An unusual/early Con-Cor Kato Item.. Black Penn Central Caboose.

[learmoia]

When I went through my 1968 Con-Cor catalog or DKS documents....
I recall "Penn Central Bay Window Caboose (black)"
.... Black??  Typo? 

But.. its 1968 so maybe pure speculation at that point.. Locos were black..
The earliest PC cabooses I have is green and NYC cabooses were brown with a Cigar Band logo..

Low and behold...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/283675476811
Penn Central caboose.. Same number/lettering as my green one..
But.. Black....
Another thing in my lookout list I guess.

~Ian

[wm3798]

Were you the lucky winner?

[learmoia]

Were you the lucky winner?

NO!.. (I would have posted a better picture)..

I didn't realize such a thing existed at the time..

I found it while searching through Ebay completed listings.

If someone has one, I'd be interested.

~Ian

[daniel_leavitt2000]

These cars date to the late 60's. Could it be possible that these were released BEFORE PC started painting cabs?

[learmoia]

These cars date to the late 60's. Could it be possible that these were released BEFORE PC started painting cabs?

That's is my guess.. But its Con-Cor... they made an Amtrak Hudson... accuracy wasn't their biggest strength.

I think they jumped on the Conrail bandwagon very early too.  And for some reason everything was blue.. 

[Mark5]

Concor released a plethora of horrendously incorrect schemes (including a black N&W caboose  ).

https://www.trovestar.com/generic/zoom.php?id=120287

My money is that the PC caboose is in a similar vein.

Mark

[C855B]

The blue cardboard box is later production, my edu-guess (Charlie? @ncbqguy ) after Jim (Conway) moved his operation to Arizona and/or moving the manufacturing to China. Con-Cor circa 1970 was a little more conservative about going all-out foob other than the nonsense schemes on U50s.

Ian's eBay find is typical of the late '60s packaging. I had only seen the green version as well. However, I wouldn't be surprised at all that Jim was trying to scoop the market by imagineering a black PC scheme on the (then Kato) model before the greenifying of the Pennsy, etc., was fully fleshed.

[Point353]

PC did have some cabooses painted dark green or black that were assigned to mail train service.
Perhaps that was what Con-Cor was trying to emulate with their model.
See the description for the N10 series here: http://pc.smellycat.com/pics/equip/cabooses.html



Here's another PC caboose that appears to be black, but from a different series:

[learmoia]

PC did have some cabooses painted dark green or black that were assigned to mail train service.
Perhaps that was what Con-Cor was trying to emulate with their model.
See the description for the N10 series here: http://pc.smellycat.com/pics/equip/cabooses.html



Here's another PC caboose that appears to be black, but from a different series:

So, I was going to make a joke about Con-Cor painting them blue, since they were basically making it up at the time..

But it turns out they had blue cabooses assigned to Detroit Eddison trains.
(In addition to the Tuscan and gold cars used on the Pennsylvania Light and Power trains.
Black


Blue

[nickelplate759]

For me it's hard to tell if PC 24045 is really blue, or just a  black caboose that looks blueish because it is preternaturally clean (for PC)  and reflecting the sky.