The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

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...

A friend (Mark W.) sent me a care package a while ago with a mountain of CN negatives and slides along with a bunch of paperwork related to CN.  Amongst these papers were a stack of Canadian Car and Foundry Bulletins for CN passenger cars and CC&F tank cars.  The passenger cars will get scanned and uploaded on the www.cnrha.ca website at some point, but the CC&F tank cars are not strictly CN related.   The drawings are for 6700, 8000 and 10,000 gallon tank cars built for Imperial Oil in 1929 and 1930 with IOX reporting marks.  These are pretty interesting documents with detailed elevation plans, detailed descriptions of the various parts of the cars as well as prototype photos.   Not only are they very useful for those wanting to model IOX tank cars, they are interesting historical documents.  If anyone is interested in getting higher resolution versions of these plans contact me via the blog.    

 Recently my wife and I purchased a light box for photographing my models and her hand made cards ( Cards.by.Amara ).  The light box is big enough to fit an HO 85' passenger car so it will work well for most model photography. The light box comes with several back drops in neutral grey, black, white and tan/beige.  I played around with the different backdrops and a recently weathered CN PSC Caboose.  I must say that I am partial to the black backdrop, with the grey and white 2nd and 3rd.  In this application I think the tan/beige doesn't work well.   The light box is easy to set up and the built in LED lights have variable tone and brightness controls.  I see good potential for this for my model photography. Neutral grey back drop.  It's okay but I may have to brighten the lighting in Photoshop Black backdrop: I really like how the red-orange pops with this back drop White back drop: this will likely need some work in Photoshop to be useable ...

Trackwork, freight cars and a switcher in Proto48 by Greg Amer A few of my cars on display GT 0-4-0 in Proto 87 by Rene' Gourley FW&D boxcar in HO scale by Rob Kirkham Soo Line caboose by Larry Sebelley BC Rail tank car in N scale by Timothy Horton Southern Pacific caboose in TT scale by Xen Valoczy Soo Line passenger car in HO scale by Stephan Wintner The Railway Modellers Meet of BC was held this past weekend (May 27-29, 2022) and it was what I would consider a rousing success.  In addition to the on line clinic lineup and layout tours < here >, we had operating sessions,  in person layout tours, "Meet My Layout", model displays and "Meet the Modeller".  We also had group discussions based on era and prototype and Table Top Clinics.   "Meet My Layout", Table Top Clinics and the group discussions were new additions and overall were well received by attendees and may well feature in future meets.  I presented a table top clinic on weathering ...

I'll do a bit of cross posting here.  I had an article about building a layout for the Quebec Iron and Titanium Railway in eastern Quebec published in the Model Railroad Hobbyist online magazine.  It has both prototype and modelling related stuff so is a bit of a cross over between my modelling and prototype blogs.  You can find the article link on my other blog here:   https://ageologistchasingtrains.blogspot.com/2022/05/quebec-iron-and-titanium-havre-st.html Alternatively you can go straight to the MRH article here:  https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/quebec-iron-titanium-railway-12353820?pid=1332635156 If anyone actually builds a layout based on the QIT I would be very interested to see their results.

For the past few years I have been on the organizing committee of the Railway Modellers Meet of BC .  We have worked hard to make this one of the best model railway events that we can.  Over the past 7 years we have continued to work on improving the meet.  We are all proud of what we have been able to achieve over the past years and are looking forward to many more years of presenting the best model railroading has to offer.   We had to scramble to put together an online meet when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.  In a very short timeframe we learned how to put on a Zoom event which went pretty well considering we were basically making it up as we went along.  We continued with the Zoom clinics in 2021, and for 2022 we are going with a hybrid on line and in person meet.  The clinic presentations will be on line while there will be in person events on May 27th to 29th.     It has a lot going on:  Operating Sessions on private...

 A few years ago I learned that CN used "Line Car Control" to explain the layout of sidings, industries etc. throughout their system.  It was divided into regions and sub regions.  I have been looking for this documentation for the areas north of The Pas Manitoba as that is my modelling focus.  I had been unsuccessful in this search.  Until now. Thanks to a very generous acquaintance I now have the Line Car Control binder for The Pas Manitoba Effective May 1986 and a second one effective December 1986.  As well I received a copy of the October 1973 CN employee timetable as well as some other Hudson Bay Railway related stuff.   A nice surprise was a telegraph pole insulator with HBR initials on it, a remnant of the original line construction from the 1913-1929 timeframe.  I will  have to sort out how to properly display it.      While 1986 is a few years after my modelling timeframe nothing really changed during the early 1...