Lima - 373 - Passenger Car, CIWL, Pullman - Chesapeake & Ohio - 3425

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. Available up until the early 1980's.
Like most of Lima passenger cars, this one of length 138 mm is too short; it should be 146 mm long to be prototypically correct at scale N (1/160).

Prototype History: The CIWL (Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits) Pullman cars are luxury lounge and restaurant cars built in the 1920's by a variety of manufacturers. They have been in service until the early 1970's.

A total of 211 cars were built in 4 series (1st class, otherwise mentioned):

Type « Sud-Express »
- 10 lounge cars (n° 2737 to 2748)
- 3 lounge cars w. kitchen (n° 2839 to 2841)

Type « Flèche d'Or » (Paris-London)
- 15 lounge cars (24 seats) w. kitchen n° 4001 to 4015
- 15 lounge cars (32 seats) n° 4016 to 4030
- 15 other cars (n° 4051 to 4080 w. or w/o kitchen)
- 30 additional cars (n° 4031 to 4050, n° 4081 to 4090)

Type « Étoile du Nord » (Paris - Amsterdam)
- 20 coach cars (38 seats) w. kitchen (n° 4091 à 4110) - 2nd Cl.
- 20 coach cars (51 seats) (n° 4111 à 4130) - 2nd Cl.

Type « Côte d'Azur » (Paris - Vintimille « Train bleu »)
- 34 cars n° 4131 to 4164, of the following 2 types, the most luxurious of the series:
++ lounge cars (20 seats) w. kitchen
++ lounge cars (28 seats)

From Wikipedia (in French)
Full roster of CIWL Pullman cars on this page (in French)

Road Name History: The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (reporting marks C&O, CO) was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond to the Ohio River by 1873, where the railroad town (and later city) of Huntington, West Virginia was named for him.

Tapping the coal reserves of West Virginia, the C&O's Peninsula Extension to new coal piers on the harbor of Hampton Roads resulted in the creation of the new City of Newport News. Coal revenues also led the forging of a rail link to the Midwest, eventually reaching Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo in Ohio and Chicago, Illinois.

By the early 1960s the C&O was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. In 1972, under the leadership of Cyrus Eaton, it became part of the Chessie System, along with the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Maryland Railway. The Chessie System was later combined with the Seaboard Coast Line and Louisville and Nashville, both the primary components of the Family Lines System, to become a key portion of CSX Transportation (CSXT) in the 1980s. A substantial portion of Conrail was added in 1999.

C&O's passenger services ended in 1971 with the formation of Amtrak. Today Amtrak's tri-weekly Cardinal passenger train follows the historic and scenic route of the C&O through the New River Gorge in one of the more rugged sections of the Mountain State. The rails of the former C&O also continue to transport intermodal and freight traffic, as well as West Virginia bituminous coal east to Hampton Roads and west to the Great Lakes as part of CSXT, a Fortune 500 company which was one of seven Class I railroads operating in North America at the beginning of the 21st century.

At the end of 1970 C&O operated 5067 miles of road on 10219 miles of track, not including WM or B&O and its subsidiaries.

Read more on Wikipedia.

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