Full Throttle - FT-1020-2 - Covered Hopper, 3-Bay, Cylindrical - Canadian National - 2-Pack

Specific Item Information: Road Numbers: CN 377008 & 377035

Model Information: After WWII, US railroads were increasingly called upon to haul new and unique "modern" products over long distances. In response, American Car and Foundry (ACF) designed a tank-type covered hopper car. The cylindrical shape created a better weight/volume ratio; plus, the elimination of interior ledges, combined with hatches and outlets placed along a center-line, led to ACF's trademark "Center Flow" hoppers. Through the 1960s the Cylindricals became omnipresent on our nation's railroads, with many styles of hatches and outlets devised according to needs. Because the cars were compartmented, various different loads could be carried in a single unit, and some had aluminum construction to further reduce weight. Here was a "Freight Car for the Future," ready to transport sugar, cement, sand, salt, fertilizers, many types of grains, coke, starch, feeds, chemicals and plastics!

Prototype History: ACF introduced their roundish cylindrical hoppers in the early 1960s. The cars differed greatly from the ribbed sided hoppers of the era. They have been made in 3-bay and 6-bay variations. These cylindrical hoppers were superseded on ACF’s production line by the Centerflow in 1964, a revolutionary design that influenced later covered hopper types. In the late 60s or early 70s Canada came out with 4-bay covered hoppers that appear to be derived from ACF’s pre-Centerflow cylindrical hoppers. These cars were used by CN, CP and various smaller Canadian shippers. There is some question as to why the Canadian builder based their design off the older cylindrical and not ACF’s newer Centerflow. It was likely a patent issue and copying it could have triggered legal action against the Canadian builders. There are also certain structural design differences between the cylindrical and centerflow cars and perhaps the decision to copy the cylindrical was based on the greater volume capacity of the cylindrical design.

Road Name History: The Canadian National Railway Company (reporting mark CN) is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec that serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad". CN is a public company with 24,000 employees. It had a market capitalization of 32 billion CAD in 2011. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding to its privatization in 1995. Bill Gates was, in 2011, the largest single shareholder of CN stock.

CN is the largest railway in Canada, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, and is currently Canada's only transcontinental railway company, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia. Its range once reached across the island of Newfoundland until 1988, when the Newfoundland Railway was abandoned.

Following CN's purchase of Illinois Central (IC) and a number of smaller US railways, it also has extensive trackage in the central United States along the Mississippi River valley from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, CN owns about 20,400 route miles (32,831 km) of track in 8 provinces (the only two not served by CN are Newfoundland & Labrador and Prince Edward Island), as well as a 70-mile (113 km) stretch of track (see Mackenzie Northern Railway) into the Northwest Territories to Hay River on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake; it is the northernmost rail line anywhere within the North American Rail Network, as far north as Anchorage, Alaska (although the Alaska Railroad goes further north than this, it is isolated from the rest of the rail network).

The railway was referred to as the Canadian National Railways (CNR) between 1918 and 1960, and as Canadian National/Canadien National (CN) from 1960 to the present.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: Greetings, I'm Will, a Fine Arts graduate of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania who grew up in the Delaware Valley. I worked for 30 years with the Pennsylvania German Folklife Society. For ten years I had a permanent booth, each month showing my "PA Dutch" wares, at the country's largest under-roof Antique Market in Atlanta, GA. When Mom and Dad started to have health issues, I was forced to give up the nomadic life, but during my travels I came to love Z Scale Model Railroading, as I could easily take small layouts with me to the motels and play with my trains in the evenings!
Now that Mom and Dad are gone, and after many years of providing care for my "Pappy" in Florida, I find myself a homebody in the "Sunshine State" with a neat little business, supplying interested Z hobbyists with rolling stock and unique quality products!