The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

Whoops... someone forgot to say when to stop. North Vancouver BC in the 1970's My most recent projects were a quintet of 10'6" 40' boxcars with 8' doors.  Canadian Pacific and Pacific Great Eastern (later BC Rail) ordered these cars in the late 1950's and early 1960's for newsprint service.  They were among the last 40' boxcars built for Canadian railways before the switch to 50' cars.  CN had 8' door cars as well but they had a different door style. These are newly released Kaslo Shops Distributing cars both with and without roofwalks. Given how many of Kaslo kits I have built these were very fast to build.  Everything went together well, and sanding was really only needed on the ends to clean up the details.  I primed the cars with Mr. Surfacer 1500 which gives a very nice base to start from. The PGE car was painted with TLT PGE Freight Car Red and decalled with Black Cat decals. The Canadian Pacific block and script lettered cars were painted...

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 purchased roughly 740 52'8" combination door boxcars from NSC in 1972/73 to supply cars for lumber service.  These cars supplanted and later replaced the sizable fleet of 40' double door boxcars used in this service.  As the shippers switched to centerbeam flatcars carrying wrapped lumber these cars were put into general service.  As delivered they had a green sliding door to denote lumber service.  Later on as they were repainted the green doors got painted in the standard CN red #12.  Some of the green door cars survived in original paint well into the 2000's.  Most of these cars were retired by 2018 although a few likely survive in OCS service.   For many years the only available car was a flat resin kit from Kaslo Shops Distributing.  It was a nice kit however availability was often limited.  Rapido Trains has announced a RTR version of these cars, and recently Kaslo has re-released their original kit (HK-03) as a 3D printed car....