Bluford Shops - 73982-A - Open Hopper, 3-Bay, 70 Ton Offset - Chicago St.Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha - 49729

Prototype History: 70 ton 3-bay offset side hoppers first appeared in the late 20s and by the late 30s had become an AAR standard design with cars being delivered from a number of builders in large quantities to railroads across the country. The last of these cars were delivered in the mid-'60s and many remained in service through the 80s.

Road Name History: The CStPM&O was the result of the 1880 merger of the Chicago St. Paul & Minneapolis Railway and the North Wisconsin Railway. Two years after the merger, Chicago & North Western bought a controlling interest in the CStPM&O. The Chicago St. Paul Minneapolis & Omaha (known to locals as The Omaha Road) developed into a 1,700 mile system running from Elroy, Wisconsin (C&NW provided the connection from Elroy to Chicago) northwest to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The mainline then turned southwest to Sioux City, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska. In addition there were important branches to Duluth, Minnesota, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and several others. CMO was not a paper railroad but a largely independent operation from C&NW for the first 75 years. They had their own management, headquarters, locomotive and freight and passenger car fleets and sales force. There were some joint passenger routes with C&NW but that was also common on railroads that were not directly related. CStPM&O adopted some steam locomotive classes that C&NW did not and vice versa. Locomotive tenders were later adorned with the C&NW System logo but CStPM&O marks on the cab. Diesels received similar treatment. In 1957, C&NW officially leased the CStPM&O – finally turning it into a paper railroad. It was officially merged in 1972.

Brand/Importer Information: Bluford Shops began in 2007 as a side project of two model railroad industry veterans, Craig Ross and Steve Rodgers. They saw a gap between road names available on N scale locomotives but not available on cabooses. They commissioned special runs of Atlas cabooses in Atlantic Coast Line, Central of Georgia, Monon, Boston & Maine and Southern plus runs on Grand Trunk Western and Central Vermont on the MDC wooden cabooses. While these were in process, they began to develop their first all new tooling project, 86' Auto Parts Boxcars in double door and quad door editions in N scale. By January of 2008, Bluford Shops became a full time venture. Along with additional N scale freight cars and their own tooling for new cabooses, they have brought their own caboose line to HO scale. They also have their popular Cornfields in both HO and N. The future looks bright as they continue to develop new products for your railroad.

The town of Bluford in southern Illinois featured a small yard on Illinois Central's Edgewood Cutoff (currently part of CN.) The yard included a roundhouse, concrete coaling tower (which still stands) and large ice house. Reefer trains running between the Gulf Coast and Chicago were re-iced in Bluford. Things are more quiet now in Bluford with the remaining tracks in the yard used to stage hoppers for mines to the south and store covered hoppers. Intersecting the IC line in Bluford is Southern Railway's (currently NS) line between Louisville and St. Louis. Traffic on this single track line remains relatively heavy.