Red Caboose - RN-17535 - Boxcar, 55 Foot, Thrall All-Door - Northwestern Oklahoma - 3-Pack

Prototype History: Lumber has always been difficult to ship by rail. Box cars provide protection but are hard to load and unload. Flat cars eliminate those problems, but loads have to be tarped to protect them from the weather.

In 1967, Thrall took the best of both ideas and created a unique car that would solve these problems. The All-Door Box Car had no true sidewalls, but was equipped with four large doors which could be opened in pairs. This provided a 25' wide opening that made loading and unloading a breeze! And since it was a box car, the loads were completely enclosed for the entire trip. As the housing boom began in the 1970s, the cars became a common sight at lumber mills and yards across America.

Thrall Door boxcars arrived in Detroit in the early 70s. They were used to carry hardboard products to Ford plants in the Detroit area.

Road Name History: NOKL was established in 1973 to take over operation of the 9 mile former M-K-T line connecting Fisk, Woodward and Warner, Oklahoma. Customers include a grain elevator and a railroad car repair shop. They currently lease out their reporting marks so the many thousands of freight cars lettered NOKL actually belong to the First Union Rail car leasing operation and not this shortline.

This begs the question, why a leasing company would bother to lease a shortline’s reporting marks when they could just use their own (something ending in X such as NDYX, also used by First Union.) There is a difference between private owners and railroad owners in how car-hire is billed. Private owner cars are billed by the mile. Railroad owned cars are billed by a complex formula including per diem, the age of the car and the mileage. Therefore, depending on the service, the leasing companies earn more by using a railroad reporting mark for a car and other times they are better off running the car as a private owner.

Brand/Importer Information: Originally Red Caboose was a manufacturer of HO and N Scale model railroading items. It was located in Mead, Colorado, and was founded in 1990 by Leon Fairbanks. Red Caboose manufactured highly accurate, well detailed N, HO, and O Scale freight cars and locomotives.

Red Caboose closed its doors in January of 2015. Red Caboose N Scale has been sold to Fox Valley Models and HO was sold to InterMountain Railway. Many of the Red Caboose toolings have seen re-releases from Fox Valley since the acquisition. We just wish they would clean up the underframes. Red Caboose always went light on the details where they thought people wouldn't look.

Manufacturer Information: While they were in business, Red Caboose split its production runs between the US and China. Which models were produced where was a function of which body style and which run. Furthermore, which Chinese company was used for production is something we would love to find out.