One a work trip a couple of years ago I built this Tichy 40 foot flatcar during the evenings in my hotel room.  CN rostered a siginficant fleet of these cars that were inherited from Canadian Northern, built in the 1912-1918 timeframe.  I got the car painted CN red and set it aside until I could locate some appropriate decals and prototype photos.

I have a number of photos of these cars in work service, with some of the later cars lasting into the 1990's in work service.  Per Ian Cranstone (Thanks Ian!) : "Originally built by Canadian Car & Foundry in 2/1912 for the Canadian Northern as CN 41491 (series CN 40601-40699 – remember that Canadian Northern was the original owner of the CN reporting mark), renumbered to CN 652955 during the 1920s (series to CN 652510-653059), to CN 54030 in 12/1973 and removed from the roster in 1/1986."

Black Cat Decals ( http://www.blackcatdecals.com) came to the rescue with a decal set for the early CN flatcars, and I have since located a number of prototype slides, photos and images online as well.  

I selected CN 54030 as my prototype and made quick work of the lettering.  You can just make out the "Canadian National" text on the side sill, almost completely worn away by the time the photo was taken.  I used Microscale ACI labels on a piece of scale 1 x 10 Evergreen styrene strip painted black and glued to the sidesill.  I'll need to weather the deck and add some stakes and boards for the miscellaneous junk this car will carry.  A nice quick one evening project.

Marc Simpson