Minitrix - 18430 - Rolling Stock, Reefer, Wood, Epoch III - SNCB/NMBS (Belgian National Railway) - 261 479-P

Specific Item Information: Three-axle boxcar as a beer refrigerator car with a brakeman's cab. Privately owned car painted and lettered for "Wiel´s Wielemans", used on the Belgian State Railways (SNCB). The car looks as it did in the Mid-Fifties.

Road Name History: SNCB/NMBS (French: Société nationale des chemins de fer belges, Dutch: Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen, German: Nationale Gesellschaft der Belgischen Eisenbahnen) is the national railway company of Belgium. The company formally styles itself using the Dutch and French abbreviations NMBS/SNCB, however it is commonly referred to in English and internationally using just the French abbreviation SNCB.
NMBS/SNCB is an autonomous government company, formed in 1926 as successor to the Belgian State Railways. In 2005, the company was split up into three parts: Infrabel, which manages the railway infrastructure, network operations and network access, the public railway operator NMBS/SNCB itself to manage the freight (B-Cargo) and passenger services, and NMBS/SNCB-Holding, which owns both public companies and supervises the collaboration between them. NMBS/SNCB-Holding was merged into SNCB in 2014 in order to simplify the structure of the Belgian railways.

Brand/Importer Information: Trix is a German company that originally made Trix metal construction sets. one of its co-founders was Stephan Bing, the son of the pioneer toy-maker industrialist Ignaz Bing. In 1935 the company began producing the electrically powered model trains that it became famous for, under the Trix Express label. Prior to the outbreak of World War II the Trix company produced a small range of fairly unrealistic AC powered three rail models running at 14 volts.

N gauge models under the Minitrix brand were made from the late 1960s mostly of European prototypes (German and British primarily). North American prototypes were also manufactured and marketed under the Aurora "Postage Stamp" brand; later these items were sold under the American Tortoise, Model Power and Con-Cor brands. Trix sometimes utilized North American consultants to aid in the design of this portion of the product line. The "Hornby Minitrix' brand was used in the 1980s for a short lived range of British outline models using the earlier product tooling.

Trix's owner in the 1980s and 1990s was Mangold, which went bankrupt in the late 1990s and Märklin purchased the assets in January 1997. In part, this purchase was a reflection of Märklin's need for added production capacity; Trix had been manufacturing certain items for Märklin in previous years. The purchase was also in response to the earlier purchase of the Karl Arnold company by the Italian company Rivarossi; Märklin were very keen to take over Trix market share in 2-rail H0 and especially Minitrix, until then Märklin had not marketed N gauge models. In 2003, Märklin introduced its first N gauge models under the well established Minitrix brand. A number Märklin H0 scale three-rail AC locomotives have also been introduced in two-rail DC versions under the Trix logo and many models are shared between the two brands.

From Wikipedia