Category Archives: Freight Cars

Starting the Woodchip Gondola Fleet

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With the layout operating well, I’ve started to focus on getting the freight car fleet up to snuff. BC Rail had a large fleet of open top woodchip gondolas, many built by the Squamish Shops under the Railwest Manufacturing banner.

Over the years I’ve aquired a few of the Kaslo Shops resin kits for the cars, and I have a bunch more on order whenever they are produced again, The kit went together surprisingly well, with a few extra details like coupler cut levers, grab irons and ExactRail trucks added to the basic kit.

The kit assembled and ready for primer and paint. (those Kadee trucks are incorrect, but I was using them as “shop trucks”

Ready for paint

 

And now painted and weathered, ready for service on the layout:

BCOL 904446 Complete

I still have to build a load for the car, looking at prototype photos the chips were loaded higher then the interior cross pieces, so the load I build will have to be notched to clear them. I think I’ll build a removable load using some foam insulation board cut to shape and covered with sawdust.

There’s still a long way to go to get a representative fleet of chip cars running on my layout, thankfully the Kaslo kit is quite well designed and fun to build!

 

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TOFC Trailer Project

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One of the things I’ve found about building a layout of a specific prototype is you learn a great deal about subjects that may have had little to no interest to you before. On the prototype railway, goods were moved north packed in trailers mounted on flat cars, or TOFC. Before I started my layout, I knew nothing of the different types of trailers that were found on the BCR in the 1980’s, and although I’m still learning, I’ve found there ere quite the variety. I’m not going to get into the different types and sub classes, since I still know very little about them, rather I thought I would write about one trailer I recently completed.

One of the commodities to travel north on BC Rail was the life giving fluid that is beer. For reasons unknown (to me) Labatts shipped beer north in very sharp looking blue trailers with the company logo on the sides.

Here’s a shot taken by Richard Yaremko in August of 1985 that shows one of these trailers:
Prototype AUGUST 1985 RICHARD YAREMKO

No question what was hauled in that trailer!

Through some good fortune and the help of a couple of friends I managed to find a Briggs Models kit of this trailer. Cast in resin with some styrene pieces (ie the roof) it turned out to be a rather nicely designed kit

Kit mostly built before primer and paint:

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I left the wheels off for ease of painting and weathering of the under frame, the seperate hubs and tires make it nice to paint the pieces before assembly

Tires after paint:
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Body after painting with Polly Scale C&O Blue and lettered using the (very nice) decals that came in the kit:

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Now painted, weathered and assembled sitting on a TOFC flat that was kitbashed by Andy Barber:

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I added an A Line fuel tank and built the wire hanger contraption (spare tire mount?) to the kit before paint. I’ve always wanted one of these trailers to run on my layout and am happy how it turned out.