Category Archives: CP Flatcars

Freight Car Friday #74 – CP 305560 Model

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This unique Canadian Pacific skeleton flat is a new model I just finished* this week.

*(Assembly, paint and decals; still needs clear coat and weathering.)

The model is a Custom Finishing kit, which is made up of a series of soft metal (pewter) casting. After cleaning up all the parts with a fine file, and drilling holes for grab irons and truck and coupler box mounting screws, the model was assembled per the kit instructions using two part epoxy to glue the major parts together. As there’s barely a dozen pieces, it’s actually a very easy and straightforward build. I also drilled through the joint at each end between the main spine of the car and the end platforms and pinned it with a short piece of wire to reinforce the joint, so that the main structural pieces aren’t only held together by the epoxy. One extra addition I made was to apply 1×10 plates for the KarTrack ACI barcode labels on the right-most stake on each side, and I also drilled holes in the end sills to mount Kadee #438 air hoses.

With the assembly completed, the model was airbrushed black and lettered with decals from Black Cat Publishing specifically for this car. ACI labels came from a MicroScale set, and a couple of missing elements (“Plate C” marking and NSC builder’s logo) were added from a Highball CP Rail flatcar set.

The prototype for this car is one of 50 cars built in September 1968 by National Steel Car as CP 305560-305609. (Another 300 identical cars were built for Pacific Great Eastern in two batches in 1966 and 1968.) The cars were designed for use transporting full length logs and poles.

I’ve heard some mention of shipments of telephone poles to the Sault Public Utilities Commission; I’m not sure where such shipments would be unloaded, but all that is needed is a team track with a driveway beside it. Whether such movements actually happened with any regularity, the “rule of cool” applies here a little as well, and that’s what the waybill for this car will show when it runs on my eventual layout.

Just need to make a (removable) pole load for this car now…

CP 301389

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Here’s another car I finished lettering this week.

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CP 301389 is another former Proto2000 53′ flatcar kit that I got in a second-hand deal a while back. This one I elected to just paint up and use as a standard flatcar.

The car was primed and painted with TrueLine Trains’s CP Action Red. Lettering is (mostly) from a Highball Graphics CP flatcar set, with some details such as the U-1 wheel inspection dot and alternate shop code/date from Microscale and Black Cat sets.

The car just needs some overall weathering and the deck will be beaten up and painted/weathered to look like the car has seen some service.

CP 305513 Lettering Completed

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Over the last week I’ve been managing to get a little bit of work done each evening on this car, and over the weekend, I got it painted, and after a few more evenings of work, the lettering on this car is basically completed. The car was lettered with a set from Highball Graphics for CP flatcars, with end reporting marks taken from another set, as they were unfortunately omitted (since regular flatcars would not have them, but the set is intended to be used for bulkheads as well, and any of those would have had them…)

The car number and logo in the prototype photo of the 305513 are actually a little smaller than on most CP Rail flatcars, so comparing the model to the photo the lettering is a little large, but short of having a custom set created for this car, this was close enough.

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I only had photos of one side of the real car, but following standard CP Rail practice for flatcars the number and logo are located in different places on each side of the car.

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All it needs now is a little weathering to give it a nice in-service look to finish it off.

CP 305513 Bulkhead Flatcar Kitbash

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This week I had a chance to spend some time bringing an older project back onto the work bench – a kitbash of a somewhat lesser-known obscure Canadian Pacific bulkhead flatcar design.

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This example was photographed by fellow WRMRC member Jurgen Kleylein in work train service in or near Sudbury in the late 1990s. It’s actually an interesting example of a prototype kitbash, as it is one of a 60-car series rebuilt with bulkhead ends from standard flatcars. Naturally given such a unique look, I had to plan to do one myself.

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I started with an old Life-Like Proto2000 53′ flatcar kit, for which I made a new deck from Evergreen scribed sheet, and scratch-built the bulkheads from styrene sheet and strip. The main body construction was actually done some time ago, but the car has been sitting in storage since then waiting for further detailing. So this week I decided to pull this out and complete that job, adding ladders, grab irons and brake hardware.

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This close-up of the end shows most of the major details. The brake hardware is from a Tichy brake details set, and the ladders are also Tichy.

Note the side ladders are mounted with small bits of styrene strip to raise them away from the sides of the wrap-around bulked, as the ladder has pass over the angled edge of the bulkhead. Likewise, as the brake hardware has to be mounted over the ribs on the ends, the brake housing and platform supports are also attached to pieces of styrene strip for mounting.

Lastly, with the final details installed over the last few days, this evening I cleaned and prepared the car for painting, and fired up the airbrush to give it an initial coat of light grey undercoat/primer.

Next up, some CP Action Red.