The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

I have managed to acquire a number of CN employee time tables for northern Manitoba ranging from the early 1970's to the mid 1990's. These are snapshots of the railway operations during these times.  As is often the case there was far more traffic in the earlier time tables than the later ones.    My chosen era is the 1981-83 time frame. Time Table #39 shown above is the closest to my era that I currently have on hand. I'm still looking for additional time tables for my prototype time frame.  The main Subdivisions that are pertinent to the layout are the Turnberry Sub that runs from Hudson Bay to The Pas, the Wekusko Sub that runs from The Pas to Wabowden, the Flin Flon Sub that runs from Flin Flon Junction to Flin Flon and the Sherridon  Sub that runs from Sherrit Junction to Lynn Lake. This map shows the Hudson Bay Division Subdivisions in 1980.  I'm focused on the lines north of The Pas. In 1980 there was still extensive railway activity in northern Mani...

Along with my blogs on the Hudson Bay Railway (this one) and another on my real life railfan adventures < here > I have another blog that I originally started on the Model Railroad Hobbyist site about 8 years ago.   That MRH  blog was my gateway to these more recent blogs and I still post there regularly, although now I tend to post a shorter version of what I post here with a link back here to continue reading.  Since I am inherently lazy I figure the easy way for future readers to read my older MRH posts is to put a link here to a list of the MRH posts.   Some I have redone here, others have not been transferred over as I outlined above.  If you feel like reading more of my nattering feel free to pop over to MRH: https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/42428#new     If the above link doesn't work, try this one: https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/blog/33822?page=11

I was invited to do a Zoom presention to the St. Lawrence Division of the NMRA in Ottawa.  I spoke about my modelling focus on the Hudson Bay Railway.  Around 35 or so attendees managed to stay awake through my presentation.  If I ever figure out how to link my presentation to this page I'll post it for people to see. This type of presentation helps me to focus on the overall layout plan and see where I need to do further work.  Now to get to item #439 on the list...

A little background on the prototype: The Hudson Bay Railway (HBR), owned by Omnitrax, took over Canadian National’s lines to Flin Flon (Flin Flon Subdivision), Lynn Lake, Thompson and Churchill Manitoba in 1997. These lines were built to access northern Manitoba’s mineral wealth and forest products. The Flin Flon Subdivision was completed in 1928, the line to the Port of Churchill in 1929, Lynn Lake in 1953 and Thompson in 1958. Another line to Snow Lake was built in 1960 and abandoned in the late 1980’s. Major traffic generators for the northern Manitoba lines include outbound concentrates and ingots from Flin Flon, Lynn Lake and Thompson, predominantly Copper, Zinc and Nickel. As well, inbound concentrates, mill and smelter supplies for the smelters and concentrators at these mining centers is shipped by rail; raw logs and chemicals going to, and finished wood and paper products coming from the Tolko lumber mill and pulp mill, frack sand from Channing, grain loads going to and grain...