PGE Newsprint boxcar build


The Pacific Great Eastern (PGE) was the name of the railway that ran from North Vancouver to northern British Columbia.  It was renamed the British Columbia Railway in 1972.  The PGE/BCR primarily focused on forest products throughout it's network.  To serve the numerous lumber and paper mills they amassed a sizable fleet of boxcars, flatcars and bulkhead flatcars (as well as numerous centerbeam flatcars as the BCR) and woodchip cars.

In 1966 the PGE ordered 100 50' newspirnt cars from Hawker Siddeley for service on their system.  The cars had plug doors that gave a smooth interior to lessen damage to the newsprint rolls they hauled.  The cars were delivered with roofwalks and high mounted brakewheels.  In the 1970's many of these cars were rebuilt without roofwalks and repainted into the BCOL scheme in both light and dark green paint.  

Kaslo Shops recently released both the as delivered and rebuilt versions of these cars as kits.  I was asked to build and paint a set of these cars for the kit's box art.  

The kits were a straight forward build with nicely etched phosphor bronze ladders, grabs and other parts on a crisp 3D printed body and underframe.  The bodies went together quickly; the underframe required a bit more work to build the brake system using wire for the brake piping and brake rods.  

I did use some Bondo putty to fill and sand some print lines but overall the body didn't require a significant amount of work.  I elected to sand the body panels as I have gotten into the habit of doing this on all my 3D print builds to lessen the chance of any printing artifacts showing through on the finished car.  

I primed the cars with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer.  When this was dry I used TLT PGE/BCR Brown on the as delivered kit for the body, roofwalk and underframe with the roof painted steel to represent the unpainted prototype roof.  When I masked the roof for the painting of the main body I left the edges unsealed to get some overspray on the edges of the roof as you see on the prototype cars.  I like the effect.

I applied Vallejo gloss varnish to give a good surface for decalling the car with a set of Black Cat PGE newsprint car decals made for this specific car.  They will be available directly from Black Cat in the near future.  


The BCOL car was painted in the light green dogwood scheme using TruColor BCR light green.  According to the Canadian Railcar Pictorial book on the PGE/BCR fleet these cars had their rooftop painted when they were rebuilt so I did so on this kit, greatly simplifying the painting process as it didn't require any masking.  I decal bashed the appropriate decals from Black Cat, Andy W and Kaslo Shops decals along with a few added bits from various Microscale decals.  Black Cat will eventually release a set for these cars I am told.  

Everything was sealed with several coats of Tamiya TS-80 matt spray.  I added painted wheels using my standard technique (see this post <here>), scale head Kadee couplers painted with Vallejo Game Effects Dry Rust along with some air hoses to complete the cars.  I am planning to (eventually) weather these cars when Kaslo Shops quits releasing new kits that they need box art for!  These were a fun build for a car type that is not likely to be released as RTR anytime soon.  



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