Tag Archives: OCS

True Line Trains CC&F Snowplow Announcement – Including AC

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tltplowannounce

This past Friday, True Line Trains made an announcement for their next rolling stock model: a HO scale Canadian Car & Foundry snow plow, based on a common design that was owned by Canadian National, Pacific Great Eastern (later British Columbia Railway), Ontario Northland and Algoma Central. (Apparently they will be doing CP versions with different details next.) A fall 2014 release is currently projected.

Some of the features of the model include DCC controlled operating lights and wing blades, and even sound (air horn, and I’m guessing air noises for the pneumatically operated moveable equipment on the plow). While fascinating to have all of these operating features, I wonder how many people actually model a winter layout and would actually make much use of these, and as I’m modeling a summer period it seems a little excessive for something that will sit on a side track in Hawk Junction yard and essentially be little more than a scenic item (non-DCC/sound versions are not listed as going to be available). But I guess this is still better than trying to track down some long out of production brass model of a CN plow to custom paint. And even with the fancy electronically controlled operating features that probably won’t get used much other to test them out and say “Hey, that’s pretty neat!” this is still probably cheaper than the alternative.

The product list includes Algoma Central: plow AC 10105 and two paint versions are listed: a black scheme, and a red scheme. The black scheme would be the “true” AC colours; the ACR’s two plows, AC 10104* and 10105, were painted black into the 1990s when the ACR was acquired by Wisconsin Central in 1995. Sometime shortly after the WC purchase, the two plows were both repainted into the WC’s maroon and gold colours; this would be the “red” scheme mentioned and pictured (at bottom left) on the TLT ad copy.

(* Note the body details of AC 10104 are slightly different than the 10105, so the 10105 is the only one that this model is truly accurate for.)

Here’s a prototype photo of AC 10105 in the Algoma Central’s black paint for reference:

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Note that the prow above the curved plow blade has at some point been modified with a sheet metal extension. This type of modification is extremely common on these plows to help deflect rocks and debris back downwards.

Here’s a later shot of the 10105 repainted into WC maroon and gold:

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(Both photos above courtesy of Blair Smith.)

And finally here’s the AC 10105 at Steelton Yard in summer 2013, still in service and waiting for the heavy snows of winter. (My photo.)

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Another ex-ONT 40′ Boxcar for Work Service: AC 10352

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Here’s another jade green Ontario Northland boxcar that I have in my shop as a companion to the handful of 2900 series boxcars rostered by the ACR for LCL or company service duties. This one will be modeled as work storage car AC 10352. The 10xxx series range on the Algoma Central was reserved for cars specifically assigned to work and maintenance service. This car was likely in service as a tool or materials storage car for work train service.

On this car the original markings were covered over with a large grey-green paint patch. Apart from the more extensive paint patching, this car also features new placard holders on the doors and ends and ventilators on the centreline of the roof.

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The car body all masked off for painting the paint patches.

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To paint the patches, I rather unscientifically mixed “Grimy Black” into some “NYC Jade Green” until I had a grey-green colour I liked, and then sprayed it on using my airbrush.

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After the paint had dried, I peeled off the tape and remounted the car’s floor/underframe in the body. I think the colour of the patches came out quite nicely.

I also touched up the roofwalk supports and the spots on the ends where the tops of the ladders and the original brake hardware locations on this car and the AC 2906 from the other day with a little bit of NYC Jade Green straight out of the bottle, which is a perfect match to the jade green on the TrueLine Trains model for touching up.

Now it’s just a matter of re-working the ladders and brake hardware into their lowered position for these two cars, plus a few more ONT brown cars that will receive similar treatments into either 2900 or 10000 series cars.

I’ll also need to find some detail parts for the ventilators on the roof of this car.

AC 2902-2915 series ex-ONT boxcars from TrueLine Trains’ 40′ NSC boxcar – Part 1

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In the late 1970s to early 1980s the Algoma Central acquired some secondhand equipment from northern Ontario’s other regional railroad, the Ontario Northland Railway. This consisted of about 30 open hoppers acquired in 1978 for general service (basically meaning sinter from Wawa) and a number of old 40′ boxcars. Quite a number of former Ontario Northland boxcars ended up with 10000 series work service numbers as tool and storage cars, and a small handful received standard fleet numbered in the 2902-2914 series. These cars were used for the railways own local on-line freight service, hauling company supplies and materials, express and less than carload traffic to various remote places along the line, for which the railroad was the only way to bring in any sort of supplies or building materials. The railway used to run a weekly wayfreight for this service. I consider it highly unlikely that these cars ever left AC rails.

These boxcars were originally built in 1947-48 for the Ontario Northland by National Steel Car in Hamilton, ON. A few years ago, True Line Trains made modeling these cars easier by producing a ready-to-run model of this car, which was exclusively rostered (as original purchasers) by Canadian National and Ontario Northland.

These cars did receive a few modifications though, so a little bit of work to the model is required.

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Here’s AC 2915 at the Steelton shops in 2004. The car’s running boards have been removed (a common modification as roof running boards on boxcars were banned from interchange service on all railways in the 1970s) and interestingly, the brake wheel on the end of the car has also been relocated to a lower mounting.

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The first step obviously is to remove the running board (roof walk) from the car. It’s best to shear the mounting pins as you do this, or once removed, cut off the mounting pins and glue them back into the body mounting holes to plug them up. On the left side of the picture above, you can see how the mounting pins are located in the middle of several of the running board supports molded into the roof. While good for hiding the mounting pins when the running boards are installed, it’s a little visible when the running boards are removed. So I used a needle file to file the rounded housing around the mounting pin off into a flat running board support like all the others on the car.

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The next step is to similarly (and *carefully*) remove the ladders and end hardware details from the car, since the ladders will need to be cut down in height, and the brake wheel mounting reinstalled at the lower height. I cut the ladders off after the 5th rung from the bottom, following reference photographs.

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While I had everything removed, I didn’t like how far away from the side of the car the tack boards were mounted, so I trimmed the back off the tack board so that when I glue it back on using CA glue, the tack board is much more snug to the end of the car.

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While most of the cars in this series were in the Ontario Northland’s early brown paint scheme (like the 2915 at the top of this post), this particular car will be given the road number AC 2906, which was in the Ontario Northland’s jade green colours. I have several more of the True Line Trains cars in both jade and brown, so more of the brown cars will join this one.

The patching out of the former Ontario Northland name and logo was clearly done with a paint roller on the prototype cars, so I took out some mineral brown paint and hand painted the patchwork with a small brush.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far; the next step will be to remount the ladders and brake hardware, renumber the car with stencil decals and weather it. All in all, a pretty straightforward job however, made easy by TrueLine’s ready-to-run Ontario Northland models.

Notes on an old Slide Collection IV: Wreck at Canyon

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Here’s an interesting sequence of images taken by a photographer riding in the cab of the trailing unit of northbound freight train No. 9 from Steelton Yard (Sault Ste. Marie) to Hawk Junction. As the train arrives at the north end of Canyon siding we see several cars of a work train parked in the siding and house track at Canyon. The siding has a string of gondolas and flatcars which be loaded with ties, track parts and other maintenance materiel. The farthest gondolas may be crane support cars. In the house track is a string of crew accomodation cars.

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The reason for the railway service cars becomes quite clear as we encounter the mangled remains of several wrecked hopper cars. A recent wreck at the north switch of the Canyon siding has spilled several cars and their contents of sintered iron ore down the embankment and into the Agawa River alongside the tracks.

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We can see that crews are quite busy cutting up many of the damaged cars for scrap on the spot. There’s not much left of this hopper car, and look at that pile of acetylene bottles:

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Several cues have already led me to date the slides in this collection to a trip made sometime during the winter of 1980-81. Ted Ellis also has a pair of photos of a similar wreck at the north end of Canyon siding on his website:

http://algomacentral.railfan.net/images/AlgoCenRy/AC_Canyon_wrk-1_3-9-1981.jpg

http://algomacentral.railfan.net/images/AlgoCenRy/AC_Canyon_wrk-2_3-9-1981.jpg

These photos are dated March 9, 1981. I think it’s pretty safe to say we are looking at the results of the same wreck, with the slides in my collection having been taken several days to a couple of weeks after Ted’s photos, which appear to show the beginnings of the wreck cleanup to re-open the line. Aside from providing an interesting angle of a few wrecked cars, these wreck shots pretty conclusively date this set of slides to March of 1981.

And to tie things off, here’s a neat sequence of images of a southbound work train carrying the ruined remains of those wrecked cars on their last trip by rail, on April 1, 1981:

http://algomacentral.railfan.net/images/AlgoCenRy/AC_166T_Sault-4-1-1981.jpg

http://algomacentral.railfan.net/images/AlgoCenRy/AC_166T-2_Sault-4-1-1981.jpg

http://algomacentral.railfan.net/images/AlgoCenRy/AC_166T-3_Sault-4-1-1981.jpg

ACR Survivors

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On my trip to Sault Ste Marie to ride the Tour of the Line, I got to see and photograph a few examples of surviving original AC equipment.

At the yard at Steelton was a string of 5 AC gondolas loaded with track panel sections for emergency track repair and replacement work.

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A similar set of 5 gondolas was also on hand at Hawk Junction. Note that the closest car in this string is an older 48′ gondola!

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These AC gons are extremely rare now. The only remaining examples are in maintenance service like these, having long been removed from any sort of revenue service. These could even be among the last 10 survivors (of the 52′ gons), although there could be a few more still in similar service on former WC lines.

Also at Steelton yard is one of the former AC steel cabooses (acquired secondhand by the AC from Canadian Pacific around 1990-91) and one of the AC’s two original steel snowplows (although the plow has several years before been repainted into WC maroon and gold colours). These were screened by the gondolas and other junk and equipment from where the passenger train boards, but fortunately I got shots from the other side using my 200mm zoom lens on my July trip:

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I also saw a few AC marked pulpwood flatcars on both trips, although it’s hard to call these original survivors, since the grey AC 238100 series pulpwood cars were rebuilt from former CP cars in 1998, well after the Wisconsin Central takeover.

Also, though it was located much farther back in the shops area and wasn’t accessible for photographs, heavyweight business car “Agawa” is still hanging around the former AC property. I have no information on the disposition of former AC business car “Michipicoten”.

Finally, I’m not sure whether you can consider this a “survivor”, but this old ex-Ontario Northland work boxcar was sitting in the weeds alongside a maintenance spur near the Oba lake “floating” trestles:

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Not bad for 18 1/2 years after the end of the Algoma Central as an independent railway. (The WC sale was official on Feb 1, 1995.)