The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

Canadian National Railways had a massive railway network that had extensive passenger service well into the 1970's.  When steam locomotives were being replaced by diesels, unlike many other railways CN elected to use separate steam generator units (SGU) for secondary and branchline trains.  This was to allow freight units to be used on these trains instead of dedicated passenger service units.   Between 1955 and 1957 CN ordered 94 SGU from CC&F (15400-448, 1958), GMD (15450-479, 1959) and NSC (15480-494, 1960), each with a different configuration.  These cars served in CN passenger train service through to the divestment of CN's passenger services into VIA Rail Canada in 1977. These cars continued in VIA service to the end of steam heated passenger cars in 1996 when they were retired.  Over the years a few options for modeling these cars were available including resin and brass, particularly several different versions of the CC&F and NSC (and maybe ...

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...

CN 56611 at Hope, BC, summer 1999 Pre-weathering view of the cars. Thanks to the generosity of a friend I was able to purchase a trio of OMI 30 yard Austin Western side dump cars that were originally part of the late Stafford Swain's collection.  The models were painted by John Morris but not decaled so needed some extra work.   Canadian National had a variety of side dump car types, with the 30 yard design from Austin Western being one of them.  CN ordered roughly 200+/- cars between 1951 and 1957 from Eastern Car Company who built them under license from Austin Western.   The cars are close to the CN 30 yard cars with some differences in the end platforms.  I decided to leave them as they were since I didn't want to mess with John's expert painting.  I didn't notice until I was looking at photos for decal placement so they will pass muster for most people.  Before I started decaling I applied thinned Vallejo gloss varnish to the areas to be...