A few photos

A few photos of the progress to date:

November 17th state of the layout

North Channing yard throat

November 25th state of the layout

First train to the Stittco siding switch and yard limits Flin Flon

I have switched over to cork roadbed instead of the Donnacona board as I am not overly keen on the amount of work required to make the Donnacona look passable.  I'm not sure yet if I'll go back and change the roadbed between Cranberry Portage and Channing. 

I am amazed...

That somebody in BC would chose to model Manitoba. I'm curious why have you chosen this? I also model a Manitoba line.

Why Manitoba?

Several reasons Bill,

1 - I am from Manitoba originally, moved out to the left coast in the mid '90s but I still call it "home"

2 - I have worked in Flin Flon, Lynn Lake and the far northeastern part of the province.  The smelter ties in with my interests in mining operations.   

3 - I have been fascinated for years by the HBM&S and the northern CN lines with the unique operations, ancient equipment and laid back branchline operations; ie. last mixed trains, last 40' boxcars in grain service, smelter had electrics, archbar trucks etc.  All of it lasted into the late 1990's or even into 2000's. 

4 - When Hudson Bay Railway took over and started running M420, M420B and C424 units the deal was sealed.  I am an Alcophile and the M420 is one of my favourites

5 - Several good friends live and work in the North and are my fountains of information on the railway/smelter.  One friend worked for CN in the '80s out of Gillam, another lives in Flin Flon so is constantly pestered by me for information. 

People out here are heavily into the Kettle Valley, Coquihalla, CP Boundary Subdivision and other operations.  There are a lot of excellent layouts of those prototypes that I get the opportunity to operate on.  I wanted to do something more aligned to what I was interested in and that was not a common prototype/theme. 

Yup. Cool.

Very interesting, I'll be following along for sure.

Wow!!

Now, who'da thunk it?  Flin Flon is my home town.  I'll sure be following this build.  I haven't been back there for many years, but it's still home to me.  Life was good there growing up.  Good luck to you with this.

Cheers!

Alcos

M420

Rene, I would be very interested to see your M420.  You have talked about it but I have never seen it in person.  It would be put to good use on the HBR...

M420s

Were you planning to use brass, or Kaslo shells?  I went the latter route for my lone M420R and was happy with it, but I don't envy anyone who has a large fleet to build.  Kaslo makes a nice shell, but it's a bit of work to bring the model up to the level of today's RTR locomotives, in large part because of the wide open areas above and around the trucks and fuel tank that just seem to beg for more detail.  I think the model below took me around 4 months from start to finish, but I'm The World's Slowest Modeler.

With all the recent Canadian locomotive offerings, I'm hoping that Atlas or Bowser eventually offer a nice factory M420/B/R.  

As you can see from the overhead decor in my layout room, I'm a bit of a fan of M420s (or in my case, the "R" variant, IAIS 800-802) as well.  All left the IAIS roster around the time of my era, which is part of why I chose to stop time there.

M420 models and number boards

Nice stuff, A few of the M420R are still running in Saskatchewan, I shot one on the Great Western Railway in Assiniboia SK a few years back.  Another was being used on another shortline there as well. 

Currently I have one Overland M420 operating and a Kaslo M420 and M420B almost ready for the paint shop.  The Kaslos are challenging to build but I have about 5-6 kits that will eventually be part of the fleet.  Unless of course the RTR version comes through, in which case they'll be traded or used as part of the mountain of out of service units around the roundhouse in The Pas.  There are some good examples of the Kaslo kits being built with a custom brass frame complete with underbody details.  I took advantage of an exCN M420 relatively nearby to shoot a ton of detail shots for future reference.  An added bonus was that it was in fact an HBR unit so directly related to my prototype. 

I see a few of the M420R number boards now reside in your layout room.  I have a few of the HBR/CN boards as well, 3516, 3547 and a few others that will eventually be put up in the layout room. 3516 currently greets visitors, along with a Budd plate.