State Cars

Company History: Love it or hate it-- and there's not been all that much middle ground-- the State Car Special Edition series has been, by far, the most ambitious SE program in the entire history of Micro-Trains Line, going all the way back to 1972. Dwarfing the "Bicentennial" series, a mere fourteen releases produced in 1975 and 1976, this collection of rolling stock honored all fifty United States and also included a pair of FT locomotives and a caboose. Additional "member only" cars from the N Scale Collector's Society made by MTL in the same "look and feel" supplemented the main series; we've got those NSC cars included here as well.

Aided by a substantial marketing push in the second half of 2002, the first car in the group, January 2003's Illinois was a very quick sellout and jumped quickly to a high aftermarket premium. The second and third cars, California and New York, also command significant aftermarket values at times, but the Illinois is the key car in the series. Most of the other regular run cars, though becoming a bit harder to find, sell for a large discount to MSRP if you are patient. The NSC cars sometimes sell for more than MSRP but also sometimes not.

The series went through two catalog number changes in its history. Originally, the catalog numbers were by tens as is the practice for most MTL freight car releases. It was probably noted very quickly that the 21000's would have been almost out of numbers by the time that was completed-- the group would have ended at 21810!-- so a switch to single digit increments began with the South Dakota release, 21371. That would have ended the numbering at 21419, except that the eight digit catalog numbers began in January 2005 with West Virginia, 021 00 386.

From July 2008 through September 2012, Z Scale versions of the State Cars were issued. Please refer to the alphabetical listing here to view the release sequence, which was not the same as with the N Scale releases-- other than the Illinois car which opened the Z Scale series in July 2008. The images below are ordered by the sequence of N Scale releases... sorry, but they were done first! The N Scale Collector's Society issued only one "almost a state" cars in Z Scale, the District of Columbia.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.