The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

Ouch.  The crack runs almost all the way around the cup mount on the airbrush. I don't think that will buff out... I was prepping to do some airbrushing on some freight cars and loaded my Gaahleri Barbatos Rex Swallowtail trigger style airbrush with black paint. I picked up the airbrush and saw a lot of paint spillage thinking to myself "I wasn't that sloppy loading the brush..." I gave the brush a wipe to clean the paint and more poured out of a crack in the top of the brush.  I had a large crack around the top of the brush where the cup mounts to the body.  I have a vague recollection of the brush falling out of the rack and hitting the baseboard but didn't think it was anything of note.  Apparently not.  The crack runs around 2/3 of the cup mount and looks to me to be unfixable.   It has been a good airbrush over the past year having 3 needle sizes and a decent sized paint cup. I'll reach out to Gaahleri and see if I can get a replacement body; the ...

When I am operating on people's layouts, the most common question both myself and others have is "where am I?" on the layout, particularly if you are a new operator there.  Even on layouts where I operate often I still need to sort out what location I am at.   My friend Tim has a small business that does laser cutting ( Schist Lake Designs ) and other work.  I asked him to design some signage for my layout that would help operators know where they are and what direction they are travelling.   He sent me some PDF of the signs to review. I asked some others what they thought of them as far as readability, clarity, etc. We agreed on CN style lettering for the signs, along with CN and HBM&S logos. Once I was happy with the signage I gave the go ahead to get them done.  He used material with a white surface, giving a nice readable sign when it is cut. I received the signs in the mail earlier this week, and I'll be putting them in place prior to my layou...

For years one of the projects that has lurked in the back of my mind was the CN 222600 series mechanical reefers that were rebuilt from CN's fleet of 8 hatch ice reefers. These mechanical reefers were staples on the Hudson Bay passenger train from the 1960's through 1983. CN rebuilt a significant portion of their 8 hatch ice reefer fleet into mechanical reefers in the 1960's as these were relatively new cars (the last cars were built in the late 1950's) that were obsolete due to the advent of mechanical refrigeration.   The rebuilding process included plating over the roof hatches, adding full height plug doors, underslung genset, fuel tank, battery box and other equipment along with an A/C unit on one of the doors. The 222600 series cars also had steam lines for use in passenger service. CN also converted other cars with a 5' tall plug door. Other similar cars were in the 220xxx, 224xxx and 225xxx series, and likely others as well. CN's freight car renumbering ...