Con-Cor - 0001-01457 - Boxcar, 50 Foot, Steel, Plug Door - Con-Cor - 1457

Specific Item Information: Promo Car

Model Information: This body style was designed by Kato for MRC. However, since MRC used elements of previously designed Con-Cor owned toolings, Con-Cor was able to claim that they owned this derived model as well. The rights to the tooling were transferred to Con-Cor and MRC turned to Lima for a replacement tooling for this one. After acquiring the rights to the tooling, Con-Cor had Kato produce the first runs of this car with Con-Cor branding. Perhaps this was out of convenience or perhaps it was part of a legal settlement. Later on, Con-Cor brought the tooling back to the United States for continued production. Likely the tooling was later moved to China in the 1990s, but as of this writing, I am unsure if Con-Cor has produced any Chinese-made runs of this model.

Prototype History: The 50-foot boxcar made its first appearance in the 1930s and steadily grew in popularity over the years, which further improved redundancies by allowing for even more space within a given car. Today, the 50-footer remains the common boxcar size. After the second world war ended, and steel became once again readily available, steel became the go-to choice for construction of boxcars. Pullman Standard and ACF were some of the most prolific builders of these cars.

In the 1960s, the flush, "plug" style sliding door was introduced as an option that provides a larger door to ease loading and unloading of certain commodities. The tight-fitting doors are better insulated and allow a car's interior to be maintained at a more even temperature.

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.