Micro-Trains - 995 05 025 - Boxcar, 60 Foot, High-Cube - Seaboard Coast Line

Specific Item Information: Black Friday Cyber Specials: These N and Z Scale Cars were offered only with purchases from MTL's Website:

Model Information: Micro-Trains has used the model to stand in for a variety of 60 foot steel boxcars built by Berwick Forge & Fabricating, Greenville Steel Car as well as the railroads themselves throughout the 1960s and 1970s. One example is the The BFF class BX-187 boxcar, which is equipped with fixed end bulkheads and shock control underframe and is assigned to auto parts service. Another example is the BFF Class XL extended height box cars are equipped with interior side rails and moveable bulkheads for hauling household appliances of high cubic capacity. This tooling has also been used to model the Penn Central X64 boxcar.

Prototype History: High-Cube boxcars are made by a number of manufacturers. They typically have a 100+ ton car capacity. They feature an inside length of 60-feet; an inside width of 9-feet; and a zero weld protrusion smooth interior wall with an interior height of 13-feet, 1-inch. The cars feature a variety of different door types which are typically 12 feet high. The floor is 4-inches high, composed of 70,000 pound nailable knurled steel. The cars can come with lading strap anchors, floor anchors and 15-inch end of car cushioning.

Road Name History: The Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (reporting mark SCL) is a former Class I railroad company operating in the Southeastern United States beginning in 1967. Its passenger operations were taken over by Amtrak in 1971. Eventually the railroad was merged with its affiliate lines to create the Seaboard System in 1983.

At the end of 1970 SCL operated 9230 miles of railroad, not including A&WP-Clinchfield-CN&L-GM-Georgia-L&N-Carrollton; that year it reported 31293 million ton-miles of revenue freight and 512 million passenger-miles.

The Seaboard Coast Line emerged on July 1, 1967, following the merger of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The combined system totaled 9,809 miles (15,786 km), the eighth largest in the United States at the time. The railroad had $1.2 billion in assets and revenue with a 54% market share of rail service in the Southeast, facing competition primarily from the Southern.

On November 1, 1980, CSX Corporation was created as a holding company for the Family Lines and Chessie System Railroad. In 1983 CSX combined the Family Lines System units as the Seaboard System Railroad and later became CSX Transportation when the former Chessie units merged with the Seaboard in December 1986. Effective January 1, 1983, the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad became Seaboard System Railroad after a merger with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and Clinchfield Railroad. For some years prior to this, the SCL and L&N had been under the common ownership of a holding company, Seaboard Coast Line Industries (SCLI), the company's railroad subsidiaries being collectively known as the Family Lines System which consisted of the L&N, SCL, Clinchfield and West Point Routes. During this time, the railroads adopted the same paint schemes but continued to operate as separate railroads.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: Micro-Trains is the brand name used by both Kadee Quality Products and Micro-Trains Line. For a history of the relationship between the brand and the two companies, please consult our Micro-Trains Collector's Guide.

Manufacturer Information: Micro-Trains Line split off from Kadee Quality Products in 1990. Kadee Quality Products originally got involved in N-Scale by producing a scaled-down version of their successful HO Magne-Matic knuckle coupler system. This coupler was superior to the ubiquitous 'Rapido' style coupler due to two primary factors: superior realistic appearance and the ability to automatically uncouple when stopped over a magnet embedded in a section of track. The success of these couplers in N-Scale quickly translated to the production of trucks, wheels and in 1972 a release of ready-to-run box cars.

Micro-Trains Line Co. split off from Kadee in 1990 to form a completely independent company. For this reason, products from this company can appear with labels from both enterprises. Due to the nature of production idiosyncrasies and various random factors, the rolling stock from Micro-Trains can have all sorts of interesting variations in both their packaging as well as the products themselves. When acquiring an MTL product it is very important to understand these important production variations that can greatly enhance (or decrease) the value of your purchase.

Please consult our Micro-Trains Collector's Guide