Con-Cor - 0001-008074 - Boxcar, 50 Foot, Grain Loading - Burlington Northern - 248582, 248573, 318417

Model Information: This model appears in the 1979 JMC catalog but not the 1973. I suspect it was introduced around 1976, but I would love confirmation. It was produced in Con-Cor's NEW Jersey facility and features a die-cast underframe and a standard 1st-generation injection-molded body. The tooling was likely moved to China as at least one modern Christmas Car was produced with this tooling.

Prototype History: Grain-Loading boxcars were variations on standardized boxcars built with specialized doors. Grain doors were the term used for the wooden, or in later years cardboard inserts mounted inside the regular doors to keep the grain from spilling out when the main door was opened. These allowed any suitable car to be used in grain service.

These cars were typically rebuilt from older cars and modified such that the door was boarded up from the inside and the grain was blown in over the top of the boards. These cars were all made obsolete by the appearance of specialized covered hoppers in the 1980s. At this point some of these cars were adapted for MOW service.

Road Name History: The Burlington Northern Railroad (reporting mark BN) was a United States railroad. It was a product of a March 2, 1970, merger of four major railroads - the Great Northern Railway, Northern Pacific Railway, Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad - as well as a few small jointly owned subsidiaries owned by the four.

Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1996.

Its historical lineage begins in the earliest days of railroading with the chartering in 1848 of the Chicago and Aurora Railroad, a direct ancestor line of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, which lends Burlington to the names of various merger-produced successors.

Burlington Northern purchased the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway on December 31, 1996 to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (later renamed BNSF Railway), which was owned by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation.*

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.