N Scale Kits - NS109 Kit - PRR F33 Heavy Duty Wellcar - Boston & Maine

Specific Item Information: Pennsylvania Railroad ordered just 16 of these heavy duty wellcars built by Greenville between 1938 and 1942. The cars were all welded with a wooden lower well deck - the planks of which were placed both longways and sideways across the deck. The cars ran on 3 axle Buckeye trucks. The cars, with a high tonnage and deep wells were in demand across the US to transport large electrical equipment and large castings etc.. The cars were numbered 47080 - 470095 and became Penn Central and then Conrail's 768121-768136. They lasted in service until the 1980's. Five very similar cars were also built for the C&O. Cars 80975-80980 were drawn and described by Bob Hundman in Mainline Modeler Feb 1989.

Road Name History: The Andover and Wilmington Railroad was incorporated March 15, 1833, to build a branch from the Boston and Lowell Railroad at Wilmington, Massachusetts, north to Andover, Massachusetts. The line opened to Andover on August 8, 1836. The name was changed to the Andover and Haverhill Railroad on April 18, 1837, reflecting plans to build further to Haverhill, Massachusetts (opened later that year), and yet further to Portland, Maine, with the renaming to the Boston and Portland Railroad on April 3, 1839, opening to the New Hampshire state line in 1840.

The Boston and Maine Railroad was chartered in New Hampshire on June 27, 1835, and the Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts Railroad was incorporated March 12, 1839, in Maine, both companies continuing the proposed line to South Berwick, Maine. The railroad opened in 1840 to Exeter, New Hampshire, and on January 1, 1842, the two companies merged with the Boston and Portland to form a new Boston and Maine Railroad.

The B&M flourished with the growth of New England's mill towns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but still faced financial struggles. It came under the control of J. P. Morgan and his New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad around 1910, but anti-trust forces wrested control back. Later it faced heavy debt problems from track construction and from the cost of acquiring the Fitchburg Railroad, causing a reorganization in 1919.

By 1980, though still a sick company, the B&M started turning around thanks to aggressive marketing and its purchase of a cluster of branch lines in Connecticut. The addition of coal traffic and piggyback service also helped. In 1983 the B&M emerged from bankruptcy when it was purchased by Timothy Mellon's Guilford Transportation Industries for $24 million. This was the beginning of the end of the Boston & Maine corporate image, and the start of major changes, such as the labor issues which caused the strikes of 1986 and 1987, and drastic cost cutting such as the 1990 closure of B&M's Mechanicville, New York, site, the largest rail yard and shop facilities on the B&M system.

Guilford Rail System changed its name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Technically, Boston & Maine Corporation still exists today but only as a non-operating ward of PAR. Boston & Maine owns the property (and also employs its own railroad police), while Springfield Terminal Railway, a B&M subsidiary, operates the trains and performs maintenance. This complicated operation is mainly due to more favorable labor agreements under Springfield Terminal's rules.

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Brand/Importer Information: N Scale Kits manufacture and sell the widely admired Alan Curtis model range [AC Models and Andersley Models]. Their focus is the intermodal and flatcar kits originally produced by Alan Curtis and AC Models. All cars are manufactured in lead free pewter.

N Scale Kits is located at Minster Chambers, Church Street, Southwell Nottinghamshire, England NG25 0HD.