The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

I recently completed weathering on a pair of locomotives; a CN SD40-2W for myself and a CPR H-16-44 for the CPR Boundary Subdivision. These were an interesting pair and represent the 1st and 2nd generation diesel locomotive fleets of their respective railways. The SD40-2W was purchased by CN in 1980 and was a new mainline locomotive in my era (1981-1983) so would have fairly light weathering as CN maintained their road power in good condition. To represent this I used Tamiya Black Panel Liner on the doors, louvers and latches to pop them a bit. After this was cleaned up I masked the windows and applied Tamiya matt clear finish to seal the body. After this I used oil washes to give the body a light grime coat.  I used oil paint and black PanPastel powders around the exhaust stack to get the oily gritty appearance often seen on these locomotives.  The wheels were painted black followed by Vallejo Game Effects dry rust which gives a nice look to the wheelsets. I sprayed a matt fi...

Starting in 1983 CN selected 9 units from their fleet of 1973-74 rebuilt F7Au for conversion into trailing "B" units.  They had their cab equipment, bells and horns stripped, windows and number boards painted over and new fuel tanks added to replace the smaller as delivered tanks. They also got a new paint job.  They were known as blind beetles, Blind B's, beetles and a few other more colourful names in the railfan community.  Railfans also called them F7Aum to represent modified rebuilt F units. You can find out more about the CN rebuilt F unit fleet in CN Lines magazine Vol 20 No 1 and 2 that covered the prototype and modeling of the rebuilds.   I decided I needed one of these units for my fleet and used a Highliners shell and a Stewart (now Bowser) F7A drive for the locomotive.  I used photos as a guide for detailing the model, and I scratchbuilt a fuel tank as well. There are plenty of fiddly bits on the pilot and rear of the car body that took some fig...

Whoops... someone forgot to say when to stop. North Vancouver BC in the 1970's My most recent projects were a quintet of 10'6" 40' boxcars with 8' doors.  Canadian Pacific and Pacific Great Eastern (later BC Rail) ordered these cars in the late 1950's and early 1960's for newsprint service.  They were among the last 40' boxcars built for Canadian railways before the switch to 50' cars.  CN had 8' door cars as well but they had a different door style. These are newly released Kaslo Shops Distributing cars both with and without roofwalks. Given how many of Kaslo kits I have built these were very fast to build.  Everything went together well, and sanding was really only needed on the ends to clean up the details.  I primed the cars with Mr. Surfacer 1500 which gives a very nice base to start from. The PGE car was painted with TLT PGE Freight Car Red and decalled with Black Cat decals. The Canadian Pacific block and script lettered cars were painted...

I have managed to acquire a number of CN employee time tables for northern Manitoba ranging from the early 1970's to the mid 1990's. These are snapshots of the railway operations during these times.  As is often the case there was far more traffic in the earlier time tables than the later ones.    My chosen era is the 1981-83 time frame. Time Table #39 shown above is the closest to my era that I currently have on hand. I'm still looking for additional time tables for my prototype time frame.  The main Subdivisions that are pertinent to the layout are the Turnberry Sub that runs from Hudson Bay to The Pas, the Wekusko Sub that runs from The Pas to Wabowden, the Flin Flon Sub that runs from Flin Flon Junction to Flin Flon and the Sherridon  Sub that runs from Sherrit Junction to Lynn Lake. This map shows the Hudson Bay Division Subdivisions in 1980.  I'm focused on the lines north of The Pas. In 1980 there was still extensive railway activity in northern Mani...

  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 ...