Con-Cor - 1776A - Boxcar, 40 Foot, USRA Double Sheathed Wood - State Cars - 178701

Model Information: Con-Cor marketed these as 'Wood Boxcars' but they have a lot of reefer-like attributes.

Prototype History: Double-sheathed means the cars carried wood sheathing both inside and out. The structure that this sheathing is applied over steel framing. The USRA double-sheathed design boxcar had a steel underframe with a monster heavy deep-fishbelly steel center sill. The interior carried horizontal sheathing and the exterior carried vertical sheathing. These are described as steel UNDERFRAME. (but not usually called "steel framed").

Road Name History: Love it or hate it-- and there's not been all that much middle ground-- the State Car Special Edition series has been, by far, the most ambitious SE program in the entire history of Micro-Trains Line, going all the way back to 1972. Dwarfing the "Bicentennial" series, a mere fourteen releases produced in 1975 and 1976, this collection of rolling stock honored all fifty United States and also included a pair of FT locomotives and a caboose. Additional "member only" cars from the N Scale Collector's Society made by MTL in the same "look and feel" supplemented the main series; we've got those NSC cars included here as well.

Aided by a substantial marketing push in the second half of 2002, the first car in the group, January 2003's Illinois was a very quick sellout and jumped quickly to a high aftermarket premium. The second and third cars, California and New York, also command significant aftermarket values at times, but the Illinois is the key car in the series. Most of the other regular run cars, though becoming a bit harder to find, sell for a large discount to MSRP if you are patient. The NSC cars sometimes sell for more than MSRP but also sometimes not.

The series went through two catalog number changes in its history. Originally, the catalog numbers were by tens as is the practice for most MTL freight car releases. It was probably noted very quickly that the 21000's would have been almost out of numbers by the time that was completed-- the group would have ended at 21810!-- so a switch to single digit increments began with the South Dakota release, 21371. That would have ended the numbering at 21419, except that the eight digit catalog numbers began in January 2005 with West Virginia, 021 00 386.

From July 2008 through September 2012, Z Scale versions of the State Cars were issued. Please refer to the alphabetical listing here to view the release sequence, which was not the same as with the N Scale releases-- other than the Illinois car which opened the Z Scale series in July 2008. The images below are ordered by the sequence of N Scale releases... sorry, but they were done first! The N Scale Collector's Society issued only one "almost a state" cars in Z Scale, the District of Columbia.

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.