While visiting family in Spring, TX, I saw these hazmat training cars in the wye.  They are used to train first responders on tank cars and tank car safety, and familiarize them with the various access hatches and connections on tank cars.  While these are very rare cars, they do move around a lot and can be seen in locations that have a lot of hazmat passing through. About 5 years ago I was in Essington, PA (south of Philadelphia) and saw the NS versions of these cars.

I am modeling CN in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan but live in the lower peninsula.
Every once in a while I do some virtual railfanning of the CN's lines up north using Google's satellite view. On the most recent 'trip' I noticed a whole bunch of what looked like two bay open hoppers in Gladstone yard. The satellite view is almost straight down so no details are visible. Street view didn't help either.

Can any Yooper help this 'Troll' out with some detailed information? I'm interested in type of car, road name, number series and commodities transported.

Thanks in advance.

I've been reading a lot about solvent vs. water based paints.  I personally haven't used solvent based paints in many years - partly because water based is safer and easier to use.  However, I have a couple of brass locomotives that I want to paint and I get the feeling that solvent based paints are still favored for brass.

With the advancements of water based paints, what, if at all, are folks using to paint their brass models?  Do water based paints match the durability of solvent based on brass?

Something a little different. Maybe some discussion.

Lightweight helix with easy to handle and cut materials. The backstory is that I actually built one of these for a proposed traveling display layout a couple of years ago. This was after our Spruce Coal & Timber On30 layout had made the rounds from 2013-2017

I had seen only 1 traveling layout that had a working helix and that was the famous N Scale Clinchfield back in the day. I'm sure there had to have been others, but my thought at the time was weight saving. 

Joey