The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

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...

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the mid 1960's through to the mid 1990's with some cars operating into the mid 2000's. Most of these cars have since been replaced by mechanical reefer containers.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 ...

I have been on a bit of a Canadian Pacific bent as of late.  I have been working on a number of Kaslo Shops kits for the CP Hawker Siddeley 50 foot boxcar fleet; specifically 2 door rod and 4 door rod newsprint cars both with and without roofwalks, 50 foot autopart boxcars with and without roofwalks, and a Hawker Siddeley 50 foot mechanical reefer. These cars were enjoyable to build, although my first attempt at painting the multimark on the green newsprint car was unsuccessful due to poor interactions between  the Tamiya white paint and TruColor CP green.  Note to self: don't mix these paints on a model, it won't end well. For most of the cars I used either Tamiya TS-33 dull red spray cans (these are becoming a rare commodity in Canada these days) for the CP boxcar red, based on a recommendation from Coquihalla Man .  For the action red and action green I used TruColor CP action red and action green with good results.  The silver mechanical refrigerator was pai...

This past weekend the annual Vancouver Train Exposition (VTEX) was held at the PNE Forum in Vancouver.  I attended and had an enjoyable time catching up with people, browsing the sales tables and visiting the various layouts and displays around the show.   Talking with my friend Al (who happens to also be the chair of the Canadian National Railways Historical Association  cnrha.ca  ) he mentioned he had some CN ore cars from the late Ron Keith collection - my friend Rene has a nice post about Ron < here >. I only met Ron a few times but his scratchbuilding work was outstanding. Al pulled a couple of the ore cars from a case and showed me.  They were scratchbuilt models of CN drop bottom gondolas used in ore service.  As usual for Ron's models they were very nicely rendered representatives of the cars, complete with interior details and full underframe brake gear.  Al said he didn't have a use for them and asked if I might have a spot for the...

The Pacific Great Eastern (PGE) was the name of the railway that ran from North Vancouver to northern British Columbia.  It was renamed the British Columbia Railway in 1972.  The PGE/BCR primarily focused on forest products throughout it's network.  To serve the numerous lumber and paper mills they amassed a sizable fleet of boxcars, flatcars and bulkhead flatcars (as well as numerous centerbeam flatcars as the BCR) and woodchip cars. In 1966 the PGE ordered 100 50' newspirnt cars from Hawker Siddeley for service on their system.  The cars had plug doors that gave a smooth interior to lessen damage to the newsprint rolls they hauled.  The cars were delivered with roofwalks and high mounted brakewheels.  In the 1970's many of these cars were rebuilt without roofwalks and repainted into the BCOL scheme in both light and dark green paint.   Kaslo Shops  recently released both the as delivered and rebuilt versions of these cars as kits.  I w...

I regularly operate and dispatch the CP Boundary Subdivision owned by my friend Scott.  It is a large layout that is a blast to operate.  On occasion I would give Scott a hard time about all the shiny new freight cars and locomotives on the layout.  It was suggested that I help fix that issue, which I agreed to.  This latest batch included a mix of CP, CN, MILW, WP and Southern Mountain (freelance roadname).   Most of these (except CN and CP) don't show up on my own layout so this was an interesting diversion for me. The layout is set in the pre-CP script era, so circa 1961-63.  These cars were fun to do, using the build dates as a guide to how grungy and weathered the cars should be. Most of the cars were built between 1945-57, so there is quite a range of dates.  I'm pleased with how they turned out.  Only about 400 or so cars to go... 

BC Hydro served a significant number of wood product producers in the Lower Mainland of BC (the area from Vancouver to Hope BC for those who are not familiar with the area's geography) between Vancouver and Chilliwack.  In the late 1970's and early 1980's BCH leased or purchased a large number of Thrall and Evans All Door Boxcars to serve these businesses.  These cars were designed to allow easy access for loading and unloading while protecting the higher value products in the car from the elements.  This was the era prior to center beam flatcars and plastic wrapped lumber and plywood.   The All Door Boxcars served the lumber and plywood industries into the 1990's (and even a bit longer in some areas) until they were replaced by center beam flatcars and plastic wrap.  The maintenance costs of these cars (door maintenance, etc.) was another reason they were retired.   I have been interested in these cars for quite some time and thought it would be ...

I recently completed a 6 car set of the newly released Kaslo Shops Distributing Marine Industries 51'6" IL bulkhead flatcars in several variations.  They are nice kits and go together well.  You can do as much or as little underframe detailing as you want.  I did the full underframe detailing on a few and just installed basic underframe details on the others.    The etched ladders and other bits are very nice and are close to scale size.  The cars go together quickly and the parts have good fit.  The center post cars are a bit tricky to get the posts vertical in all directions, I would recommend using a glue that has a longer working time than CA so you can get everything lined up.   The cars are quite light and finding space to add weight will be challenging.  There is space in the centersill for adding weight, and you could also add some weight behind the side sills.  These cars may need to  have permanent loads to get them ...

CN rostered a gigantic fleet of steel 40' boxcars with over 42,000 cars of the 1937 AAR design, both 10' and 10'6" interior height (IH).  These cars made up over 2% of the North American boxcar fleet at their peak.  To say these cars were ubiquitous is something of an understatement as they could be seen pretty much everywhere.   The 8 foot door version of these cars numbered 5000 cars or over 10% of the CN fleet.  However these cars are not commonly seen on layouts as there are not many RTR versions available.  Trains Canada produced a version with NSC3 ends and a PS1 style roof, however some of the features like the car body rivets are terribly out of scale.  Yarmouth Model Works has a nicely done version of this same car style. What is not currently available is the 8' door car with improved dreadnaught ends (IDE) and a diagonal panel roof.  There were 1900 of these cars so they were relatively common.  I decided I needed to represent thes...