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Picture Page August 2013 The Colt Lightning Magazine Rifle cartridges.....
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Colt catalogs included listings for the cartridges used in all of its hand guns and long guns; illustrations of the cartridges for the Lightning rifles were all identified as Colt's New Lightning Magazine Rifle cartridges, even those that were based on the cartridges that were the exact same load as had been introduced earlier by other companies, including the ..22 Short rim fire, .22 Long rim fire, .38-56 Winchester, the .40-60 Marlin, and the .50-95 Winchester.
While the illustrations of the cartridges in the Colt catalogs, like those from the Colt 1890 catalog shown above, bear the headstamps of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company also produced ammunition especially for the popular Colt rifles. Of the cartridges that were chambered in the Colt Lightning rifles, Winchester produced four with distinctive headstamps that identified them as being intended for use in the Colt rifles. Three of these, the .32-20, .38-40 and .44-40, included C.L.M.R. in the headstamp, which stood for Colt's Lightning Magazine Rifle. These differed from the standard Winchester black powder loadings for these cartridges in the weight of either the powder charge or the bullet: .32 C.L.M.R. 20 grains black powder 100 grain lead bullet .32 W.C.F. 20 gr black powder 115 gr lead bullet
.38 C.L.M.R. 38 gr black powder 180 gr lead bullet .38 W.C.F. 40 gr black powder 180 gr lead bullet
.44 C.L.M.R. 40 gr black powder 217 gr lead bullet .44 W.C.F. 40 gr black powder 200 gr lead bullet
.45-85 Colt (.45-85) - 83 grains black powder 285 grain lead bullet .45-85 Bullard (.45-85 BUL.) - 85 gr black powder 295 gr lead bullet .45-85 Marlin (.45-85 MAR.) - 85 gr black powder 285 gr lead bullet
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In
1885 the Colt Patent Firearms Company, well established as a maker of
revolvers, began production of their Lightning slide action magazine rifles.
The Lightning rifles were initially produced in a medium weight frame for
the Winchester .32-20, .38-40, and .44-40 cartridges; by 1887 they were also
producing a small frame version which used the .22 short and long rim fire
cartridge, and by 1888, a large frame version chambered for a range of big
game cartridges, including the .38-56 Winchester. .40-60 Colt, .45-60
Winchester, .45-85 Colt, and .50-95 Winchester Express. By 1895, the large
frame version was out of production, followed by the medium frame in 1900
and the small frame in 1903. This marked the end of sporting long gun
production by Colt, as their machine gun and handgun production utilized all
of the manufacturing capacity of the company. The picture below from the
Colt 1888 catalog shows the three models of the Colt Lightning magazine
rifle. 
The
.40-60, developed by Marlin for use in their Model 1881 lever action rifle
and adapted by Colt for use in their large frame Lightning rifle, was headstamped by
Winchester .40-60 MAR (or M.) and .40-60 COLT to differentiate the
cartridges. Aside from the headstamps, however, the cartridges were exactly
the same, from their flat-nosed 260 grain lead bullets and 60 grain charges
of black powder to their small primers. One other cartridge made by
Winchester for Colt's lightning rifle had it's own unique headstamp,
although it gave no hint of it's Colt connection. This was
the .45-85 Colt, which was headstamped simply '.45-85' by Winchester. It
used the same cartridge case as two other .45-85 cartridges made by
Winchester (.45-85 Marlin and.45-85 Bullard), and, aside from the headstamps,
it differed only in the weight of it's powder charge
and/or it's bullet:
