CN auto transporter build

Between 1956 and 1959 Canadian National took delivery of double deck auto transporter cars that were some of the earliest auto racks produced.  CN took delivery of a total of 75 x 75' cars and 75 x 57' cars.  These cars were intended to replace the 40 and 50 foot boxcars that were the primary transportation mode for automobiles on the railways.

The 57 foot cars were almost immediately obsolete in their intended service as they were only able to transport 6 automobiles.  The 75' cars were able to transport 8 automobiles so were a bit more useable in their intended service.  

These cars were not to be interchanged so primarily stayed on CN trackage for their careers.  8 of the 57' cars were used in Car Go Rail service on the Super Continental passenger train service in the 1970's.  As well other 57' cars were converted to transport other items like boats and roof trusses after they were superseded by enclosed autoracks.  One was converted to a cattle car!  More information about the varied careers of these cars is available on Eric Gagnon's Trackside Treasure blog here:

http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com/2011/10/cns-double-deck-auto-transporters.html

  

The lone 75' auto transporter car I saw in the wild.  Being interchanged!!

CN sold a large number of 75' cars to Autotrain in the early 1970's, and the remaining few cars soldiered on until the early 1990's.  I only ever saw one car in active service coming off interchange(?!?) with the Southern Railway of British Columbia in Chilliwack BC in 1992.  This car was still in the CN maple leaf scheme.  

CN 720134 in Thompson MB on the HBR in April 2000  

720134 was still on the HBR (The Pas this time) in 2018, relettered to HBR - Note how they painted around the ACI label...

These 63 year old cars are amazingly still in use on the Hudson Bay Railway in northern Manitoba.  They are in restricted service, used to transport cars, trucks and other supplies between The Pas, Thompson, Gillam and Churchill.  Their smaller size makes them useful for the smaller vehicle loads being transported north to Churchill. Many have been relettered to Hudson Bay Railway but retain much of their original CN lettering and numbering.  Since they are not interchanged they don't have to meet the rules about the age limit for railcars.

Sylvan Scale Models produced several versions of these cars with decals for the various schemes they were painted in.  All the cars in service in northern Manitoba wore the CN noodle scheme.  Over the past few years I have managed to accumulate a number of these kits, usually from tables at train shows or the used section of hobby shops.  I have a total of 5 cars in hand with a sixth coming eventually to round out the fleet.  

Using my photos as well as online photo sources as a guide I built and painted my first kit a few years ago as the 720134.  Unfortunately at the time I didn't have good photos of the underframe brake rigging so I used best guesses about the setup using the photo as a rough guide.  However some of the particulars of the setup eluded me.  With this next round of kit building I set out to fix the lack of details.

Up close and personal with 720127

Brake rigging up close - these are the shots I needed for 720134 when I built it

The slack adjuster on the brake system is on the right.  I wonder if this was used on any other CN cars

The hand brake pulley is visible under the indented hand brake area of 720107.  Note that the CN noodle was one panel inboard of the standard location on this side of the car.  The other side had the noodle in the standard location.

On my various trips to the region since building my first kit I tried to take as many detail photos as I was able when I ran into these cars.  On a trip to Thompson in 2018 I managed to get up close and personal with cars 720107 and 720127.  Numerous underbody and detail photos were taken, finally letting me sort out what exactly the brake rigging setup was for these cars.  The assumptions I made with 720134 did what assumptions usually do - Make and ass out of you and me (ASS-U-ME).  While not totally wrong the set up was incorrect.  

Using my photos as a guide I drew up a sketch of the brake rigging based on the prototype cars.  I used this drawing to guide my brake rigging construction process.  I used the kit supplied air reservoir, triple valve and brake cylinder along with the kit brake levers.  I used 0.0125" wire for the rigging along with 18" straight grab irons and styrene for the lever supports as outlined in the photos.  

The above photo shows the brake system as modeled.  It may have a few things that a car knocker would take issue with, but overall I think it replicates what I am seeing in the photos pretty well.  I modelled the slack adjuster using X.XX" square brass stock and various bits of styrene to get something close to the prototype setup.  I didn't bother adding chain as it isn't visible from normal viewing locations, and everything will be painted black.  

The car on the left has the 3 rung Tichy ladder while the car on the right has the wire grab irons.  The lower grab needs a bit of tweaking.

The brake lever inset with the 4 rung ladder and brake chain.  I substituted A Line stirrups for the plastic stirrups that came with the kit.  These are very resilient to handling.

Some cars had grab irons on the left side, others had a 3 rung ladder.  I applied the appropriate part to each car based on photos.  These were chopped down from the as delivered full height ladders.  I went through my parts bin and settled on the Tichy 7 rung ladder as it has the correct rung spacing and ladder width relative to the prototype.  The ladder rungs are reasonably fine on these ladders although a bit of selective scrapping helped with a few rungs.  Unfortunately my etched ladders are not the correct rung spacing for this car.

I used some 40 link/inch A Line chain for the brake chain between the housing and the bottom of the inset.  I put a short length of 0.010" wire at either end of the chain to securely attach the chain.  I used CA to secure the chain.  

I made a scale 8" wide x 6" high pulley housing as per the prototype photos out of a piece of 0.04" thick styrene.  I attached it to the car body with a short pin made of 0.0125" wire.  I attached a short length of the same A Line chain to the wire brake lever with a clevis to represent the linkage.  I attached the chain to the pulley housing after painting the body and underframe separately.  In the above photo I haven't trimmed the pin on the pulley housing yet, it will be glued and trimmed when I am done painting the underframe and body separately.

I washed the car body and underframe with soapy warm water followed by a rinse to get any oils off the car.  After the cars were dry I airbrushed thinned Tamiya Liquid Surface Primer to give the paint a good basecoat.  I followed the primer with True Line Trains TLT CN #12 red which is unfortunately out of production now.  I have stocked up on this paint so I should be able to paint a few more cars before I have to seek out alternatives.  

Once I had good coverage I gave the areas where the decals were to be applied a coat of Vallejo gloss varnish to give a good base for decalling.  I used a mix of Black Cat, Sean Steele, Sylvan and Microscale decals to get the correct lettering using photos of the specific car numbers as a guide.  As an example of paint variations CN720107 has the noodle on the side with the brake housing offset one side panel towards the center.  It isn't obvious until you look closely at the prototype photo.  Other variations include COTS panel locations, wheel dots and ACI label locations.  

The end door lettering also has a lot of variation in lettering placement depending on the car.  I tried to use photos where possible but finding good end door photos is not easy for these cars.  As well I had to cobble together the French lettering. I got these from a few decal sets that don't have a couple of the words used on the prototype so I apologize for the poor French on the cars.  

I also used the yellow stripes from this set for the car height warning line on the sides and ends. I pretty much used up all the stripes from multiple decal sheets to get all the cars done. Once the decals were complete, I sealed the car with a second gloss coat to hide the decal edges.  

Before: It looks terrible but it gets better after you clean it up

After: The effect is fairly subtle and doesn't show in the photo very well.

At this point I used some acrylic Vallejo Black Wash to highlight the panel lines, rivets, latches and roof ribs.  This is better used on a glossy surface as you get fairly extensive bleeding of the color on a matte surface.  This helps to make some of the details pop a bit on these cars, but you need to keep a Q-tip handy to clean up any colour bleeding. I originally planned to use Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color however it didn't seem to want to play nicely with the Vallejo gloss varnish I put on the car so I went with an acrylic wash instead.

I also decided to add some chipping paint to the roof of the cars.  I used a mix of silver and grey Vallejo paint to recreate the look of galvanized metal.  I tried to keep the chipping light so that it is subtle.  I varied the intensity between the cars.  I also applied some black wash to highlight the ribs and rivets on the roof.

The weathering on these cars washes out in the photos.  I was going for a light weathering on these cars with some rooftop flaking paint.

Tamiya TS-80 Matt was sprayed over the entire car body to get a good base for further weathering.  These cars were in relatively good condition in the early 1980's so they only get a relatively light weathering coat.  I may yet airbrush some road grime on the lower part of the cars.  

I added some Kadee #158 couplers that were drybrushed with Vallejo Game Effects Dry Rust.  The 33" wheels got an oily black paint application to the wheel faces.  Nothing ruins the effect of a nicely weathered car more than shiny wheels.  I also added air hoses to the cars.  I put the cars into service on the HBR and now have sufficient cars to haul all the auto traffic going between The Pas and Churchill.