In the early decades of the 20th century it is said that there was a plan at Winchester to develop a cartrige for the Winchester lever guns, which should - if has ben realized - come close to the performance of a 458 WinMag or the .450 Alaskan. Does anybody heard about this story/development and can write some details about it?

I cant think of a .46 at the moment but according to Paul Foster the Winchester factory made some experimental cartridges for the Springfield Armory in 1884. The cartridge was .45 caliber and a bottlenecked case 3 1/8” long firing a 500-grain bullet ahead of 200-grains of black powder. The project did not go very far.

In 1878 Winchester also displayed a .45-75 case for the Model 76 rifle. This case was loaded with 90-grains of black powder and used a 500-grain paper patched bullet.

This was in an article in the 1952 issue of the Gun Digest.

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slim

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. Afak had the mentioned cartrige the name i wrote in the headline. Nevertheless I think you described the cartridge I'm looking for. Thanks again.

William, I checked it, the cartridge that you mentioned is not the one I looking for.

Actually the cartrigde is named .46 WCF and headstamped

“W.R.A.Co. 46 WCF”

The development of this cartridge should has been in the 20th oder 30th of the last century.

Any ohter ideas??

Unfortunately we are getting outside of my interest area in cartridge collecting. As with most of us, I have a limited collection of cartridge books in my library.
There is a chance you will find out more in Volume II of the W.R.A cartridge books. These are primarily of help in identifying variations in bullet, headstamp and cartridge cases. I am a small caliber collector so I only have volume I. Perhaps John Kort will shed some light on this.

http://www.chartingnature.com/books.cfm?book=B11514

http://www.amazon.com/W-R-Co-Headsta.../dp/B0006FDBGY

The 46 WCF is a known headstamp as you will see in this link - scroll to bottom.

http://members.shaw.ca/cartridge-corner/Wraco.htm

I would ask the question on the IAA forum.

http://www.cartridgecollectors.org/forumintro.htm

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slim

William thanks a lot again for your great support. I sent John a PM and will have a closer look into IAA-Forum. I will report the resutls.

I do remember something about this cartridge you speak of, you need to look up some Doug Turnbull's articles. He has based his .475 Turnbull round on this experimental Winchester cartridge designed for their 1886 lever action rifle.

Beck

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"40 knots no smoke"

Winchester produced exactly 1 1886 in .46 W.C.F. as an experimental rifle only. I have no idea how many cartridges were made for the testing.