6464-1 Western Pacific

Production:  1953 - 1954

History
The 6464-1 Western Pacific box car was the first offering of the infamous 6464-style box cars. In total, four 6464-style cars were created by Lionel in their introductory year, 1953. Production of these box cars allowed Lionel to market a realistic and almost scale-like box car never previously seen in the Lionel family. The 6464-style box cars were an immediate success and remained in the Lionel catalogue up until it's final year of postwar production, 1969. Even today, all 6464-style box cars remain a favorite of collectors and operators.

The 6464-1 Western Pacific is a fairly common car. Although it was only offered in one 1953 027 gauge freight set, it was also available for separate sale. The silver paint on this car tends to fade with age, clean quality cars are hard to find.

Features
The 6464-1 Western Pacific included the following standard features: silver painted shell with blue lettering, type I body style, single block sliding doors, bar-end trucks with two operating couplers plus a single brakewheel.

Additional Detail, Photos & Box Information
The common version of the 6464-1 box car has blue lettering. There was an extremely small production run where Lionel used red lettering on the car. This is a very rare car.

Also, production of the car is assumed to be only in 1953. In 1954, Lionel made a slight modification to the body mold and eliminated the third column of rivets to the right of the sliding door (on each side). A 6464-1 box car without the third column of rivets to the right of the door is another rare version.

Blue Lettering - Shown in first photo above - The common version.
Red Lettering (Second photo above) - A rare variation, it is nearly impossible to locate a red lettered 6464-1 box car.

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