Rivarossi built since 1947 Italian freight wagons , and in 1954 began listing in their catalogues also carriages and wagons for the US administration, only in 1961  were wagons from other countries added to the catalogue:  these were firstly German wagons, created in the cooperation with Trix.

It’s strange that only after fifteen years,  the company finally poses itself the problem of making rolling stock for other European countries, even though European sales were amongst the priorities of Alessandro Rossi right form the early days of operation.

And at that, not with independent production, but that of a cooperation with Trix, which is understandable, as it allowed  for immediate production and sales of models, getting them on the their catalogues, and further more at no cost to design, tool,  or model, whereas the two companies though, not in direct competition: Trix again with a three-rail system and a coupling system that is not compatible (and horrible if I might say), Rivarossi with a more modern two rail system, the use of development  of polystyrene  allowed for a much more realism and modeling results (up to then), but also the constant search for technical and esthetical improvements some admirable for its time, ie the wheel flanges or couplings system.

It is not excluded that the taking in this direction may also have been influenced by the success of the Pocher producing  wagons for the Scandinavian countries, with the Tuborg Findus etc etc.. refrigerated wagons. Only recently, Corrado Muratore founder of Pocher whilst browsing  through an old Pocher catalogue said to me… "this is the Findus wagon, that at that time no one in Italy knew about it!!!".

Coming back to Rivarossi, we have to wait until the mid 60s before they timidly undertook  the task of an autonomously production of wagons running in the European rail environment, and even at that, so be to honest  it was a relatively autonomous as the first non-Italian or American wagons were refrigerated wagons derived from Pocher production (which become a partner in 1963) and also even though listed in the Rivarossi catalogue, they were in fact still marked underneath with the Pocher markings and sold in this state for many years.

However, the European wagons produced by Rivarossi will be relatively few, in comparison  to the amount on European locomotives produced, and many of the European wagons were nothing else by recolouring of wagons that ran under the many different administrations, like the E Eaos that ran also in Italy, or re workings of the Refrigerated Pocher wagons.

Probably the only non-European car also offered in an FS livery was the high capacity refrigerated Interfrigo wagon.

Only in the 90s with the grain hopper wagons Uas, offered for many years in different liveries and markings, for many of the Eu railway administrations, now the European versions  prevail over the national ones.

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