Announcement HO Dec 2012

All new tooling is in the works for two styles of Short Body Bay Window Cabooses and three styles of Transfer Cabooses in HO. These Ready-To-Run cars included wire grab irons and cut levers, Kadee #5 couplers and other super-details. The December announcement consists of the Short Roof Transfer Caboose (known here as Version 4.) Place pre-orders with your favorite dealer for delivery in 2013. Watch for more road names in the coming months. First draft artwork is shown, subject to improvement by Bluford's crack development team!

Conrail Transfer Cabooses. Conrail inherited most of their transfer cabooses from Penn Central who (along with predecessor New York Central) had built them by the hundreds in their own shops, largely from old boxcar components. Conrail had the largest fleet of transfer cabooses in the nation. The two road numbers in this release received this paint sometime in 1978 (two years after the creation of Conrail itself) and received the two-box format consolidated stencils and, since they had 33” wheels, the black and yellow “U-1 inspection dot.” The two road numbers will be sold separately. 34010 Conrail #18046 $49.95; 34011 Conrail #18196 $49.95.

Indiana Harbor Belt Transfer Cabooses. IHB is one of Chicago’s major terminal carriers, shifting blocks of cars from connections on one side of the city to the other. For most of its history, it was controlled by New York Central with a 60% stake (C&NW and MILW split the rest.) Today ownership is split between Canadian Pacific, Norfolk Southern and CSX. While parent NYC (later PC) was building transfer cabooses for themselves in the late 60s and early 70s, they built 20 for the IHB. They were built with Century green paint. This black and orange scheme was adopted in 1983. This run will be available with two different road numbers sold separately. 34020 Indiana Harbor Belt #4 $49.95. 34021 Indiana Harbor Belt #8 $49.95.

Grand Trunk Western Transfer Cabooses. The GTW built for themselves 24 transfer cabooses from old boxcar components. That’s quite a fleet for a road that size! There is a great deal of variety in lettering placement and slogans on this fleet and we are reflecting that in this release with two different slogans. Also caboose #75061 carries an ACI tag while the other number does not. 34030 Grand Trunk Western #75061 “Safety Wears Well” $49.95; 34031 Grand Trunk Western #75065 “Take Time To Be Safe” $49.95.

Amtrak Transfer Cabooses. Amtrak became a major owner of right-of-way during the organizing of Conrail. Passenger traffic was king on Penn Central’s “Northeast Corridor” between Washington D.C. and Boston so turning over ownership of the line to Amtrak seemed to be the best solution. With that, Amtrak assembled a sizeable fleet of maintenence-of-way equipment, including cabooses. Transfer cabooses of NYC/PC ancestry are part of that fleet. We are doing two road numbers for this run and as you can see, they look quite different from each other. This is because no two of the prototypes are lettered alike! 34040 Amtrak #14034 $49.95; 34041 Amtrak #14032 $49.95.

Kansas City Southern Transfer Cabooses. KCS had a number of transfer cabooses, built by the line in their own shops. The earliest group is represented with these two road numbers which sport friction bearing trucks, ACI tags, and red conspicuity stripes along the frame. (Later cars had roller bearings, yellow frame stripes and locomotive style all-weather windows.) The Kansas City Southern system of this period linked KC with the Gulf and Dallas with New Orleans. In later years, KCS would acquire, Mid-South, Gateway Western, Gateway Eastern, Texas-Mexican and Mexico’s TFM. 34050 Kansas City Southern #677 $49.95; 34051 Kansas City Southern #682 $49.95.

Great Northern Transfer Caboose. Great Northern built four all-steel transfer cabooses in their St. Cloud Shops in 1967 (just before the shift to Sky Blue paint.) The four cars were built on the frames of old VO-1000 switchers and as a result were the heaviest cabooses on the GN roster! Each received a safety slogan with #X177 “Your Safety Is Up To You” and #X178 “What’s Your Safety Score Today?” represented in this run. While not visible in these views, the “Safety First” version of the round Rocky The Goat logo does appear on the end splash guards (adjacent to the brake wheel stands.) While the prototype cars wore Type-A switcher trucks, for practical reasons, these models will come with friction bearing leaf spring caboose trucks. 34060 Great Northern #X177 “Your Safety Is Up To You” $49.95; 34061 Great Northern #178 “What’s Your Safety Score Today?” $49.95.