The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

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...

Between 1933 and 1943 Canadian National Railways ordered 1750 48'6" steel mill gondolas from Eastern Car Company (ECC) in Trenton Nova Scotia.  These cars were found thoughout the CN system well into the 1980's, with some staying on in work service well into the 1990's.  Since I model a smelter I need a seemingly endless number of gondolas, so I needed a few of this type on my roster.  Fortunately for CN modellers this particular car is readily available from Westerfield Models (http://westerfieldmodels.com/46722.html).  Again we modellers owe Stafford Swain a debt of gratitude for both building the masters for this model as well as for convincing Westerfield to issue kits #7101 (no stakes) and #7111 (with stakes).   Over the years I have acquired a number of these kits and it was always on my "to do" list as they are particularly well researched thanks to Stafford Swain (various CN Lines and other publications) and Ian Cranstone (CN Lines Vol 8 No 3)....

I built a pair of CN 66' gondolas < here > and decided I needed a load for them.  I shot one of these gondolas with a load of poles in 1992 (in the photo above) that I thought would be a fairly easy to build load.  The first thing I needed to sort out was how to make the poles.   I thought about using skewers but they are too small in diameter to be reasonable.  While tooling around in a dollar store I stumbled across a package of wood dowels that scaled out to 12" diameter, roughly appropriate for HO scale.  I picked up a few packages of the dowels and had my starting point.   I also needed to come up with how to mount the poles so they would be removable.  A small piece of thin plywood forms the load base.  I trimmed the I drilled a series of holes in the plywood to insert some round toothpicks to represent the vertical side posts used to hold the poles in place.   I needed to figure out how to represent the bark that w...

CN 157188 eastbound through Roblin Manitoba in 1993.  Marc Simpson Photo CN 157064 in it's almost finished form.  This is a car that is going to need a repaint soon. CN 156053 is a less weathered car that was recently shopped. CN ordered 700 65'6" IL gondolas from Hawker Siddeley and NSC between 1966 and 1972.  These cars were used in general service with some receiving a removable roof.  These were often seen in steel service, scrap metal and hauling hydro poles among many things.   These have been on my build list for many years.  Originally I planned to scratchbuild these cars but Kaslo Shops ( https://www.kasloshops.com/ ) has made this task much easier by releasing a 3D printed version of both the HST and NSC cars.  Each type has a number of differences that only become obvious when you look at the cars in detail.   The kit comes with a mix of etched parts and 3D printed parts.  Everything is nicely rendered.   The ki...