Operating on the WC Kimberley Sub

While in Winnipeg for my training with CN, it seemed only fitting that I visit a few local layouts if  time allowed.  Bill Brillinger extended an invitation to me to join himself and a few other locals in operating on Bob Menzies' home layout.  I delightfully accepted this offer, and Bill kindly offered to pick me up at the Best Western on the day of.

Saturday, April 22, 2017 was the day that worked best for everyone involved, and Bill picked me up at the hotel relatively early to allow us a good chunk of time to operate.

We arrived at Bob's around mid-morning and in short order I found myself in Bob's basement which isn't all that big, however Bob has wisely used all permissible space for his layout.  Currently Bob has a "plywood pacific" of sorts, but fully operational.

The day unfolded with three of us running trains, Bob overseeing everything, including giving guidance with regards to switching out various industries, and finally Ian Lisakowski performing duties as Neenah Yardmaster.  My train wasn't quite put together in Neenah Yard, so I snapped a quick photo of what would be my power for the day, as the trio rolled off the shop track.

SOO 415 (RS27), GBW 319 (C424), AC 1501 (GP7)

It wasn't long after I had taken a few photos that Ian had my train made up and all ready to go.  Bob runs a double shelf style layout, with the yard on top tucked away just behind the stairway, and a slow  descending grade to the bottom level.  I can't exactly recall, but my train was somewhere in the range of 35-45 cars long and with a couple short blasts on the horn, train FLO 97 began the descent down to switch out the various industries at International Papers and Thilmany Packaging.

The photo below shows the peninsula along with the short spur off to the right where a couple more customers are located, which I had to pull and spot cars at each customer.  It was quite the challenge, but having no one else in my way due to my location, I managed to get the work done as efficiently as an amateur operator can do ;)

Pickups for FLO 97 at International Paper.

At some point in the early afternoon Bob and his wife, Margaret offered me a Vernor's Ginger Ale, a specialty from Michigan if Im not mistaken.  I personally do not care much for pop anymore, but this stuff was incredible.  Needless to say, at the end of the day I had happily polished off a total of 4 cans.  I made sure to not take long breaks from switching and only sporadic sips though, as work had to be done!

Throughout the day, Bob came around snipping trip pins on MANY couplers, and even did some changing out of awful wheel sets and replaced them with beautiful IMRC wheel sets.  This helped improve the operations success by a huge margin.

My only real flaw was getting hung up on a couple of switches in and around the peninsula industries while operating FLO 97.  A few of the switches had Bob's specialty kitty litter ballast caught up in the points which resulted in multiple derailments, but with a little bit of patience all was well.  Just as I was drawing to a close on switching International Paper, a supper call was made by Margaret.

The weary crew, busy from working on various jobs all day, hurried excitedly upstairs to find a most impressive roast beef dinner awaiting us.  Lots of laughs and stories alike shared around the table with a beautiful banana cream pie to devour for dessert.  To say we as a crew were spoiled is an understatement.

With supper behind us, there were a few more hours left to operate before we would shut everything down for the evening.  I wasn't too long finishing up my work on FLO 97 and had the train back up in Neenah Yard.  Ian explained that he had a FLO 93 train built up also for the lower deck of the layout, and I coupled onto that and was off.

Pickups for FLO 93 at IMCO Pulp & M&I Drilling.

Very soon after, it all became very congested as Bill had FLO 91 and Ricoh had FLO 95 all working down in the same vicinity.  However, it provided real life scenarios with congestion in very close proximity with a lot of work to be done.

Sometime after supper, Margaret reappeared downstairs with a tray full of fresh chocolate chip cookies.  Of course this warranted a need to have another ginger ale with a few cookies!

FLO 93 preparing to head downgrade.

Needless to say, I got as much done as I could, and the night was drawing to a close all too quick.  I figured it would be better to get half of the work done and return to the yard, as opposed to getting 3/4 or so of the work done and leaving the power and all the cars down at the industries.

I will end this post with a shot of my train just moments after leaving the yard with train FLO 93, before I headed downgrade.

A huge thanks goes out to Bill for inviting me, and also to Bob and Margaret for being such welcoming hosts and providing a fun day of operating with some incredible food!

Last but not least a couple photos graciously supplied by Bill of some of us operating throughout the day, and an operating selfie! :)

Myself, Bob, and Ian (Pictured left to right): Bill Brillinger Photo 

Bill & Ricoh (Pictured left to right): Bill Brillinger  Photo

- Caleb

Three Months Later, an Update!

It has been over three months since my last blogpost...wow.

Life has been busy, and in case you (my readers), didn't know, I am now an employee for CN Rail, as of the end of March.

Between a new career, training in Winnipeg for a total of seven weeks, and moving from Lunenburg to the Halifax area, it has all been fairly hectic.  However, I still find time here and there to do what I enjoy as a model railroader.  So here's whats been happening or hasn't been happening in the model department :-)

The UMG module will be taking a break for a little while as wiring and soldering the module itself is the next stage.  My plans is to use that module as a diorama of sorts to take photos of my models on as they are completed, and also to use at local model railroad shows as time off allows me to attend.

I have purchased a few pieces of rolling stock and also an older SD40 Athearn blue box locomotive, which should be arriving in the mail any day now!

My personal modules will wait until my wife and I move into a house sometime in the future where I can plan something more permanent for my layout.  I have had multiple modellers suggest that I focus on weathering and detailing rolling stock and motive power until I have the space for a layout, and I have decided to do just that.

Back in late February, I spent an evening with local modeller Ryan Handrahan and with his careful guiding, I was able to successfully weather my first piece of rolling stock, a CNA Railbox boxcar.  I have included a photo below to show the lightly weathered results.  In fact this week, I will be back at Ryan's for a second take on weathering with pan pastels and oil paints!

First boxcar, weathered.

Well there you have it, the next post will be a brief synopsis of two operating sessions I was apart of during my stay in Winnipeg.  As always, thank you for taking the time to view my blog, and I hope to have lots more material for you all in the near future!

- Caleb

A Visit to Andrew Castle's Home Layout

On Monday, January 10, 2017, after many failed attempts, I finally was able to spend a few hours at Andrew Castle's house to take in his excellent models on his layout that is developing quite nicely!

Believe it or not, I did not take many photos, but rather took some notes the old school way with a paper and notepad!  For those of you that don't know, Andrew is an excellent modeller, and has just a couple locomotives on his roster that are factory painted.  The first photo that you can see below is of two excellent custom paint jobs featuring CN 4762, (GP38-2W) & CN 9410, (GP40-2W).

Custom painted CN 4762 in HO Scale.

Custom painted CN 9410 in HO Scale.

Andrew models a few different prototypical scenes, including Onslow to Brookfield, NS on the CN Bedford & Springhill Subdivisions, along with the Truro A-Yard and a portion of the CBNS Hopewell Subdivision.  Although not much scenery is done, the models that Andrew has taken the time to build, reconfigure, strip paint off of, repaint, etc look extremely sharp!  The scene below hosts covered hoppers that in time will be a recreation of CIL Fertilizer, more commonly known as Truro Agromart today, located in Onslow, NS.

Covered hoppers on the CIL Fertilizer spur.

Although the Truro-Yard does not usually host much if any road power, this yard currently hosts a smorgasbord of power, as these are currently "dead", waiting decoder replacements.  Andrew is in the process of changing over the decoders in his locomotives from Tsunami to LokSound.

CN Truro A-Yard, with locomotives awaiting new decoders.

CN 3541 sits next to the former yard office in Truro, NS.

The pride and joy of Andrew's Layout is his scene depicting Sproule Lumber located in Valley, NS, and served by the CBNS Railroad.  The entire scene below is either scratchbuilt or kit bashed pieces.  I was very impressed to see this in person, as there is just the right amount of detail to make this scene come to life!

Sproule Lumber located in Valley, NS.

Although we didn't run any trains, I was perfectly content to soak in all of the information that I could learn about priming and painting models with various methods.  Of course, being able to look at this layout as a whole was much appreciated too!  Thanks again to Andrew Castle for having me over and letting me see his work up close and personal, and again for being such a wealth of knowledge to me!  I cannot wait to return and hopefully operate on this well-built layout someday.

- Caleb

Taking Inventory

Happy new year!  Hope everyone had a good Christmas, or whichever holiday you celebrate.  After no posts in the past month and a bit, I'm back!  Life has been busy with preparations for Christmas and the holiday season, and I have decided that I will begin the new year with a post of a spreadsheet, showing what I own by way of rolling stock and motive power.

If you're into stats, then this post is most definitely for you!  You may notice that my reporting marks are in alphabetical order so I can find my cars and locomotives easily...and I'm a tad OCD, CDO, (the OCD way of spelling OCD ;)) One thing I noticed as I was taking inventory of my entire fleet is that I have way less rolling stock than I thought...I guess that means that I can buy more? :)  The following charts are sorted by Rolling Stock, (above) and Motive Power, (below).

I won't say anymore, and let the inventory do the rest of the talking, enjoy!

Reporting Marks:	Road Number:	Type:	Manufacturer:
B&O	480000	Boxcar	Unknown
BN	625571	Centre Beam	Walthers
C&O	3178	Wide Vision Caboose	Athearn BB
CCBX	400151	23, 500 Gallon Tanker	Atlas
CGTX	22320	Tanker	Unknown
CN	322660	Coal Hopper	Unknown
CN	377275	Cylindrical Covered Hopper	Intermountain
CN	377324	Cylindrical Covered Hopper	Intermountain
CN	370018	56’ Center-Flow Hopper	Bachmann
CN	78934	30’ Wood Caboose	Walthers
CN	873603	Woodchip Hopper	Walthers
CN	873640	Woodchip Hopper w/ Load	Walthers
CNA	553756	Combination Door Box	Athearn RTR
CNWX	109487	55’ ACF Center-Flow Hopper	Athearn BB
CP	330939	52’ Mill Gondola w/ Load	Athearn RTR
CPWX	604301	Cylindrical Covered Hopper	Bachmann
CPWX	606691	Cylindrical Covered Hopper	Intermountain
DTTX	56000	48’ Well	Athearn
DTTX	56147	48' Well	Athearn
DTTX	56174	48’ Well	Athearn
DTTX	655299	53’ Well Car	Walthers
GATX	71731	19 000 Gallon Tanker	Intermountain
GN	171021	Cylindrical Covered Hopper	Atlas
IC	533046	Gunderson 50’ Hi-Cube Box	Walthers
ICG	700706	Thrall 89’ Tri-Level Autorack	Walthers
MEC	6627	40’ Box	Athearn BB
MILW	92115	52’ Mill Gondola	Athearn RTR
MLLX	97277	64’  Pellet Covered Hopper	Walthers
MOBX	14277	23 500 Gallon Tanker	Atlas
NAPA	8008	40' Box	Model Power
NIRX	16523	Mechanical Reefer	Golden Spike
NS	456724	Gunderson 50’ Hi-Cube Box	Walthers
RAIX	6489	23 000 Gallon Tanker	Walthers
RG	1500	36’ Wide Vision Caboose	Bachmann
SP	226379	Double Door Box	Unknown
T&NO	41531	Gondola	Unknown
USLX	3015	Double Door Box	Atlas
USLX	50241	56' Thrall All-Door Box	Walthers
UTLX	125036	13 000 Gallon Acid Tanker	Athearn RTR
WC	24071	50’ Box	Athearn
WC	38000	Logging Rack	Walthers
WH	9011	Cylindrical Covered Hopper	Intermountain
Undecorated	Undecorated	40’ Gondola	Unknown
Undecorated	Undecorated	40' Gondola	Unknown
Undecorated	Undecorated	48’ Mill Gondola	Unknown
Undecorated	Undecorated	Extended Woodchip	Unknown
Undecorated	Undecorated	Ore	Tichy
Undecorated	Undecorated	Flat w/Rail	Unknown

Reporting Marks:	Road Number:	Type:	Manufacturer:
CN	D-250	RDC	Proto 1000
CN	2514	C44-9W	Athearn BB
CN	5610	SD70i	Athearn Genesis
CN	7707	SW1500	Athearn BB
CN	9719	GP60M	Athearn RTR
NS	6775	SD60M	Proto 2000
SF	307	F-9	Bachmann
Undecorated	Undecorated	SD40	Athearn
Undecorated	Undecorated	GP9	MRC
UP	6344	SD60M	Proto 2000
VIA	6444	F40PH	Walthers

- Caleb