Out of the box, each of these big cars delivers a weighty, well-constructed feel in your hands. Holding the model up to the light reveals the semi-translucent appearance of the prototype Safe-Paks, even from some side angles. Most importantly, the cars track extremely well due to their low center of gravity as the entire bottom deck and underframe are of a single piece of cast metal with the exception of the outer layer of the center sill.
Separately applied ABD brake details, flexible plastic cut levers and a multi-wire rendition of the brake piping help to complete the basic appearance of the underframe. Everything above the bottom deck is of injection-molded styrene and solidly assembled. Despite initial impressions, the rungs on the vertical ladders at each corner of the car are actually separately applied and stand barely off of the surface.
On the scales, each Safe-Pak car weighs 7.8 ounces, with the roofless FEC car coming in a tad lighter at 7.4 ounces. Either way, the cars are either dead-on or just barely over the NMRA'.s weight recommendations for cars of this size. Each Safe-Pak rides on 28" insulated metal wheelsets mounted in low-profile truck side frames with rotating roller bearing details. All cars come equipped with Kadee # 148 metal couplers installed in fixed draft gear enclosures.
In 1973 the first fully enclosed autorack railroad cars were designed by competing manufacturers to address the problem of increasing vandalism to new automobiles in transit. The first production fully enclosed autorack railroad cars were delivered in late 1974 and early 1975. The Whitehead & Kales company design, named Safe-Pak, were delivered to the ATSF, SBD, CSXT Patch, UP/WP, UP, WP, NW, SCL, FEC, and CPAA. The Safe-Pak autorack cars were in service on US and Canadian railroads until the late 1990s.