IMRC 4750 cu.ft. 3 Bay Covered Hopper Conrail
Road Number CR 890713
(Equipped with Micro Trains Trucks & Couplers)
Consolidated Rail Corporation was created by the US Congress to salvage, merge and oversee the operations of the financially failing, Penn Central, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Reading, the Erie Lackawanna, the Lehigh Valley, and the Lehigh & Hudson River railroads. Operations began in April 1976.
By 1981 Conrail began its financial turnaround. With the success of Conrail the federal goverment sold its ownership interest in the railroad through what at the time was the largest initial public stock offering in the nation's history on March 26, 1987. This returned Conrail to the private sector as a for-profit corporation, as Congress had initially envisioned.