Winchester Model 1872 Army Trial Rifle,By 1872 the Winchester Company was famous for their lever act

Winchester Model 1872 Army Trial Rifle,By 1872 the Winchester Company was famous for their lever action repeating rifles.  While successful on the civilian market, Winchester was never able to secure a lucrative military contract.  In 1872 the tried with a military version of there popular rifle.The idea behind the Trial Rifle was to create a tougher, more reliable version of the lever action rifle.  The barrel was elongated to military specs and a stronger military stock was added.  However its key feature was the changing from the a toggle breechblock system to the studier bolt breechblock system, a design which would actually be successful;y created for Winchester by John Browning a decade later.  This was needed since the army requested that the new rifle be chambered for .45-70 government, a powerful rifle cartridge, while the original Winchester rifle was chambered for much less powerful pistol cartridges. The rifle was fed from a tube magazine that was loaded from the right hand side, which also had a port from which empty cartridges were ejected.Unfortunately for Winchester, the new design was an incredible flop that had the opposite effect of what was expected.  The new action tended to jam and bind when fouled, and the stocked tended to crack from the pressures of the new cartridge.  Winchester attempted to retool in an attempt to improve or modify the design, but all attempts failed.  Winchester would never manufacture a lever action military rifle, bummer. -- source link

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