Category Archives: Rolling Stock

AC Woodchip Car Progress and Doors

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Over the could of weeks I’ve been continuing to make some progress on my scratchbuilt Algoma Central woodchip gondolas. I’ve completed some more sides so that I have enough for three cars currently and I’ve also been getting some work done on the door ends of the cars.

These took some careful laying out, but other than that have been going together fairly well. Like the other parts of the car so far, this mainly consists of a .020″ sheet forming the backing of the main door with .040″ square styrene strip for the vertical ribs on the door. The corner posts are .060″ square and the top beam is .080″. These parts of the frame are glued to the edges of the .020″ door sheet, not using the surface backing.

The trickiest part actually turned out to be cutting the angles on the bottom sheet representing the reinforced end sill on theses cars (since the majority of the end isn’t structural, but a top-hinged door that can open up like a dump truck). I had to throw out a few attempts that weren’t quite symmetrical.

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The hinge detail was also a little tricky to manipulate due to the extreme small size of the pieces, but otherwise the design is pretty straightforward.

The vertical parts of the hinges attached to the door are .010x.040″ strip while the hinge mounts were carefully cut out of bits of .010x.080″ strip.

There’s still some additional detail to add (ladders, grab irons, latches and a storage box attached to the door for mesh nets used to contain loads and prevent chips from blowing away in transit), but otherwise I have all the major pieces now to complete three bodies except for the next major project: the underframe/floor.

Freight Car Friday #35 – HCRY Pulpwood Flatcars

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For this next series in Freight Car Friday, we’re going to head over to the Huron Central side of Sault Ste. Marie.

Huron Central has a small 30 car fleet of their own pulpwood cars, all 52′ (nominal) inside length cars with side stakes in several variations, from various former Canadian National and Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific (a CN subsidiary) lineages. These cars are in captive service between the Huron Central yard in Sault Ste. Marie, where they are loaded, and the pulp mill in Espanola, ON, so these would never or rarely leave HCRY rails. However, this captive nature of the fleet makes for an interesting treat for the avid freight car enthusiast when visiting the area, and if one were interested in modelling the Huron Central, these would be an important key to representing the correct equipment and traffic.

Here’s a few of HCRY’s hodge-podge of ex-CN flatcars, shot in two separate visits in summer 2013 and 2014.

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HCRY 70002, ex-CN 604651, ex-DWC 606350-606849 or 607900-608999 series?

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HCRY 70005, ex-CN 613051

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HCRY 70007, ex-DWC 605103

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HCRY 70008, ex-DWC 606386

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HCRY 70013, ex-DWC 606716

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HCRY 70014, ex-DWC 606743

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HCRY 70016, ex-DWC 608549

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HCRY 70019, ex-DWC 608887

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HCRY 70027, ex-CN 604068, ex-CN 608000-608349 series

CP Woodchip Cars Painted and Lettered

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Last week I finished painting and decaling my pair of CP woodchip boxcars which are now numbers CP 31181 and 31202. On Saturday I was able to deliver them to the club layout, where they will enter service for now with some other modified cars.

The two cars were sprayed Pollyscale freight car brown and lettered primarily with CDS dry transfer sets, with some additional details (including Plate C markings, ACI labels, re-weigh dates, end reporting marks and numbers and some additional small data) from various Microscale and Black Cat sets.

Once the decaling was completed, I gave the cars a quick coat of Dullcote to seal the lettering and then a general spray of “grunge” using a thinned mixture of various weathered blacks.

That’s one project off the workbench that’s been there for a while!

Freight Car Friday #34 – Iron Ore Hoppers (HLMX)

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Rounding out our look at hopper cars in the Tilden iron ore pellet service over the last two weeks, is this look at the current cars in use in this service.

In 2004, the bulk of the cars in this service were leased hoppers from GATX. In my 2013-14 visits, the primary fleet was composed of cars leased from Helm Financial (HLMX), or subsidiary Helm-Pacific (HPJX).

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The most common cars in the train by far were these plain looking HPJX cars.

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The next most prominent car by numbers were these former Chicago & Northwestern hoppers now marked with Helm’s primary HLMX reporting marks. Apart from some graffiti on some of the cars, the original paint is in pretty good shape and you can see the Trinity Industries builder’s logo above the middle hopper bay.

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There was also a small handful of these interesting little twin bay hoppers, which really stood out from the rest of the train due to both their striking orange colour and comparatively small size compared to the large three bay cars. I photographed at least five of these in this one train.

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While the train was primarily leased cars from Helm, rounding out the mix were a few odd CN family cars including a pair of Bessemer & Lake Erie cars like this one, and at least one SSAM hopper as featured in last week’s posting.

All photos in this post taken July 12, 2013 in Sault Ste. Marie, ON.

Freight Car Friday #33 – Iron Ore Hoppers (WC/SSAM)

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This posting is a bit of an add-on to last week’s Freight Car Friday.

Mixed in with the leased GATX hoppers featured last week were a number of Wisconsin Central hoppers and even a pair of ex-Ontario Northland AC 8600 series hoppers. This post highlights the various WC series seen. Multiple examples of each series depicted below were seen and photographed, but only one representative will be shown here.

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This first car was quite obviously a former Burlington Northern car, built by Bethlehem Steel. From series WC 33000-33199.

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This next car represents a series of cars built by Pullman-Standard for Kansas City Power & Light (KCLX). The SSAM reporting marks it now bears are for WC subsidiary Sault Ste. Marie Bridge Co. Series SSAM 33250-33374. At least one of this series was also seen and photographed in my summer 2013 visit.

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This second variation of SSAM hopper appears to be a Greenville built car, of unknown origin. (Possibly also ex-KCLX?) Series SSAM 33700-33919.

All three photos August 18, 2004 in Sault Ste. Marie.