Bowser - 37110 - Caboose, Cupola, Steel, N5/N5C - Cambria & Indiana - 33

Prototype History: The PRR had a long tradition of designing its own distinctive "Cabin Cars"... as "P" Company men referred to their cabooses... much the same way the railroad designed and built its own locomotives. Many Pennsy cabin cars were built at its sprawling shops in Altoona, PA, or nearby Hollidaysburg. The Pennsylvania's first mass-produced steel cabin car was the "N5", a type first built in 1914 (later models would be identified with a letter suffix). The basic structure of the N5 of 1914 remained essentially unchanged over the years until 1942.

PRR's most distinctive caboose design was the N5c. This style of cabin was similar to its N5 cousin, but it incorporated streamlined elements that had become popular during the Great Depression.

Road Name History: The Cambria & Indiana was born in 1911 with the renaming of the Blacklick & Yellow Creek Railroad. The line ran in its namesake counties in Pennsylvania. Built as a lumber hauler, coal quickly took over as the primary commodity. In the 1930s and 40s, the C&I was the richest railroad per mile of track in the country but when oil and gas became more popular for home heating, some of this traffic disappeared. C&I had always owned many more hoppers than they could possibly load on their own line. This large fleet was rented to other railroads to load where needed. In 1950, the railroad was sold to Bethlehem Steel who could then keep their own freight car production lines busy between orders building hoppers for the C&I. Those hoppers could then be rented out. In 1963, Bethlehem Steel opened a new coal mine on the line which fed considerable traffic to the C&I for the next 31 years. The closure of this last mine on the C&I led to the closure of the railroad in 1994. Like the Conemaugh & Black Lick, C&I eventually adopted the yellow and black paint scheme used for all of Bethlehem Steel's shortlines.

Brand/Importer Information: On May 1, 1961, Bowser was purchased by Lewis and Shirlee English and moved from Redlands, CA to their basement in Muncy, PA. The original Bowser Manufacturing Co first advertised in the model railroad magazines in November 1948. At that time, the company had only one (HO Scale) engine, the Mountain, which had a cast brass boiler that is no longer available. It was sometime later that Bowser (Redlands) developed the NYC K-11 and the UP Challenger. The molds were made by K. Wenzlaff who introduced himself at the MRIA Show in Pasadena, CA in 1985 These two locomotives are still current production.

Bowser entered into N Scale in 1998 with their acquisition of the Delaware Valley Car Company, a manufacturer of N scale freight cars.