This car is an unmodified Life-Like Proto1000 boxcar. Life-Like did Canadian modellers a huge service by providing this car in HO scale, fully accurate right out of the box. The only modification our club makes to these cars is to replace wheels and trucks with Intermountain wheelsets for improved operational reliability. Otherwise, this car required no more than some light weathering before being placed into service.

This car represents one of a 500 car series, CPI 85000-85499, built in 1969 by National Steel Car in Hamilton, ON. The CPI reporting marks indicate that this car is in International Service, and is only to be loaded for cross-border destinations.

These cars were actually the first new cars to be delivered in the new “Action” paint scheme and Multimark. The green paint and small shield logo indicate that this car is restricted to paper service. Since rolls of paper are easily damaged, paper mills required cars that were in top shape and dedicated to hauling only paper so that the car interiors did not suffer any damage that could in turn damage the valuable loads.