The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

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...

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 w...

The latest car to come off the workbench was a re-release of the Kaslo Shops HK-02 combination door boxcar.  It is an early test print so took a bit of sanding work to smooth out the print lines.  Overall the kit went together well and was a quick build.   I painted the car in the early light BCR green (TruColor) and used a combination of Andy W., Kaslo, Microscale and Black Cat decals for the car.  I still need to weather the car but it turned out well.  I'll need a few more for lumber heading north on the Hudson Bay Railway.

I recently finished building a Kaslo Shops Distributing  kit HK-33 - BCRAIL Trenton Works 5277 cu ft 50'6" Combination Door Boxcar.  It's a nice kit and goes together well.  It's a bit too modern for my era but I enjoy building these kits. I did a fair bit of prep work in the form of sanding the side panels to minimize the print grain.  It goes quickly with about 5 to 10 minutes taken per side.  This was an early test print so required a bit more work than the production kits.  The etchings are great and fit perfectly.   I primed the car with Tamiya fine white surface primer and painted it with a combination of Vallejo silver for the roof and Trucolor BC Rail dark green.  The decals were from Kaslo Shops and were straightforward to apply over the glossy Trucolor paint.  I sealed the decals with Tamiya TS-80 flat clear.  Final details were Kadee 158 scale couplers and Atlas 70T roller bearing trucks.  The couplers and wheels got...

Mike Barone's excellent modelling.  Most interesting to me is the first CN diesel switcher in the background.  Can't wait to see it in finished form. This past weekend (May 26 to 28) we had the latest edition of the Railway Modellers Meet of BC at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.  The event was well attended with roughly 100 people in attendance over the 3 days.   Events included a prototype tour of the new G3 grain facility in North Vancouver, Operating Sessions, Layout Tours and two days of clinics, displays and camaraderie.  We also had a very interesting Keynote  address by Tony Thompson to kick things off.  Overall it was a very successful return to an in person event.  By all accounts it was very well received by attendees. I was the clinic coordinator for this year's edition and spent much of the meet running around trying to ensure that the clinic program ran smoothly with minimal hiccups.  Thanks to assistance by Mike and Lar...

  I've taken on building more Kaslo Shops Distributing woodchip gondola cars.  This pair is for the kit box art.  I'm quite happy with how this pair turned out.   The CN car was painted with True Line Trains CN Red #12, the interior got painted black as most CN cars seemed to have applied.  I used a set of Kaslo CN woodchip car decals to decal the car.  Matt finish was the final step. The BCOL car got TruColor BCR light green and red oxide on the interior.  A set of Black Cat BCR decals finished the car along with some matt finish.   These cars will eventually get some light weathering but for now will be factory fresh.  Next up is an Algoma Central ACIS woodchip car.  Plenty more to keep me busy.