The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

A well weathered CN 1929 boxcar in Winnipeg, on its way to the Winnipeg Railway Museum circa 1995; if only I had the foresight to measure the brake gear when I had the chance... I have wrapped up a long dormant boxcar project.  While digging through my stash of freight cars I found a Kaslo Shops Distributing Canadian National 40 foot 1929 single sheath boxcar in a box, assembled (not sure if it was me or something I bought at a train show)  but unpainted.  I decided to remedy that situation.   Side view of the brake rigging - I need to find a museum with one of these cars to measure and photograph! Before I got too far I had to address an issue with the brake rigging. On the prototype there was a clevis, crank, chain and anchor set up that I have never seen done in model form. I finally came across a few prototype slides in my collection with clear enough views of this arrangement to make an attempt at representing it. An Intermountain part along with some scrat...

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...

One of the thngs on my "to do" list has been to build some CN prototype snow plows.  CN had a wide range of snowplows, many unique to the railway and others from common designs used elsewhere.  Walthers brought out a Russell snow plow years ago that was good for some of the plows CN operated.  However the majority of plows were built by ECC, CC&F and in house by CN and were quite unique.   CN 55392 as it currently sits.  It was a late 1990's kitbash that has sat for years because I just wasn't quite happy with it.  I may just bite the bullet and finish it now.   I started kitbashing an ECC/CC&F plow years ago from a Walthers Jordan plow kit and got it to the point of being ready to paint.  But there were enough differences between it and the prototype to cause me to wonder if there was a better way.   With the recent influx of 3D printed models of unique prototypes the doors have been thrown wide open to model equipment...

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)....