CN 9172 heads north with a short freight

 

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CN Boxcars a Plenty

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Canadian National had a long lasting fleet of 40 foot boxcars, some of which lasted until 1996 in grain service.  Modelling northern Manitoba in the early 1980's requires a significant number of 40 footers in both grain and general service.   Over the past several years I have been building out my fleet of these cars using RTR, kitbashed kits and resin kits.  There have also been numerous CN painted models done over the years, with some being relatively accurate while others are stand in models - some call these foobies. First Thing To  Do If you want to accurately model any CN steel boxcar your first stop should be to find a copy of Railroad Model Craftsman's August 1993 issue with Stafford Swain's seminal article "Canadian National's 1937 AAR design 40-foot steel boxcars".  It covers the entire range of 40 foot steel cars from 1937 to the end of 40' car deliveries in 1957.  This is "must read" material.  CN Lines has a number of articles on the...
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Tank car weathering

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Rapido Model Trains recently released their model of the Procor GP20 20,000 gallon general purpose tank car.  This has long been on my list of "must have" models for the Hudson Bay Railway.  Any photo with a tank car in it from the late 1970's to the 1990's was likely one of these cars.  They were used to haul gasoline, diesel and other fuel to various parts of the northern railway network.  They were used to stock the fuel tank farm in Churchill that serviced the barges that supplied communities along Hudsons Bay.  This required massive numbers of tank cars to travel north.   The model from Rapido is very nicely done with etched walkways and nicely rendered fine details.  They are pretty much ready to go out of the box, however I want to try adding some weathering to the cars to better represent the prototype.   One challenge is that there are not that many photographs of these cars in service in the early 1980's, as much due to the cos...
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Snowplows a plenty

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One of the thngs on my "to do" list has been to build some CN prototype snow plows.  CN had a wide range of snowplows, many unique to the railway and others from common designs used elsewhere.  Walthers brought out a Russell snow plow years ago that was good for some of the plows CN operated.  However the majority of plows were built by ECC, CC&F and in house by CN and were quite unique.   CN 55392 as it currently sits.  It was a late 1990's kitbash that has sat for years because I just wasn't quite happy with it.  I may just bite the bullet and finish it now.   I started kitbashing an ECC/CC&F plow years ago from a Walthers Jordan plow kit and got it to the point of being ready to paint.  But there were enough differences between it and the prototype to cause me to wonder if there was a better way.   With the recent influx of 3D printed models of unique prototypes the doors have been thrown wide open to model equipment...
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