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...

CN used "Line Car Control" books to help crews with serving the many customers throughout their system.  These are great tools for those of us looking to replicate the prototypical operations on our layouts.  Previously I had received a Line Car Control book from 1986 which was a great help in sorting out customers, tracks use, etc.   Recently the CNRHA received a sizable donation of documents from the estate of a former CN employee.  I have been sorting through these documents and have begun to scan them for future use on the CNRHA website.   One very interesting part of the documents is an undated Line Car Control book for The Pas Servocentre.  it appears to be a late 1960's/early 1970's era book based on a few things, most notably that the kraft mill and log yard are either proposed or under construction.  Based on some research of the checkered history ( Churchill Forest Industries Scandal  and The Pas mill history  are interes...

One of the thngs on my "to do" list has been to build some CN prototype snow plows.  CN had a wide range of snowplows, many unique to the railway and others from common designs used elsewhere.  Walthers brought out a Russell snow plow years ago that was good for some of the plows CN operated.  However the majority of plows were built by ECC, CC&F and in house by CN and were quite unique.   CN 55392 as it currently sits.  It was a late 1990's kitbash that has sat for years because I just wasn't quite happy with it.  I may just bite the bullet and finish it now.   I started kitbashing an ECC/CC&F plow years ago from a Walthers Jordan plow kit and got it to the point of being ready to paint.  But there were enough differences between it and the prototype to cause me to wonder if there was a better way.   With the recent influx of 3D printed models of unique prototypes the doors have been thrown wide open to model equipment...

I'll toot my own horn a bit here.  I have an article on building and weathering a CP 4 hatch tank hopper car from a Sylvan Scale Models resin kit.  I'm happy with the article and how the car turned out.  These cars were a common sight throughout Canada and the US into the mid 2000's.  Sylvan's kit has filled a gaping hole in our freight car rosters for both the CN and CP versions of these cars.  

As part of the Railway Modellers Meet of BC I presented a clinic entitled "Weathering Covered Hoppers" which covers some of the techniques I use to model various types of covered hoppers. When I converted it from a PowerPoint to a Google Slides presentation some of the formatting became a bit wonky but hopefully it is somewhat presentable.  I hope you find it useful and enjoyable, hopefully there is something useful for you here.   Link to clinic presentation: Weathering Covered Hoppers

I posted on my other blog about a derailment that happened while I was working in Flin Flon.  I was fortunate to be there during the clean up and got quite a few photos of the action.  Lots of modelling potential.  The post is here:  https://ageologistchasingtrains.blogspot.com/2023/05/flin-flon-derailment-on-hudson-bay.html When the long awaited rebuilt M420 arrives from Rapido Trains I will be custom painting HBR 3548, the lone M420 painted into the Hudson Bay Railway scheme.  

I have had a long term project in the form of a Kaslo Shops GE 70 Tonner kitbash that I started eons ago.  I initially focused on Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting GE 70T #1 as it was the longest lived 70T in the HBMS fleet.  However more research has led me to realize that for my earlier 1981-83 modelling timeframe that either #2 or #3 would be a better prototype to model as it had the carbody filter arrangement that I kitbashed for my modelling timeframe.   I had originally planned to model the late 1990's so #1 after it's rebuild was my plan.  However #1 had a different filter arrangement during the early 1980's.  HBM&S swapped around doors between the various units, so photos are the best guide to use.  So now we're doing #3.   HBM&S operated a total of 9 units, #1 was purchased new while the balance were purchased used in the late 1960's and 1970's.  The fleet lasted until the early 1990's basically intact with only #4 being sc...

Kaslo Shops  has announced 3D printed kits for woodchip cars built by NSC and CN Transcona .  These have not been offered previously and are welcomed by CN modellers.  I was offered the opportunity by Kaslo Shops to build and paint a pair of these kits for the box art of the kits.  While these cars never(?) operated on the Hudson Bay Railway I jumped at the chance to build these new offerings.  I'll come up with some reason to have woodchip cars, maybe servicing my future paper plant.   The kits themselves are completely 3D printed and come with everything except the trucks and couplers.  And they come with custom decals for these cars.  Overall it is a well designed kit that goes together quickly.   I did note some print grain on the car sides.  While not objectionable I elected to sand the sides to lessen the grain.  600 grit sandpaper trimmed to fit the various widths of the panels made quick work of this task.  T...

A friend (Mark W.) sent me a care package a while ago with a mountain of CN negatives and slides along with a bunch of paperwork related to CN.  Amongst these papers were a stack of Canadian Car and Foundry Bulletins for CN passenger cars and CC&F tank cars.  The passenger cars will get scanned and uploaded on the www.cnrha.ca website at some point, but the CC&F tank cars are not strictly CN related.   The drawings are for 6700, 8000 and 10,000 gallon tank cars built for Imperial Oil in 1929 and 1930 with IOX reporting marks.  These are pretty interesting documents with detailed elevation plans, detailed descriptions of the various parts of the cars as well as prototype photos.   Not only are they very useful for those wanting to model IOX tank cars, they are interesting historical documents.  If anyone is interested in getting higher resolution versions of these plans contact me via the blog.