The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

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...

I have added a page for kits and models for sale that I would like to send to a new home.  It will be updated as things are sold and I find new treasures that become surplus to my needs.  You can find the kits for sale page link at the top of the page under the title block.  

This is a Speedwitch kit with K brakes that I purchased from a friend's collection.  These are what maybe the best resin casting of a single sheath boxcar that I have seen.  Individual boards have saw kerf markings, different wood grain and other features that you notice on close inspection.  Absolutely top notch. I pretty much followed the instructions with a few minor variations.  I used Kaslo Shops Distributing 7 rung ladders as they looked better than the plastic kit ladders, although I used the kit end ladders.  The roofwalk was a bit too thick for my liking so I scratchbuilt it using scale 2x8 styrene.  The model has K brakes but I modelled it with a brake wheel conversion in place of the vertical staff brake the car was delivered with.  This was based on a few prototype photos showing this arrangement which is not what you expect in a 1917 era boxcar.   For the base coat I used Tamiya grey surface primer followed by various weathered w...

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....

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...

The latest car to come off the workbench was a re-release of the Kaslo Shops HK-02 combination door boxcar.  It is an early test print so took a bit of sanding work to smooth out the print lines.  Overall the kit went together well and was a quick build.   I painted the car in the early light BCR green (TruColor) and used a combination of Andy W., Kaslo, Microscale and Black Cat decals for the car.  I still need to weather the car but it turned out well.  I'll need a few more for lumber heading north on the Hudson Bay Railway.

I recently finished building a Kaslo Shops Distributing  kit HK-33 - BCRAIL Trenton Works 5277 cu ft 50'6" Combination Door Boxcar.  It's a nice kit and goes together well.  It's a bit too modern for my era but I enjoy building these kits. I did a fair bit of prep work in the form of sanding the side panels to minimize the print grain.  It goes quickly with about 5 to 10 minutes taken per side.  This was an early test print so required a bit more work than the production kits.  The etchings are great and fit perfectly.   I primed the car with Tamiya fine white surface primer and painted it with a combination of Vallejo silver for the roof and Trucolor BC Rail dark green.  The decals were from Kaslo Shops and were straightforward to apply over the glossy Trucolor paint.  I sealed the decals with Tamiya TS-80 flat clear.  Final details were Kadee 158 scale couplers and Atlas 70T roller bearing trucks.  The couplers and wheels got...

I'll toot my own horn a bit here.  I have an article on building and weathering a CP 4 hatch tank hopper car from a Sylvan Scale Models resin kit.  I'm happy with the article and how the car turned out.  These cars were a common sight throughout Canada and the US into the mid 2000's.  Sylvan's kit has filled a gaping hole in our freight car rosters for both the CN and CP versions of these cars.  

The latest addition to my woodchip car fleet is CN 880659 that has extended sides from Kaslo Shops Distributing .  CN seemed to randomly choose cars from this series and add extensions to increase their capacity.  As well some of the extensions were painted CN Red #12 like the main carbody while others were painted black.  All the cars had black interiors.  Photos are your guide here. The car was a fairly quick build with the underframe piping being the most involved.  I chose a car number (880659) that had black extensions as this adds some variety to the fleet.  Masking the posts was a bit of a chore and touch ups were needed afterwards for small runs. Overall a nice car and the last one I'll be doing for a while.  Time to move on to boxcars...