Page 29 - January February 2017

Left: Like many retired coaches, boxcars withdrawn from front-line duties sometimes don’t die either. Many can live on for decades in MoW service, like this fifty-footer, a Proto 2000 kit and incidentally the first SP model I ever purchased, in San Mateo CA in 2000. Since the applied lettering dates from 1955, I don’t use it on my 1954-era trains at home. The roofwalk initially precluded me from running it at the club, where we have a broad, “post-mid- seventies” rule. (As an extreme, imagine a thirties- era livestock car running next to a modern 80’ LPG car, followed by a 1950s roofwalk-ice reefer coupled to a flat car loaded with an Abrams M1, being pulled by an Eire Triplex and no caboose. The operations we enjoy are reasonably realistic, and thus, so is the stock.) However (hurrah!), because these MoW boxcars were never used in normal interchange service and only ever run on “home rails”, they were exempt from the law banning boxcar roofwalks that emerged in the 1970s. SPMW boxcars like these typically had the original road numbers crudely hand-paintbrushed over.
Left: Trailer. Not for sale or rent, and still being used, many years after it was deposited at Quisling, as a useful storage facility for the railroad.
period, can be given a new lease of life in MoW service. However, all of the cars illustrated in the pictures have real-life equivalents, and research is essential if you want to avoid bloopers. I confess too, that I find the research as enjoyable as operating the actual cars once all the work has been done.
Modelling a selection of accurate MoW stock can be undertaken reasonably easily and cheaply, and the work needed can be minimal. As is seen, the MoW boxcars illustrated only required a rough “patching-out” of the original car numbers and new numbers and reporting marks added. A further attraction is that models you’ve discarded, due to being “out-of-era” and not accurate your modelling
How I got into North American Modelling Nathan Morley
Railways are in my blood! At age four I stayed for several days with my Grandma in St Albans. Evidently I was not homesick because I knew that every day she would take me to see a steam hauled express train on the Midland Main Line.
Following the family moving to Toronto, in 1957 I received my first train set, a used American Flyer set with a steam locomotive. For my thirteenth birthday I asked for an HO train set, and received a Santa Fe (rubber band drive!) F7 diesel and three streamlined coaches. In time this grew to include a Santa Fe switcher, a CN diesel (in the 'Noodle' scheme) and a small assortment of freight cars. Still no layout but during vacations I set up the expanding system on two large tables arranged in an 'L' shape, in the basement of my parents' house.
Then in 1973, during a summer spent working in the UK, I bought a couple of engines (a Wrenn 2-6-4 tank engine and a Hornby LMS 2P) two or three carriages and some wagons. After finishing university I quickly added many more locomotives and stock, as well as buildings, people, cars etc. This eventually led to the planning and construction of a medium sized layout based on Derbyshire and Surrey in 1937 (see my article, using my second name of James, in the August 1991 issue of 'Railway Modeller).
Upon returning to the UK in 1988 I started building an N Gauge layout featuring Sturminster Newton on the Somerset and Dorset
line. A fascinating subject but one which held my interest for about 15 years before the project ground to a halt. In the meantime my interest in North American models had been rekindled, and I started collecting various N Scale models (including CN, GTW, Santa Fe, EL, D&H and NYC). I am currently building a layout featuring Aurora (a town where I lived for 10 years, near Toronto) and Troy (an industrial city on the Hudson River near Albany). I love doing railway research using books, websites, maps and plans, and I am fortunate to have some of my own slides of the station and trains at Aurora, taken between 1979 and 1987.
The final chapter of the story is a second sortie into HO, with a potential Freemo module currently being planned. The module is based on the CNR stations of King and Aurora, King being the next station south on the line to Toronto.
One of my great interests is travelling by train, with the most recent journey being a wonderful trip through the Rockies last September. I travelled on The Canadian between Vancouver and Jasper, a route which I took many years ago in 1972, on CN's Super Continental. The latter was followed about a week later by an equally memorable trip on CP's The Canadian from Calgary to West Toronto, the charming 1911 station clandestinely and unceremoniously demolished by CP in 1982.
But that's another story!
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