was so effective that it became the de-facto Reading standard and they continued purchasing new cabooses of this type through 1948. The design soon became popular with other Northeastern railroads such as the WM, L&NE, LV, CNJ and others.
Road Name History:
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (reporting marks C&O, CO) was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond to the Ohio River by 1873, where the railroad town (and later city) of Huntington, West Virginia was named for him.

Tapping the coal reserves of West Virginia, the C&O's Peninsula Extension to new coal piers on the harbor of Hampton Roads resulted in the creation of the new City of Newport News. Coal revenues also led the forging of a rail link to the Midwest, eventually reaching Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo in Ohio and Chicago, Illinois.

By the early 1960s the C&O was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. In 1972, under the leadership of Cyrus Eaton, it became part of the Chessie System, along with the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Maryland Railway. The Chessie System was later combined with the Seaboard Coast Line and Louisville and Nashville, both the primary components of the Family Lines System, to become a key portion of CSX Transportation (CSXT) in the 1980s. A substantial portion of Conrail was added in 1999.

C&O's passenger services ended in 1971 with the formation of Amtrak. Today Amtrak's tri-weekly Cardinal passenger train follows the historic and scenic route of the C&O through the New River Gorge in one of the more rugged sections of the Mountain State. The rails of the former C&O also continue to transport intermodal and freight traffic, as well as West Virginia bituminous coal east to Hampton Roads and west to the Great Lakes as part of CSXT, a Fortune 500 company which was one of seven Class I railroads operating in North America at the beginning of the 21st century.

At the end of 1970 C&O operated 5067 miles of road on 10219 miles of track, not including WM or B&O and its subsidiaries.

Read more on Wikipedia.
Brand/Importer Information:
Life-Like Products LLC (now Life-Like Toy and Hobby division of Wm. K. Walthers) was a manufacturer of model railroad products and was based in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was founded in the 1950s by a company that pioneered extruded foam ice chests under the Lifoam trademark. Because ice chests are a summer seasonal item, the company needed a way to keep the factory operating year round. As model railroading was becoming popular in the post-war years, they saw this as an opportunity and so manufactured extruded foam tunnels for model trains. Over the years, Life-Like expanded into other scenery items, finally manufacturing rolling stock beginning in the late 1960s. At some point in the early 1970s, Life-Like purchased Varney Inc. and began to produce the former Varney line as its own.

The Canadian distributor for Life-Like products, Canadian Hobbycraft, saw a missing segment in market for Canadian model prototypes, and started producing a few Canadian models that were later, with a few modifications, offered in the US market with US roadnames.

In 2005, the company, now known as Lifoam Industries, LLC, decided to concentrate on their core products of extruded foam and sold their model railroad operations to Wm. K. Walthers.

In June 2018, Atlas and Walthers announced to have reached an agreement under which all Walthers N scale rolling stock tooling, including the former Life-Like tooling, will be purchased by Atlas.

Read more on Wikipedia and The Train Collectors Association.
Item created by: Alain LM on 2017-10-07 15:44:57. Last edited by CNW400 on 2020-05-19 12:57:17

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