Röwa - 8002 - Passenger Car, Pullman, Semi-Corrugated, Dome - Santa Fe - 503

Model Information: These cars were originally manufactured for MRC by Röwa (Germany) in the end 1960s-early 1970s. Röwa also sold them under its own brand. Post-MRC, Con-Cor distributed them for a while under its brand name and attempted to acquire the tooling in order to set up production of these cars at Rivarossi. However, said tooling was eventually lost (or confiscated) and these models subsequently vanished from the face of the earth. They have metal window frames, close-coupling, diaphragms and venetian blinds in the windows. Some come equipped with interior lighting.
This model was made after the Pullman Dome, but not matching a particular prototype. The lower corrugated part was similar to the ATSF Pleasure domes, but the dome itself is similar to the B&O Colombian dome; the sides' windows arrangement could have been inspired from Wabash and Texas & Pacific domes.
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Prototype History: The Vista-Dome is a deluxe coach with a glass compartment rising out of the roof. This railroad passenger car has a second floor with 24 or 30 seats, lots of windows and no obstructions. The front and rear walls of the dome are windows. The entire side of the dome is made of windows. Curved glass is used to transition from the side to the roofing on vista-domes. All of this glass allows passengers to view the all the great and vast scenery. At night only the only lights used are to illuminate the floor allowing passengers to look up and watch for falling stars. A Vista-Dome has only one set of stairs up and down. It is not the place to hide from a ticket collecting conductor.

The Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad, the Burlington Railroad, introduced the Vista-Dome passenger car into regular service in 1947 on it's Twin Zephyr train. It was part of the standard equipment of the California Zephyr train when that train started running on March 20, 1949. The Twin Cities Zephyr train included 5 Vista-Dome cars. Standard height dome cars, 24 inches over the roofline were not suitable for service on most eastern railroads because of clearance problems. Budd built domes with a 19 1/2 inch dome top for eastern service. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the only pre-Amtrak east coast railroad that had Vista-Domes in revenue service. The domes were a part of the Columbian and Capitol trains.

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Road Name History: The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (reporting mark ATSF), often abbreviated as Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. Chartered in February 1859, the railroad reached the Kansas-Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farm land from the land grants that it was awarded by Congress. Despite the name, its main line never served Santa Fe, New Mexico, as the terrain was too difficult; the town ultimately was reached by a branch line from Lamy.

The Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight transport, an enterprise that (at one time or another) included a tugboat fleet and an airline (the short-lived Santa Fe Skyway). Its bus line extended passenger transportation to areas not accessible by rail, and ferryboats on the San Francisco Bay allowed travelers to complete their westward journeys to the Pacific Ocean. The ATSF was the subject of a popular song, Harry Warren & Johnny Mercer's "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", written for the film, The Harvey Girls (1946).

The railroad officially ceased operations on December 31, 1996, when it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway.

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Manufacturer Information: Röwa was founded in 1961 by Willy Ade and Horst Röchling, the company name being an acronym of their combined names. For several years, much of Röwa’s energies were directed toward developing products for other model train manufacturers, notably Trix of Germany and, on occasion, Roco of Austria.

Production of model trains under the Röwa name began in the late 1960’s, ca. 1968. Much of the company’s products were in H0-Scale, but there was some interesting production in N-Scale.

The Röwa American-prototype N-Scale items were marketed in the United States by Model Rectifier Corporation (MRC) for a period of a few years. Both the locomotives and passenger cars were subsequently marketed by other companies in successive years. For example, Brawa and Con-Cor marketed the N&W Y-6b Mallet-type, and the Berkshire may have also been marketed in the same way. Con-Cor owned the passenger car tooling for a period of time, producing until the die-molds went out of production tolerances.

Röwa ended production around 1974 and the manufacturing tools and dies used to produce the trains were sold to other companies.

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