The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

  The most recent project off the workbench is something I never thought I would build: Santa Fe SD45-2B #5512.  Kaslo Shops recently brought out this kit and requested a built up version to use for their box art.  I thought it would be an interesting project to try and tackle, being the first ATSF locomotive I have done. In the 1980's Santa Fe rebuilt 8 SD45-2 units into B units for road service.  There was a phase in the late 1980's and early 1990's where many railways rebuilt locomotives into B units to decrease their maintenance costs.  CN rebuilt F7Au, CP rebuilt SD40-2, BN had a few SD units rebuilt and Santa Fe had the SD45-2 and a few other types rebuilt.  This seems to have fallen out of favour more recently due to the lack of flexibility offered by B units.  You can read more on the ATSF B unit fleet here:   Santa Fe SD45-2 fleet information The kit went together well with everything fitting as it should. Not having to worry about w...

My most recent builds are a mix of 40 foot boxcars that I have been working on are a mix of cars for Kaslo Shops, myself and a few for friends.   A pair of Ontario Northland 40' 10'IH boxcars with 8' doors was the first thing off my workbench.  These are a recent offering from Kaslo Shops, and I built these cars for the box cover art.  These were not frequent visitors to northern Manitoba, but I have a slide scan of an ONT boxcar tucked in behind the road power heading north out of Wabowden MB. At least one car went as far as Gillam or Churchill so I have a prototype example! These were a straight forward kit build, one car (ONT 91037) with roofwalk and one car (ONT 91006) without.  ONT 91037 got a Jade Green paint scheme using the MRH Acrylic Paint Guide formula for NYC Jade Green that I tweaked a bit to get something close to the jade green in photos.   ONT 91006 was painted with Rapido Protocolour ONT green; I don't recommend this paint as it is dif...

CN 235116 in Winnipeg MB  in the early 1990's - it has seen better days Hot on the heels of the Hawker Siddeley 231xxx and 233xxx series mechanical refrigerators, Kaslo Shops brought out the 235000-235299 series reefers.  These were a more common car on CN, with 300 cars delivered in 1966.  Some of these cars were in use until the mid 2000's with most being retired in the 1990's.  Their silver body with blue doors were distinctive, and when they were clean they were nice looking cars.  Unfortunately they didn't seem to stay clean very long. These cars were common on the Hudson Bay Railway, with service to most communities in the north that CN served.  There was at least one car in semi-captive service hauling groceries from the freight house in The Pas to Lynn Lake.  These were also frequent visitors to Churchill, Thompson and Gillam, at least until improved roads to Thompson and Gillam arrived in the mid 1980's.  These cars have long been on my w...

The photo above has something a bit out the ordinary in it: an F-35 fighter jet. Kid #2 asked for a model F-35 on his Christmas list, so "Santa" popped over to Burnaby Hobbies and did some shopping.   Normally Santa buys paint, thinner and other general modelling supplies when he visits this store as it isn't a railway focused hobby shop.  This go around he looked through the very large selection of model kits and came away with an Airfix 1:72 kit with both a Spitfire (which also happens to be the first model I ever built while in hospital getting my adenoids out when I was 6) and an F-35 Lightning II.  Kid #2 was quite happy on Christmas morning when he opened the gift.   These are a nice basic beginner kit that has sufficient detail to be interesting while not being an overly complicated model to assemble.  Kid #2 did a good job of assembly with some help from dad over a couple of days, with only a few fingerprints melted into the plastic from a bit ...

CN used "Line Car Control" books to help crews with serving the many customers throughout their system.  These are great tools for those of us looking to replicate the prototypical operations on our layouts.  Previously I had received a Line Car Control book from 1986 which was a great help in sorting out customers, tracks use, etc.   Recently the CNRHA received a sizable donation of documents from the estate of a former CN employee.  I have been sorting through these documents and have begun to scan them for future use on the CNRHA website.   One very interesting part of the documents is an undated Line Car Control book for The Pas Servocentre.  it appears to be a late 1960's/early 1970's era book based on a few things, most notably that the kraft mill and log yard are either proposed or under construction.  Based on some research of the checkered history ( Churchill Forest Industries Scandal  and The Pas mill history  are interes...

CN operated a sizable fleet of mechanical refrigerator cars from the mid 1960's through to the mid 1990's with some cars operating into the mid 2000's. Most of these cars have since been replaced by mechanical reefer containers.  Hawker Siddeley constructed 75 mechanical refrigerator cars in 1966, initially in the 231100-231174 series.  Later in 1967/68 50 cars were renumbered into the 233000-233049 series.  I am unsure of why this was done, but CN had a major freight car renumbering program in the late 1960s that can make your head spin trying to figure out.   The cars were delivered in the noodle paint scheme with a silver body and blue door to denote the cars use in meat service.  Later on some cars had silver painted doors, likely allowing their use in general refrigerator service.   Kaslo Shops has brought out this car type both with and without roof walks.  I built these two cars for their box art, 231152 for the roof walk version with ...

A well weathered CN 1929 boxcar in Winnipeg, on its way to the Winnipeg Railway Museum circa 1995; if only I had the foresight to measure the brake gear when I had the chance... I have wrapped up a long dormant boxcar project.  While digging through my stash of freight cars I found a Kaslo Shops Distributing Canadian National 40 foot 1929 single sheath boxcar in a box, assembled (not sure if it was me or something I bought at a train show)  but unpainted.  I decided to remedy that situation.   Side view of the brake rigging - I need to find a museum with one of these cars to measure and photograph! Before I got too far I had to address an issue with the brake rigging. On the prototype there was a clevis, crank, chain and anchor set up that I have never seen done in model form. I finally came across a few prototype slides in my collection with clear enough views of this arrangement to make an attempt at representing it. An Intermountain part along with some scrat...