CP 252250

This one is a simple custom paint of an undecorated Intermountain 40' boxcar with C-D-S dry transfer lettering. Detail decals such as ACI labels, COTS, U-1 dots, etc. and weathering yet to be applied in this shot.

Looks good

Looks great so far! On a

Looks great so far!

On a personal note, thanks for maintaining your Canadian Freight Car Gallery. I've gotten so much enjoyment out of visiting your site over the years.

CFRG

Thanks Ryan, it's been a labour of love for several years now.

CPAA 207259

CPAA 207259 is an Athearn Genesis model of a SIECO 50' boxcar. This car was stripped of the factory paint, repainted and custom lettered following prototype photos with an assortment of Highball Graphics decals. Only weathering remains to be done on this car.

This car was actually offered from Athearn in CPAA paint, but the factory paint job left much to be desired. Below is a factory painted car - compare to the custom painted car above to see just how far off the layout and placement of the lettering was!

Prototype photo of a brand-new car:

http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cpaa207225&o=cprail

CP 40' Woodchip Boxcars

These cars are actually in service on the club layout, which models the CPR in northern Ontario. Converted boxcars were used as woodchip gondolas between several mills in northern Ontario up into at least the 1990s.

CP 31236 is an Intermountain PS-1 converted to chip service by leaving off the roof, adding a sheet lead weight under a false floor, scratchbuilt chip doors and a few pieces of T-section added in to roughly represent some of the original car lines left in place when most of the rest of the roof was torched away.

These cars were rebuilt from older 40' boxcars pulled from across the CP roster of various series and builders. This one was modeled after a specific car that was converted from a car built by Pullman-Standard.

CP 31202 and 31181 are also converted from Intermountain PS-1 kits, but with reinforced and extended sides, following prototype photos of similar conversions. These extended side cars were rebuilt in the late 1960s for service in Atlantic Canada but there is photographic proof that many later migrated into chip service in Northern Ontario as well.

All of these cars were lettered with old C-D-S dry transfer lettering with some additional details added from various other sets.

All three cars are in service on the club layout.

CP 301389

Just a simple custom paint of an older Life-Like Proto2000 52' flatcar kit for CP. 

TrueLine Trains CP "Action Red" paint (now discontinued) and Highball Graphics decals.

Love that flat car. I wish

Love that flat car. I wish someone made an RTR of a prototypical CNR flat car.

Flat

Yeah, it's not 100% exact for CP either. I have Proto2000 and Intermountain flats for CN and CP; they're not 100% accurate, but they're close enough that most people won't notice and it's the only available options.

CP 305513

This car was built from another Proto2000 kit, with a new floor made from scribed styrene and scratchbuilt bulkhead ends.

The car was built following general folio drawings from the CP Historical Association's documents archive and this photo from my friend Jurgen:  http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?o=cprail&i=cp305513_3

In progress car in primer:

End detail:

Painted car, finished with Highball Graphics decals:

wow. Just WOW!

Very nice, Chris.

CP 336702

Several years ago ExactRail offered a model in their "Signature Series" of a Canadian Pacific specific design 65' gondola, matching at least two different series of cars built by Hawker-Siddeley and Marine Industries. Naturally I grabbed a few of these.

The model represents cars built in the early 1970s and 1980s, but similar cars were built in the mid and late 1960s as well by National Steel Car. The NSC cars had a different end design and the cars built in 1965 (before the introduction of the CP Rail branding in late 1968) were originally painted black with the older CP block lettering. (Prototype photo:  http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cp336702&o=cprail)

Naturally I wanted at least one of these variations, so I took one car and gave it a bit of a chop job. The factory lettering was removed and the ends cut away and rebuilt with styrene sheet and strip. The original brake hardware was salvaged, and ladders and step platforms added from Tichy parts.

Lettering is from a Black Cat decal set. The car number had to be applied individually to make up the tight spacing to fit between the ribs. The NSC builders logo and the "Plate C" decal were extracted from the Highball flatcar set.

So that Plate C

designation would be due to car width/length clearances, I'm assuming?  I'm used to these designations for height reasons, but it's a gondola, so it must be wider than classic gondolas by some amount; that, or due to the length, the center of the car is farther from track centerline on curves.

Plate C

Yes, the car is long but standard width, I assume the extra length puts the overhang on curves outside the clearance diagram.

Some older 65' gondolas like this one  http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cp336877&o=cprail are actually much narrower than a standard 52' mill gon in order to stay within clearance maximums.

Excellent work on those cars.

Really liking these cars

Atlas model is correct

CPAA cars

Yep the Atlas cars in the same paint scheme are also accurate and I have a couple of those in my stash. There were various subgroups of cars built by ACF, Berwick, SIECO, and FGE.

CPAA 207000-207124 Pullman-Standard 5032 cuft (25 cars)
CPAA 207125-207174 ACF 5094 cuft (50 cars)
CPAA 207175-207182 Berwick 5277 cuft (8 cars)
CPAA 207183-207322 SIECO 5277 cuft (140 cars)
CPAA 207323-207342 Berwick 5037 cuft (20 cars)
CPAA 207345-207364 ICC 5148 cuft (20 cars)
CPAA 207365-207379 FGE 5277 cuft (15 cars)
CPAA 207380-207391 Berwick 5277 cuft (12 cars)

And some similar cars specifically assigned to auto parts service:
CPAA 42350-42391 Berwick 5227 cuft (42 cars)
CPAA 42450-42499 Berwick 5227 cuft (50 cars)
CPAA 42700-42769 FGE 5121 cuft (70 cars)
(Cubic footage probably reduced due to special features or loading racks considered part of the car.)

Newsprint Boxcars

OK, not really custom like the other cars here...

On a bit of a painting and weathering kick on the weekend and gave a few of these CP newsprint boxcars some grime.

These are older mostly-RTR (ladders and door locking rods were user-applied separate parts) Life-Like Proto1000 boxcars (Walthers now has this tooling, but they re-ran these pine tree cars in the wrong shade of green). Each one previously received a bit of customization in the addition of data patching and restenciling, and varying locations and styles of COTS, ACI and U-1 decals so that no two are identical. Also reflective diamonds were added along the side sill which were missing from the factory paint job.

Light weathering was added, applying a thinned coat of grimy black to grunge up the cars a bit. A light overall coat to apply overall grunge and extra shadowing along the bottom sills, around the door bars and end ladders and some vertical spray on the car ends for wheel spray.

(Not done yet in the photos, weathering the wheels and truck sideframes, which really makes a modern car pop.)

CP 80967

Another old Like-Like Proto1000 newsprint box, representing an early 1970s repaint of a car in the same series as above.

The original factory painted model has a plain flat grey roof which looked a little dull, so I masked and painted it a metallic silver (ModelMaster "Steel") to make it pop a little and better represent the bare galvanized steel roof of the car, and give it some light overspray of "CP Action Green" (Rapido Trains ProtoPaint).

ACI, COTS and U-1 decals and a bit of light weathering complete the job.

CPAA 89958

This car was a factory decorated car from Kadee painted and lettered for Spruce Falls Power and Paper/TLCX.

These prototype cars were built in 1962 and leased by a paper mill in Kapuskasing, ONT from Transport Leasing/Pullman-Standard for a ten year period. In the early 1970s they were returned to lessor and leased to Canadian Pacific in 1973, disappearing from the CP roster in the late 1980s after about an 15 year lease.

Markings were masked and painted over in black following prototype photos and new numbers added using MicroScale stencil decals.

CP 305560

This "skeleton" flatcar (for log and pole service) is a cast metal kit from Custom Finishing. Decals are from Black Cat, with Plate C and NSC builder's logo markings lifted from a Highball CP flatcar set.

Very nice work and unique

Very nice work and unique cars.