The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

For the past few years I have been on the organizing committee of the Railway Modellers Meet of BC .  We have worked hard to make this one of the best model railway events that we can.  Over the past 7 years we have continued to work on improving the meet.  We are all proud of what we have been able to achieve over the past years and are looking forward to many more years of presenting the best model railroading has to offer.   We had to scramble to put together an online meet when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.  In a very short timeframe we learned how to put on a Zoom event which went pretty well considering we were basically making it up as we went along.  We continued with the Zoom clinics in 2021, and for 2022 we are going with a hybrid on line and in person meet.  The clinic presentations will be on line while there will be in person events on May 27th to 29th.     It has a lot going on:  Operating Sessions on private...

After my freight car weathering blitz had to take a break due to cold weather (can't spray Tamiya TS-80 indoors due to complaints from management about the smell) I have moved over to preparing ties for the rebuilt Flin Flon yard throat project I started a while back.  I have built a number of switches using Fast Tracks jigs, MicroEngineering Code 70 rail and PC board ties.   Building switches is actually more enjoyable than I expected and will be much less expensive than buying RTR switches.  I decided that staining the ties ahead of time would give better results, especially after doing some reading and watching some YouTube videos.  I painted the switches (rail and PC board ties) with a mix of rust, dirt and black paint.  This is a nice starting colour for rail and the PC board ties.  I have also used spray paint (Rustoleum flat camouflage brown) for this but given the cold weather I hand painted instead.   Ties stewing in their juices Tie...

I have enough #6 switches built to relay the Flin Flon yard throat.  I was never happy with my original setup, mostly due to the need to have a siding for the station now that I have backdated to the early 1980's.  There was still a mixed train operating between Flin Flon and Snow Lake in the early 1980's so I needed somewhere for it to come and go from.  However the original track arrangement made it difficult to have a station.  I decided to relay the yard throat to remove a couple of #4 switches, as well as add a siding for the station.  I think the new arrangement looks better and will likely operate better as well.  I'll have to operate the yard for a while to see if anything else needs adjustment.   Generally the yard will be switched from the other end except for the bulk fuel dealer, propane dealer, smelter fuel tanks, station, freight shed and team track (actually that is a fair bit of stuff now that I write it...), and this is the end of...

I've managed to acquire most of the items I need to build my own switches.  One hang up was that I had a bunch of stuff shipped to a friend's PO Box in Blaine Washington (just over the border from us) to save on postage as there is a significant difference between shipping in the US versus to Canada.   Unfortunately the border was closed to cross border traffic due to the pandemic just after the items arrived in the PO Box.  My friend finally decided to have everything shipped by a broker so after almost a year (!?) I finally got the track building supplies.  Funny thing is with the brokerage fees I ended up paying roughly what it would have cost to ship directly to Canada!  Ah well, such goes life.   After watching the Fast Tracks instructional guide  on Youtube (an 11 part series in 12 parts) I got underway.  I managed to follow the instructions and have built two #6 switches so far.  Both seem to be of decent quality so I'll...