September 2023 Railroad Model Craftsman Article


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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PGE, BCOL and CP 8' door 40' boxcars

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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...
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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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Using Employee Time Tables as a Modelling Aid

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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...
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