This weekend’s fun beyond dinner and a movie with my wife and the usual kid’s activities included more work on the staging yard.  Last week it was re-gauging the 3 way turnout (see http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/25448 ),  and running passenger and freight trains through the yard throat at ridiculous speeds to see where any problems might be.   My philosophy is that if I can run a 6 car passenger train through trackage at full throttle with no issues, the test is passed. 

I am using code 100 track in my lower staging yard, mostly because it is less expensive than the code 70 I use elsewhere, and I had a lot of track on hand to use.  

I re-laid my yard throat with Shinohara switches after trying some tight radius Peco switches that didn't work well with my long freight and passenger cars.  I sacrificed some staging capacity in order to get better operation, or at least that was the plan. 

I cleaned up my workbench last night when I had a few minutes of time and came across a package of eraser pens I picked up at the tool store a while ago that I forgot about.  One each of steel, brass and nylon.  This morning when I had a few free minutes before heading to work I thought I would try out the nylon pen to see how it did on the lettering on a boxcar.  I bought a pile of these Buffalo boxcars (see http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/17923 ) for a very good price but there are

I've been focused on getting the layout up and running with benchwork, wiring and trackwork taking up most of the available hobby time I have had.  Lately I've hit a bit of a wall with respect to wiring and trackwork, and needed a change of pace.  I found it.

While looking at the photo below I noticed a shed in the lower left corner that looked very similar to an existing kit:

It was a busy weekend in our house between kids activities and sleepovers, regular household duties and having some visitors over.  Between all of that activity I managed to get the DCC booster and transformer moved to their permanent home on a shelf under the layout.  I found an old shelf from a home entertainment center that was not being used for anything to house the electronic gizmos. 

Eric Gagnon (http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.ca/) posted a link on the Canadian railway modelers Facebook page with a link to the Everett Baker slide collection held by the Saskatchewan Historic and Folklore Society (www.shfs.ca ).  It has wonderful 1940's vintage shots of rural Saskatchewan life with a fair amount of railway content of particular interest to modelers such as grain elevators, stockyards, rural town views and quite a number of trains.  

Update:  Fixed the link to the video

A walking tour of the Hudson Bay Railway lower level giving an overview of the various locations on the layout: 

This train doesn't run very quickly but does a good job of holding track in place while the glue dries.  The smelter yard is in (hopefully) it's final form so the track is being glued, wiring to follow.  I'm using Weldbond to hold the track in place, if I need to make any changes or change out a switch (god forbid) it should be a relatively easy process. 

My good friend Tim S. recently came across a few glasses in a Flin Flon thrift shop bearing the logo of my main prototype interest, Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting.  

He picked them up and mailed them out to me to add to my bar.  I have a new favourite scotch glass:

I take the West Coast Express commuter train from my home in the 'burbs to downtown Vancouver on a daily basis.  It offers a chance to catch up on reading, work, sleep but most importantly gives me an opportunity to railfan.  Today we arrived at the downtown station with a bunch of grain cars parked on the adjacent yard track.  One car in particular caught my eye, CN 385722, a PS4750 grain hopper built in November 1978.  It has what looks like 3 sets of reporting marks: The current CNA (Canadian National), prior SR* (unknown); and an earlier KC* (maybe