Crown Model Products Boxcar

Sean, Crown Models was started by Mike McCormack and I believe one other person. They did new tooling for a box car, outside braced box car and a reefer. They may also have done some S gauge. They did their own pad printing which was very good at that time. I think they were in business from the late eighties into the nineties. When they went out of business Weaver got their tooling.......Paul 2

..

 Don Stubbs of  Northeast Trains started the company back in early nineties. I believe he had a partner and they were manufactured in Waltham MA. . Weaver eventually ended up with the line. They were offered in both 2 and 3 rail. In talking with Don early on before production. He brought out these cars that were of Scale dimension but of smaller prototypes. That way they would appeal to scale operators and those running traditional Lionel as they were more in size with a 6464 car. 

Dave C came up with the second name. I bought a number of their cars. They are on the small side but when placed by a Lionel 6464 they are the same length but are a bit wider and taller making them closer to scale. I run them mixed in with my Weaver PS-1 box cars. Paul 2

The trucks on the Crown Model cars I've had have been less than stellar.

Weaver did get the molds and continued making the cars.      They were full scale cars of smaller prototypes as near as I can tell.     the steel box car I think was the 1923 ARA car which is about the same size as the Pennsy X29 and I think designed at the same time.    the OSB box is not the USRA car, but I found a prototype for it in some old RMC magazines.    a number of western roads had them among others.     It was a more modern OSB than the USRA outside braced boxcar.     I don't know much about the Reefer.   I had some for awhile and they were the same size as other older wood side reefers.

I particularly liked the OSB boxcars.

I have a Wallkill Valley Railroad boxcar made by CMP.   The Wallkill was founded in 1866 and existed until 1977 in upstate New York.  Its roadbed is now a rail trail.  My wife and I have ridden bikes on the rail trail several times.  It's a scenic cinder trail through the woods with an expansive and picturesque bridge river crossing.  In New Paltz the depot is now a restaurant which provides a pleasant stop for an upscale lunch.  Similar to Sean007, my boxcar resulted from a successful York hunt by my wife many years back.

I have one or two lying around. They seem to run okay on my Super O track.

ttps://www.publicdeliverytrack.com/search.php?Search=&search_query=crown

As with a lot of things, I bought up a pile of the Crown cars way back when.  Weaver bought the tooling from Crown Model Products, and continued to produce the outside braced (wood) box car, and the 1923 ARA box car, and the 40' wood side reefer, right up till they ceased production about 5 years ago.  Yes, the "crown model products" line was 3 different cars. They were all 1920's-1930's style cars that were smaller profile than todays freight cars.  Freight cars were just smaller back then.

We also offer the cars with diecast/sprung trucks/couplers installed...if u dont like original plastic trucks.

Crown also did a lot of custom painting and pad printing on other cars...especially the Atlas/Roco PS-1 box cars, the 40' RBL plug door box cars, and the 52'6" gondolas.  I've got a bunch of them here too...altho I dont think any of the gondolas on the web site.  They continued with the painting and printing for years after selling tooling to Weaver.    They even bought undec cars from weaver in bulk, to decorate them for dealers who wanted certain paint schemes.

The original price for the "CMP" cars was around 32.95, IIRC.   You'll find them around at times generally in the 25-35 range.  We sell ours in the 30-35 range, but all the ones we sell are new in box, and no broken steps.  I also have some of the hard to find ones, which are generally the New England roads.

Broken steps are common.   Mike used to sell cars with broken steps at York, years ago.

beth

@midnightwrecking posted:

I have one or two lying around. They seem to run okay on my Super O track.

I have that one of those, it was a commemorative issue for the Lionel Collectors association of Canada (LCAC), the marking on the door is the LCAC logo plus the number 9418.

Some were available in multiple road numbers; Fruit Dispatch Company is one that comes to mind as I have three numbers.

Note that all of mine have been two-railed. It was quite a simple process that took me longer to find my KD couplers than to actually do the job; less than ten minutes including swapping out the wheelsets with Intermountain metal ones.

These are decent cars and produced in a number of obscure road/private owner names but I have never paid more than twenty dollars for one.

I don't know if the car  that I've pictured is standard or not. It has molded grab irons but applied ladders and sprung metal trucks and wheels. About the only marking that I can find on it is CMP and CHINA.

CMP cars I treat as interchangeable with basic Weaver cars - in fact, they used plastic Weaver trucks and couplers, with all the flaws that Weaver plastic couplers had (I treat the couplers as dummies; the plastic trucks are just fine).

The cars are light, like basic Weavers, which is why we have lead weights. CMP/basic Weaver can be nice bargains; just need some tuning, sometimes.

If you don't do switching much (per the couplers), just weight them a little, Dullcote them, weather them a bit with some powders, spray those trucks/couplers/wheels with flat brown and weather them too. Then just run the wheels off of them. 

They are exactly the same as the Weaver cars, Used all the same tooling.  Easy to put weights inside, and  weaver sold them with the diecast sprung trucks/couplers for the last 10 years or so of production.   Im working on getting more diecast sprung trucks that will fit these cars.   I just have enough for the cars we sell right now.  The steps were always part of the plastic mold of the body.  The ladders on the ends and right side, and the roof walk, were always separately applied pieces.

@rattler21 posted:

For five dollars your wife did well.  John

Indeed she did John. She keeps better mental notes on what I'm looking for than I do and she usually spots them before I do. My own personal scout!

Found this link with some additional information on Crown model products cars. http://www.tcawestern.org/crown.htm.