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HBR History and Layout Background

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A little background on the prototype: The Hudson Bay Railway (HBR), owned by Omnitrax, took over Canadian National’s lines to Flin Flon (Flin Flon Subdivision), Lynn Lake, Thompson and Churchill Manitoba in 1997. These lines were built to access northern Manitoba’s mineral wealth and forest products. The Flin Flon Subdivision was completed in 1928, the line to the Port of Churchill in 1929, Lynn Lake in 1953 and Thompson in 1958. Another line to Snow Lake was built in 1960 and abandoned in the late 1980’s. Major traffic generators for the northern Manitoba lines include outbound concentrates and ingots from Flin Flon, Lynn Lake and Thompson, predominantly Copper, Zinc and Nickel. As well, inbound concentrates, mill and smelter supplies for the smelters and concentrators at these mining centers is shipped by rail; raw logs and chemicals going to, and finished wood and paper products coming from the Tolko lumber mill and pulp mill, frack sand from Channing, grain loads going to and grain
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BCOL 5101 cu ft Combination Door boxcar

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The latest car to come off the workbench was a re-release of the Kaslo Shops HK-02 combination door boxcar.  It is an early test print so took a bit of sanding work to smooth out the print lines.  Overall the kit went together well and was a quick build.   I painted the car in the early light BCR green (TruColor) and used a combination of Andy W., Kaslo, Microscale and Black Cat decals for the car.  I still need to weather the car but it turned out well.  I'll need a few more for lumber heading north on the Hudson Bay Railway.
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BCOL outside braced combination door boxcar

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I recently finished building a Kaslo Shops Distributing  kit HK-33 - BCRAIL Trenton Works 5277 cu ft 50'6" Combination Door Boxcar.  It's a nice kit and goes together well.  It's a bit too modern for my era but I enjoy building these kits. I did a fair bit of prep work in the form of sanding the side panels to minimize the print grain.  It goes quickly with about 5 to 10 minutes taken per side.  This was an early test print so required a bit more work than the production kits.  The etchings are great and fit perfectly.   I primed the car with Tamiya fine white surface primer and painted it with a combination of Vallejo silver for the roof and Trucolor BC Rail dark green.  The decals were from Kaslo Shops and were straightforward to apply over the glossy Trucolor paint.  I sealed the decals with Tamiya TS-80 flat clear.  Final details were Kadee 158 scale couplers and Atlas 70T roller bearing trucks.  The couplers and wheels got a coat of my favourite Vallejo Game Effec
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September 2023 Railroad Model Craftsman Article

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I'll toot my own horn a bit here.  I have an article on building and weathering a CP 4 hatch tank hopper car from a Sylvan Scale Models resin kit.  I'm happy with the article and how the car turned out.  These cars were a common sight throughout Canada and the US into the mid 2000's.  Sylvan's kit has filled a gaping hole in our freight car rosters for both the CN and CP versions of these cars.  
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CN Extended side woodchip gondola

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The latest addition to my woodchip car fleet is CN 880659 that has extended sides from Kaslo Shops Distributing .  CN seemed to randomly choose cars from this series and add extensions to increase their capacity.  As well some of the extensions were painted CN Red #12 like the main carbody while others were painted black.  All the cars had black interiors.  Photos are your guide here. The car was a fairly quick build with the underframe piping being the most involved.  I chose a car number (880659) that had black extensions as this adds some variety to the fleet.  Masking the posts was a bit of a chore and touch ups were needed afterwards for small runs. Overall a nice car and the last one I'll be doing for a while.  Time to move on to boxcars...
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Noodling around with decals: how to apply a CN noodle to a ribbed freigh...

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The CN noodle was designed to go over a flat surface.  When you are decalling your freight cars the decal will fit flat sided cars perfectly.  However on a rib sided car, the proportions of the noodle will be off if you just apply the whole decal over the car side.  This video shows my technique for applying the decals to keep the noodle proportions correct.  I hope this is helpful for those who "roll their own" freight cars.  
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Algoma Central woodchip hopper

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The final (for now) woodchip hopper of the trio I built and painted for Kaslo Shops Distributing is this Algoma Central 1400 series woodchip hopper.  Algoma Central had a fleet of 90 woodchip gondolas for international service in the ACIS 1401-1490 series.  The cars were shipping wood chips to a mill in the US, hence the ACIS series.   These cars didn't seem to get photographed often as there are only limited photos on line and none in my slide collection.  Based on the available photos I assembled the car, which was fairly straight forward.  The bigger challenge was figuring out what the paint colour was.   After some lengthy discussions with Chris Vanderheide he suggested a paint mix of Vallejo paints to roughly replicate the blue green colour seen in the limited number of photos available.  I used the equivalent colours in the Vallejo Air paint line as I had those on hand.  The mix is 2 parts 71.095, 1 part 71.317 and 1 part 71.050.  Chris' mix was 2 parts 70.974, 1 part 70.
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Railway Modellers Meet of BC Clinic - Weathering Covered Hoppers Presentation

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As part of the Railway Modellers Meet of BC I presented a clinic entitled "Weathering Covered Hoppers" which covers some of the techniques I use to model various types of covered hoppers. When I converted it from a PowerPoint to a Google Slides presentation some of the formatting became a bit wonky but hopefully it is somewhat presentable.  I hope you find it useful and enjoyable, hopefully there is something useful for you here.   Link to clinic presentation: Weathering Covered Hoppers
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Railway Modellers Meet of BC 2023

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Mike Barone's excellent modelling.  Most interesting to me is the first CN diesel switcher in the background.  Can't wait to see it in finished form. This past weekend (May 26 to 28) we had the latest edition of the Railway Modellers Meet of BC at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.  The event was well attended with roughly 100 people in attendance over the 3 days.   Events included a prototype tour of the new G3 grain facility in North Vancouver, Operating Sessions, Layout Tours and two days of clinics, displays and camaraderie.  We also had a very interesting Keynote  address by Tony Thompson to kick things off.  Overall it was a very successful return to an in person event.  By all accounts it was very well received by attendees. I was the clinic coordinator for this year's edition and spent much of the meet running around trying to ensure that the clinic program ran smoothly with minimal hiccups.  Thanks to assistance by Mike and Larry we had what to me appeared to be a
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Crosspost - Flin Flon Derailment on the Hudson Bay Railway - April 2000

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I posted on my other blog about a derailment that happened while I was working in Flin Flon.  I was fortunate to be there during the clean up and got quite a few photos of the action.  Lots of modelling potential.  The post is here:  https://ageologistchasingtrains.blogspot.com/2023/05/flin-flon-derailment-on-hudson-bay.html When the long awaited rebuilt M420 arrives from Rapido Trains I will be custom painting HBR 3548, the lone M420 painted into the Hudson Bay Railway scheme.  
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Even more woodchip gondolas

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  I've taken on building more Kaslo Shops Distributing woodchip gondola cars.  This pair is for the kit box art.  I'm quite happy with how this pair turned out.   The CN car was painted with True Line Trains CN Red #12, the interior got painted black as most CN cars seemed to have applied.  I used a set of Kaslo CN woodchip car decals to decal the car.  Matt finish was the final step. The BCOL car got TruColor BCR light green and red oxide on the interior.  A set of Black Cat BCR decals finished the car along with some matt finish.   These cars will eventually get some light weathering but for now will be factory fresh.  Next up is an Algoma Central ACIS woodchip car.  Plenty more to keep me busy.
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