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”

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

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!