The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

The December 2020 issue of Railroad Model Hobbyist 's Running Extra magazine has an article I wrote about building a VIA Rail (ex CN exx Canadian Northern) Colonist combine.  I built this car from a BGR Group kit (unfortunately now out of production) resin kit.   The article covers the building process and some of the changes I made to accurately model VIA 7189.  Hopefully this will be of some use for other modellers building these kits.  

Canadian National had a long lasting fleet of 40 foot boxcars, some of which lasted until 1996 in grain service.  Modelling northern Manitoba in the early 1980's requires a significant number of 40 footers in both grain and general service.   Over the past several years I have been building out my fleet of these cars using RTR, kitbashed kits and resin kits.  There have also been numerous CN painted models done over the years, with some being relatively accurate while others are stand in models - some call these foobies. First Thing To  Do If you want to accurately model any CN steel boxcar your first stop should be to find a copy of Railroad Model Craftsman's August 1993 issue with Stafford Swain's seminal article "Canadian National's 1937 AAR design 40-foot steel boxcars".  It covers the entire range of 40 foot steel cars from 1937 to the end of 40' car deliveries in 1957.  This is "must read" material.  CN Lines has a number of articles on the...

I have an article in the upcoming CN Lines Magazine ( www.cnrha.ca ) about modelling rebuilt CN F units.  If you are interested in Canadian National or any of its affiliates, joining the CNRHA is well worth your time and effort.   The previous issue covered the history and spotting features of these classic workhorses.  Hopefully people will enjoy this two part series.   

My friend Mark P. took a lot of photos during his time working in northern Manitoba.  They are fertile modelling inspiration, and a couple of shots caught my eye.  A couple of ACFX tank cars were photographed in Churchill at the locomotive fueling area.  They were older style cars that were quite interesting in appearance.  A bit of sleuthing with the scans and Google told me that they were former LPG tank cars that had been converted to general service tank cars.  The high resolution scans showed that the cars had been rebuilt in the early 1970's and were still in use into the mid 1980's in my modelling area.  I had to model them.   All the bits I need to do a converted LPG to general service tank car - Atlas 11K gallon tank car, Yarmouth Model Works etched platform and spare Walthers tank car parts. Both Atlas and Kadee make this style of LPG car in HO, so I picked up a couple of them to do the conversion.  One has a top platform and railin...