BC RAIL Wood Chip gondola Project 

Recently I embarked on making some BCR chip cars. BCR built these cars in the late 60's and 70's for lumber mills to ship their wood chips to pulp &paper mills. They were built by BCR and many are still in service today with CN operating the line now. My cars aren't prototypical but they will do. I took some walthers wood chips and painted them in green. I plan on making a few. I will make some with the BC RAIL logo on it and some with just the reporting marks. 

More work on Nelson Creek

I recently have done more work on the creek and the area around it. I put down more plaster cloth and then put plaster over it. I then used woodland scenic's ground colour to give the ground some colour before I put down the ground foam and shrubs. I also picked up some tree's that were on discount at my local hobby store.

Upcoming Macmillan Bloedel  Alberni Pulp and paper division SW900u switcher project

Well I have come up with another interesting project. Macmillan Bloedel was a very large producer of forest products in British Columbia. Their operations were on Vancouver island and the Sunshine coast. They produced both lumber and pulp and paper. They were doing fine until the late 1990's when they were bought out by Weyerhaeuser and sold of piece by piece. They had switchers at all of their mills in the BC coast. The one that I really came to like was the one at port alberni. It is not used at port alberni any more thanks to Rail America pissing of the new owner Catalyst and Catalyst switched to truck. The switcher was a former southern pacific unit acquired by Macmillan Bloedel in the late 80's to replace their old GE 40 tonner locomotive. The switcher would take the cars that CP (later Rail America) brought in and switched them around the mill and placed the outgoing loads for CP. For this project I plan to use a athearn blue box SW9. I will paint it and modify it and paint in and decal it.

                                      

                                                                                                             
                                 

BC RAIL "Slug" Project

Recently I have embarked on making one of the famous BC RAIL slugs. Slugs are booster units made from old locomotives. BC RAIL took old alco RS-3's and removed the motor and fuel tank and modified the body. They kept the traction motors. The "slugs" had special electrical connections with their partner locomotive. The slug received electricity from the partner locomotive and that electricity went to the traction motors. You can think of slugs as booster units. I built my slug from a athearn blue box GE U30C. It is about as long as an RS3 and uses the same trucks to. I removed the motor and gears. I then cut the top part of of the shell. I still have to remove the fuel tank. I will have to construct a new body.

BCSME September 2012