The Freight Yard - Special Run - Boxcar, 50 Foot, FMC, 5077 - Northern Alberta Railways - 050133

Model Information: Boxcar, 50 Foot, Double Sliding Door, Rib Side, Without Roofwalk, FMC. This body style was acquired by Athearn from MDC Roundhouse in June of 2004.

Prototype History: In the 1970's with the growth of the Per Diem business model, FMC produced a series of 50 foot box cars in different configurations. The single-sliding-door configuration is one of the best known and used widely by many different railroads. These cars were produced using the Gunderson metal works which FMC had acquired in 1965. In late 1975, FMC began producing a 5,077-cubic-foot Plate B box car for IPD and Railbox service. FMC's 5077s have seven panels to either side of the 10-foot door, an X-panel roof, and non-terminating ends that are slightly different from those used on FMC's earlier cars. Note how the sidesill is notched all the way back to the bolsters, a key feature of FMC's mature design.

The main difference between the 5077 cu. ft cars built by FMC vs the 5277-5347 cu. ft cars built by the same manufacturers is the overall height of the car, the smaller 5077 cars were Plate B while the larger 5277-5347 cars were Plate C. Over 4,300 cars were produced from 1975-1979 by FMC's Portland, Oregon plant. The cars were delivered in numerous colorful shortline paint schemes, as well as the nationwide car pool fleet of Railbox. Many secondhand cars were later seen in Class 1 railroads and large leasing company fleets under additional shortline reporting marks.

Road Name History: NAR came together in 1929 when several railroads were combined under joint ownership of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. One line ran from Edmonton, Alberta northeast to Lac La Biche and then Fort McMurray. The other line ran northwest from Edmonton to Smith where it turned west for Grande Prairie and ultimately to Dawson Creek just over the British Columbia border. A branch came off that main at McLennan north to Peace River then west to Hines Creek. Traffic on these lines was mostly grain.

In 1958, Pacific Great Eastern finished their line to Dawson Creek from the Pacific coast. This and new highways in the area syphoned traffic from NAR. In 1964, CN opened their isolated (from other CN lines) Great Slave Lake Railway from a junction on the NAR near Peace River to mines in the sub-Arctic region. This added considerable lead and zinc ore traffic to the NAR. Nevertheless, trains were infrequent on the NAR. With 923 route miles, NAR required just 21 diesels. The diesel fleet consisted of 10 GP9’s, 7 GMD1’s, and 4 SD38-2’s. To put that into perspective, the busy Clinchfield Railroad required nearly five times as many locomotives to run less than a third of the mileage.

In 1980, Canadian Pacific sold their half of NAR to Canadian National and on the first day of 1981, NAR operations were folded into CN.

Brand/Importer Information: The Freight Yard was a hobby shop that did custom decoration and special runs of other manufacturers' N Scale products. It sold its custom products under several brands or collections: Premiere Editions, by The Freight Yard and Dreams Design.
It was located in Anaheim, California and then moved to 2006 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Established in the late 1980s, it stopped business under this name by the end of the 2000s.
The Freight Yard was owned and operated by Darren J. Cohen. Darren is now operating North Valley Trains.
The Freight Yard / Premiere Editions runs are usually available in series of two to twelve different numbers (suffixed A to M, with I not used).
The first two digits of the stock number correspond to the release year (9x being 199x, and 2x being 200x).