The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

The latest addition to my woodchip car fleet is CN 880659 that has extended sides from Kaslo Shops Distributing .  CN seemed to randomly choose cars from this series and add extensions to increase their capacity.  As well some of the extensions were painted CN Red #12 like the main carbody while others were painted black.  All the cars had black interiors.  Photos are your guide here. The car was a fairly quick build with the underframe piping being the most involved.  I chose a car number (880659) that had black extensions as this adds some variety to the fleet.  Masking the posts was a bit of a chore and touch ups were needed afterwards for small runs. Overall a nice car and the last one I'll be doing for a while.  Time to move on to boxcars...

The CN noodle was designed to go over a flat surface.  When you are decalling your freight cars the decal will fit flat sided cars perfectly.  However on a rib sided car, the proportions of the noodle will be off if you just apply the whole decal over the car side.  This video shows my technique for applying the decals to keep the noodle proportions correct.  I hope this is helpful for those who "roll their own" freight cars.  

The final (for now) woodchip hopper of the trio I built and painted for Kaslo Shops Distributing is this Algoma Central 1400 series woodchip hopper.  Algoma Central had a fleet of 90 woodchip gondolas for international service in the ACIS 1401-1490 series.  The cars were shipping wood chips to a mill in the US, hence the ACIS series.   These cars didn't seem to get photographed often as there are only limited photos on line and none in my slide collection.  Based on the available photos I assembled the car, which was fairly straight forward.  The bigger challenge was figuring out what the paint colour was.   After some lengthy discussions with Chris Vanderheide he suggested a paint mix of Vallejo paints to roughly replicate the blue green colour seen in the limited number of photos available.  I used the equivalent colours in the Vallejo Air paint line as I had those on hand.  The mix is 2 parts 71.095, 1 part 71.317 and 1 part 71.050....

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...

  I've taken on building more Kaslo Shops Distributing woodchip gondola cars.  This pair is for the kit box art.  I'm quite happy with how this pair turned out.   The CN car was painted with True Line Trains CN Red #12, the interior got painted black as most CN cars seemed to have applied.  I used a set of Kaslo CN woodchip car decals to decal the car.  Matt finish was the final step. The BCOL car got TruColor BCR light green and red oxide on the interior.  A set of Black Cat BCR decals finished the car along with some matt finish.   These cars will eventually get some light weathering but for now will be factory fresh.  Next up is an Algoma Central ACIS woodchip car.  Plenty more to keep me busy.