Lima - 396 - Passenger Car, SNCF, DEV - Canadian Pacific

Specific Item Information: Introduced in the 1968 catalog - disappeared a couple of years after.
Non prototypical, based on a European coach car.

Model Information: Introduced in 1968, this body style was available up until the early 1980's.
With a length of 138mm, this car is shorter than the prototype DEV Inox Long; it should be 150 mm at N scale (1/160) to be prototypically correct.
For a short period of time after 1968, this body style has also been used repainted with Canadian paint schemes.

Prototype History: The DEV cars have been developed by the SNCF Division des Études des Voitures (DEV) - Car Design Division - aiming at providing the French National Railway with a unified fleet of express cars at the end of the Second World War, to replace the series produced by the old companies prior to creation of the SNCF in 1938.

These cars were available in 2 distinct versions:
- DEV AO: Acier Ordinaire - ordinary steel - or Forestier car (name of DEV director in 1946), from 1946 to 1959 - a total of 1595 have been built.
- DEV Inox: Inoxydable - stainless steel car, from 1950 to 1970. These lighter cars have been built under license of the Budd patent for Corrugated Stainless steel cars. A total of 406 have been built (142 « Short » et 264 « Long »)

They came in two body lengths.
- DEV Courte (Short) : body length 22.286 m
- DEV Longue (Long) : body length 24.036 m

They were qualified to run at 140 km/h (87 mph) and then 160 km/h (100 mph).
All DEV cars have been decommissioned after 1998.
The DEV Inox cars have also been ordered by the Portuguese Railways (CP) in 1952.

Full roster (in French): DEV Inox Court, DEV Inox Longue, DEV AO Court, DEV AO Longue, DEV Mistral 56.

Road Name History: The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), formerly also known as CP Rail (reporting mark CP) between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railroad incorporated in 1881. The railroad is owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (TSX: CP, NYSE: CP), which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001.

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, it owns approximately 23,000 kilometres (14,000 mi) of track all across Canada and into the United States, stretching from Montreal to Vancouver, and as far north as Edmonton. Its rail network also serves major cities in the United States, such as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, and New York City.

The railway was originally built between Eastern Canada and British Columbia between 1881 and 1885 (connecting with Ottawa Valley and Georgian Bay area lines built earlier), fulfilling a promise extended to British Columbia when it entered Confederation in 1871. It was Canada's first transcontinental railway, but currently does not reach the Atlantic coast. Primarily a freight railway, the CPR was for decades the only practical means of long-distance passenger transport in most regions of Canada, and was instrumental in the settlement and development of Western Canada. The CP became one of the largest and most powerful companies in Canada, a position it held as late as 1975. Its primary passenger services were eliminated in 1986, after being assumed by Via Rail Canada in 1978. A beaver was chosen as the railway's logo because it is the national symbol of Canada and was seen as representing the hardworking character of the company.

The company acquired two American lines in 2009: the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad and the Iowa, Chicago and Eastern Railroad. The trackage of the ICE was at one time part of CP subsidiary Soo Line and predecessor line The Milwaukee Road. The combined DME/ICE system spanned North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa, as well as two short stretches into two other states, which included a line to Kansas City, Missouri, and a line to Chicago, Illinois, and regulatory approval to build a line into the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. It is publicly traded on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CP. Its U.S. headquarters are in Minneapolis.

After close of markets on November 17, 2015, CP announced an offer to purchase all outstanding shares of Norfolk Southern Railway, at a price in excess of the US$26 billion capitalization of the United States-based railway. If completed, this merger of the second and fourth oldest Class I railroads in North America would have formed the largest single railway company on that continent, reaching from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast to the Gulf Coast. The merger effort was abandoned by Canadian Pacific on April 11, 2016, after three offers were rejected by the Norfolk Southern board.

Read more on Wikipedia and on Canadian Pacific official website.

Brand/Importer Information: Lima N scale European models were numbered with 3 digits until 1978. They were renumbered after 1978 by adding "320" before the previous number. e.g. "306" became "320306".

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.

From Wikipedia