The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

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...

Previously I had worked on building a fleet of rebuilt CN F7 units < here >.  A total of 3 units (2 F7Au and one F7Bu) were completed and I moved onto other projects.  Recently I stumbled across another partly finished F7B and decided that I should get it wrapped up.   I bought this model as part of an ABA set of Kato drive Stewart F7 units from Dan Kirlin's hobby shop in Winnipeg circa 1994 (!?!).  In previous decades I had added lift rings, a winterization hatch and had drilled out the various grab iron and railing mounting locations to the model.  I used an OMI rooftop cooling coil for the coil seen on the prototype.  These are long out of production and impossible to find now (made out of unobtanium), but Precision Scale has a plastic cooling coil that replaces this one.   As well, I had modified the fuel tank skirting and fuel tank to reflect the prototype arrangement.  I then let the model marinate in the box for years due to...