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...

My most recent builds are a mix of 40 foot boxcars that I have been working on are a mix of cars for Kaslo Shops, myself and a few for friends.   A pair of Ontario Northland 40' 10'IH boxcars with 8' doors was the first thing off my workbench.  These are a recent offering from Kaslo Shops, and I built these cars for the box cover art.  These were not frequent visitors to northern Manitoba, but I have a slide scan of an ONT boxcar tucked in behind the road power heading north out of Wabowden MB. At least one car went as far as Gillam or Churchill so I have a prototype example! These were a straight forward kit build, one car (ONT 91037) with roofwalk and one car (ONT 91006) without.  ONT 91037 got a Jade Green paint scheme using the MRH Acrylic Paint Guide formula for NYC Jade Green that I tweaked a bit to get something close to the jade green in photos.   ONT 91006 was painted with Rapido Protocolour ONT green; I don't recommend this paint as it is dif...

I have been on a bit of a Canadian Pacific bent as of late.  I have been working on a number of Kaslo Shops kits for the CP Hawker Siddeley 50 foot boxcar fleet; specifically 2 door rod and 4 door rod newsprint cars both with and without roofwalks, 50 foot autopart boxcars with and without roofwalks, and a Hawker Siddeley 50 foot mechanical reefer. These cars were enjoyable to build, although my first attempt at painting the multimark on the green newsprint car was unsuccessful due to poor interactions between  the Tamiya white paint and TruColor CP green.  Note to self: don't mix these paints on a model, it won't end well. For most of the cars I used either Tamiya TS-33 dull red spray cans (these are becoming a rare commodity in Canada these days) for the CP boxcar red, based on a recommendation from Coquihalla Man .  For the action red and action green I used TruColor CP action red and action green with good results.  The silver mechanical refrigerator was pai...

Another batch of cars from the CP Boundary Sub made it's way onto my workbench this week.  I used a mix of oil paint, lacquer and acrylic washes as well as some selective Pan Pastel weathering on these cars.  Always fun to play around with techniques, although when it is someone else's equipment it is better to stick with what you know than try something completely new.   Most of the cars are lightly to moderately weathered with the exception of the coal hoppers and OCS  tank car.  Those cars got a bit heavier weathering to reflect their hard service.  The weathering doesn't really come out as well as it should in photos but I'm happy with how they turned out.  I may have to detoxify after all the CP equipment passing across my workbench with a good dose of CN stuff.  

I regularly operate and dispatch the CP Boundary Subdivision owned by my friend Scott.  It is a large layout that is a blast to operate.  On occasion I would give Scott a hard time about all the shiny new freight cars and locomotives on the layout.  It was suggested that I help fix that issue, which I agreed to.  This latest batch included a mix of CP, CN, MILW, WP and Southern Mountain (freelance roadname).   Most of these (except CN and CP) don't show up on my own layout so this was an interesting diversion for me. The layout is set in the pre-CP script era, so circa 1961-63.  These cars were fun to do, using the build dates as a guide to how grungy and weathered the cars should be. Most of the cars were built between 1945-57, so there is quite a range of dates.  I'm pleased with how they turned out.  Only about 400 or so cars to go...