The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

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...

True Line Trains (purchased by Atlas Model Railroad Co. and re-released) came out with several variations of the Canadian "slabside hoppers" that were used from the 1950's through the 1990's in bulk commodity service.  These cars were used by CN, CP, TH&B, PGE/BCR and CGLX.  I recommend reading the "Smooth Canadian" article written by Ken Goslett in the August 1986 Railroad Model Craftsman magazine for the complete story on these cars.   In addition to TLT/Atlas, Funaro & Camerlengo and Sylvan Scale Models have made resin kits for various versions of these cars, some of which are only available in resin. However one of the difficulties with the resin kits are the end cages which are challenging to build properly.  The TLT/Atlas car has fairly heavily cast end cages with oversized ladder rungs and an incorrect number of vertical posts on the A end of the car.   Dry fitting the end cage etching after clipping the rungs and grabs from the TLT car ...