deLuxe Innovations Announces -- THRALL ? The Competition to Gunderson In The Maxi-Stack War!!!
Gunderson cars were selling like crazy. So well in fact that Gunderson couldn't keep up with the orders. Thrall wanted in on the business, but couldn't use Gunderson's proprietary design, so they came up with their LoPac 2000 low sided container car. The LoPacs were contemporaries of the Twinstack, and sales efforts between the two companies were fevered.

The Thrall group reached the lucrative APL company with their car, and snagged a number of sales. They made two distinct versions of the car for APL, and then sold them to other entities. The first was a "normal" well car for use with dry box containers. The second version was a powered version specifically designed to carry reefers. The car was colored red and a generator was mounted at one end. Extension cords were strung from the generator to each individual container to provide power to the reefer units mounted there. This equipment was later removed and the cars repainted.

The distinctive rib sides of the Thrall are a ready spotting feature that Thrall cars carry to this day. The Thrall cars were designed to take a 40 foot container in the bottom and a forty footer on top. Some of the cars were equipped with hard points to attach two 20 footers in each well.

The Thrall braking arrangement on this car is the same as the Gunderson on the twinstack, one brakewheel at the B end.

APL sold their domestic container operations, including their stack car fleet, to Pacer Stacktrain and the cars were renumbered for BRAN (short for Pacer?s affiliate, Brandon Corp., an Omaha based shortline). This is the first road name to be produced in the LoPac 200 series.

The model carries the distinctive look of the prototype with the external ribbing and open work walkways. The 5 unit articulated car is made from die cast metal and ABS plastic details. The walkways are etched stainless steel. This model was originally offered by Interrail as a craftsman kit. The kit reflected the "as delivered" equipment of these cars, including rub rails and container guides that were removed later in the life of these cars.
deLuxe innovations has redesigned the kit to allow these details to be added to backdate the car, or to allow the user to choose to run the car as it looks today. The etched metal walkways and the etched brakewheels will be partially installed on the ready to run car. Please see the deLuxe Twinstack pages for the containers that will fit the Thrall LoPac 2000. DeLuxe innovations has re-engineered much of the assembly to make this fine-looking but extremely difficult kit into a fine-looking, fine-running ready to run car. Some of the items are pretty challenging to convert, but they are working on the situation to deliver you the finest running, highest detailed car possible?ready-to-run?at a reasonable price. The result will be available soon.