TCA Convention Box Car No. 6464-1965 was made for the National Convention of the Train Collectors Association that was held in Pittsburgh PA in 1965. This is the very first convention car that was manufactured for any of the National Collecting Clubs. This box car was produced on Type IV body that was painted BLUE with WHITE heat-stamped lettering. The multi-block door was GRAY and was painted BLUE. This car came with AAR trucks that have disc couplers. Being the first convention car that the TCA commissioned, they neglected to have an identifying number printed on the sides of this car. The number is rubber-stamped on the bottom of the chassis. To confuse things even more the box ends are numbered "6464-960."

The initial order for this car was 700 hundred units with an additional 100 units being ordered right before the convention. These 800 cars were an amazing amount to order when it’s known that the TCA membership did not exceed 1,050 at the time.

Two years later leaders of the TCA were searching the Lionel Factory for bodies and chassis to create their 1967 Convention Car when they came across another 74 of these cars. Lionel would not sell these cars to individuals but instead offered them in total to the TCA.

The reason that Lionel made these cars was to use up all of the remaining 6464 chassis that they had on hand, and when they ran out of these they used up their 3484 chassis that have the operating mechanism. It is, to this day, unknown how many of these cars have an operating box car chassis. All of these 74 units were stamped "6464-1965X" regardless of the chassis that was used. This accounts of the two variations:

Variation A: Printed on the underside "6464-1965." 800 of these cars were made.

Variation B: Printed on the underside "6464-1965X." 74 of these cars were made with an unknown amount of these using an operating box car chassis.