Model Power - 8629 - Passenger Car, Heavyweight, Combine - Canadian National - 6422

Model Information: Lima introduced North American heavyweight passenger cars in their 1969-70 catalog, in 3 body styles: Coach, Combine and Observation.
It is inspired by the prototype of the PRR P70 coach car, with major differences though, starting with 3-axle trucks instead of 2 for the prototype.
First distributed in North America by AHM and PMI, it was later distributed by Model Power under their brand name. After Lima vanished in the mid 1990's, Model Power continued to produce a copy of these cars in a Chinese factory. All in all this model has been produced over 4 decades, with very few changes. The last versions released by Model Power in the late 2000's were fitted with dummy knuckle couplers instead of the original Rapido ones. Depending on year and origin of production, the wheels can be either nickel-silver plated metal or injection molded plastic.

Prototype History: Heavyweight Passenger Cars were the prevalent style of railcars used for passenger service during the interwar period. They were constructed of concrete, wood and steel. They were much heavier than modern passenger cars due to the materials used in their construction. They were so heavy that they ofthen (but not always) required three-axle bogies to support them.

A combine car in North American parlance, most often referred to simply as a combine, is a type of railroad car which combines sections for both passengers and freight. Most often, it was used on short lines to carry passengers and their luggage, as a full car would not have been cost effective. One half (or less) of the car is built like a baggage car while the other half of the car is a regular passenger car. This type of combine is referred to as a coach-baggage. Another common type of combine in railroad use was the coach-RPO. A portion of this type of car was configured as a railway post office while the rest of the car was configured as a coach.

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Road Name History: The Canadian National Railway Company (reporting mark CN) is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec that serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad". CN is a public company with 24,000 employees. It had a market capitalization of 32 billion CAD in 2011. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding to its privatization in 1995. Bill Gates was, in 2011, the largest single shareholder of CN stock.

CN is the largest railway in Canada, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, and is currently Canada's only transcontinental railway company, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia. Its range once reached across the island of Newfoundland until 1988, when the Newfoundland Railway was abandoned.

Following CN's purchase of Illinois Central (IC) and a number of smaller US railways, it also has extensive trackage in the central United States along the Mississippi River valley from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, CN owns about 20,400 route miles (32,831 km) of track in 8 provinces (the only two not served by CN are Newfoundland & Labrador and Prince Edward Island), as well as a 70-mile (113 km) stretch of track (see Mackenzie Northern Railway) into the Northwest Territories to Hay River on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake; it is the northernmost rail line anywhere within the North American Rail Network, as far north as Anchorage, Alaska (although the Alaska Railroad goes further north than this, it is isolated from the rest of the rail network).

The railway was referred to as the Canadian National Railways (CNR) between 1918 and 1960, and as Canadian National/Canadien National (CN) from 1960 to the present.

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Brand/Importer Information: Founded in the late 1960's by Michael Tager, the 3rd generation business specializes in quality hobby products serving the toy and hobby markets worldwide. During its 50 years of operation, Model Power has developed a full line of model railroading products, die-cast metal aircraft, and die-cast metal cars and trucks.

In early 2014, Model Power ceased its business operations. Its extensive portfolio of intellectual property and physical assets are now exclusively produced, marketed, sold, and distributed by MRC (Model Power, MetalTrain and Mantua) and by Daron (Postage Stamp Airplanes and Airliner Collection).

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.

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