Winchester Centennial Model 1876

Later orders from the NWMP ultimately totaled 1,611 Model 76 carbines, with the first 150 being transferred to the Department of Militia and Defense to arm units being sent out West. The grand total, then, for the NWMP was 1,271 M76 carbines.

- Dave Scovill

While the Model 73 was a remarkable success, and the .38 and .44 WCFs were considered by many to be adaptable for most North American big game, it was obvious to company executives that they needed larger, more robust cartridge designs to compete with the single shots of the era, including Sharps, Ballard, Bullard, et al., that at the very least were suitable for the Government .45-70, namely the 500-grain cartridge with 70 grains of black powder.

The solution turned out to be a somewhat larger version of the Model 73 that at the outset was chambered for the .45-75 WCF with a 350-grain cartridge containing 75 grains of powder in a 17⁄8-inch case. Called the Centennial Rifle for its debut on the 100th anniversary of the Revolutionary War, Winchester attempted to accommodate the government cartridge, but the basic design features incorporated from the Model 73 weren’t strong enough to safely contain the larger 2.1-inch copper case. At that, the .45-75 load that generated 1,343 fps was close enough to the government 405-grain load to satisfy public demands.

Winchester followed the .45-75 in 1879 with the .4560 with a 300-grain bullet at 1,271 fps and the .50-95 (aka .50-90, or .50 EX) with a 300-grain bullet at 1,405 fps. The last entry to the cartridge lineup was the .4060 in 1884 with a 210-grain bullet that reached 1,475 fps from the 26-inch barrel of the M76 rifle, not much of an increase over the .44 WCF with a 200-grain load. Two years later, after a production run of approximately 63,870 units, the M76 was discontinued in favor of the Model 1886, although approximately 4,000 rifles were shipped between 1886 and 1898.