The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

April 1st 2026 update: I emailed Gaahleri about the break and they have responded with an offer to send a replacement body.  Good customer service so far! April 4th 2026 update: A replacement body is on its way; nominal cost to get it but worthwhile having it functional once again. April  8th 2026: New airbrush parts received. Top marks to Gaahleri for product support.  Back to painting. 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...

Starting in 1983 CN selected 9 units from their fleet of 1973-74 rebuilt F7Au for conversion into trailing "B" units.  They had their cab equipment, bells and horns stripped, windows and number boards painted over and new fuel tanks added to replace the smaller as delivered tanks. They also got a new paint job.  They were known as blind beetles, Blind B's, beetles and a few other more colourful names in the railfan community.  Railfans also called them F7Aum to represent modified rebuilt F units. You can find out more about the CN rebuilt F unit fleet in CN Lines magazine Vol 20 No 1 and 2 that covered the prototype and modeling of the rebuilds.   I decided I needed one of these units for my fleet and used a Highliners shell and a Stewart (now Bowser) F7A drive for the locomotive.  I used photos as a guide for detailing the model, and I scratchbuilt a fuel tank as well. There are plenty of fiddly bits on the pilot and rear of the car body that took some fig...

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...

CN 235116 in Winnipeg MB  in the early 1990's - it has seen better days Hot on the heels of the Hawker Siddeley 231xxx and 233xxx series mechanical refrigerators, Kaslo Shops brought out the 235000-235299 series reefers.  These were a more common car on CN, with 300 cars delivered in 1966.  Some of these cars were in use until the mid 2000's with most being retired in the 1990's.  Their silver body with blue doors were distinctive, and when they were clean they were nice looking cars.  Unfortunately they didn't seem to stay clean very long. These cars were common on the Hudson Bay Railway, with service to most communities in the north that CN served.  There was at least one car in semi-captive service hauling groceries from the freight house in The Pas to Lynn Lake.  These were also frequent visitors to Churchill, Thompson and Gillam, at least until improved roads to Thompson and Gillam arrived in the mid 1980's.  These cars have long been on my w...

The photo above has something a bit out the ordinary in it: an F-35 fighter jet. Kid #2 asked for a model F-35 on his Christmas list, so "Santa" popped over to Burnaby Hobbies and did some shopping.   Normally Santa buys paint, thinner and other general modelling supplies when he visits this store as it isn't a railway focused hobby shop.  This go around he looked through the very large selection of model kits and came away with an Airfix 1:72 kit with both a Spitfire (which also happens to be the first model I ever built while in hospital getting my adenoids out when I was 6) and an F-35 Lightning II.  Kid #2 was quite happy on Christmas morning when he opened the gift.   These are a nice basic beginner kit that has sufficient detail to be interesting while not being an overly complicated model to assemble.  Kid #2 did a good job of assembly with some help from dad over a couple of days, with only a few fingerprints melted into the plastic from a bit ...

CN operated a sizable fleet of mechanical refrigerator cars from the mid 1960's through to the mid 1990's with some cars operating into the mid 2000's. Most of these cars have since been replaced by mechanical reefer containers.  Hawker Siddeley constructed 75 mechanical refrigerator cars in 1966, initially in the 231100-231174 series.  Later in 1967/68 50 cars were renumbered into the 233000-233049 series.  I am unsure of why this was done, but CN had a major freight car renumbering program in the late 1960s that can make your head spin trying to figure out.   The cars were delivered in the noodle paint scheme with a silver body and blue door to denote the cars use in meat service.  Later on some cars had silver painted doors, likely allowing their use in general refrigerator service.   Kaslo Shops has brought out this car type both with and without roof walks.  I built these two cars for their box art, 231152 for the roof walk version with ...

A well weathered CN 1929 boxcar in Winnipeg, on its way to the Winnipeg Railway Museum circa 1995; if only I had the foresight to measure the brake gear when I had the chance... I have wrapped up a long dormant boxcar project.  While digging through my stash of freight cars I found a Kaslo Shops Distributing Canadian National 40 foot 1929 single sheath boxcar in a box, assembled (not sure if it was me or something I bought at a train show)  but unpainted.  I decided to remedy that situation.   Side view of the brake rigging - I need to find a museum with one of these cars to measure and photograph! Before I got too far I had to address an issue with the brake rigging. On the prototype there was a clevis, crank, chain and anchor set up that I have never seen done in model form. I finally came across a few prototype slides in my collection with clear enough views of this arrangement to make an attempt at representing it. An Intermountain part along with some scrat...