Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Railfanning CFQ In 1995 With Gerard Donnelly

Lately, peoples keep sending me pictures from Murray Bay Subdivision. That's probably the greatest thing about blogging: at some point, you make contact with many people you wouldn't have otherwise meet. Sharing a hobby and a common passion makes them particularly aware of what you are looking for.

Today, Stéphane Melançon whom helped me a lot in defining Ciment St-Laurent and Dominion Textile operation patterns sent me a few links. Once again, they are extremely helpful to better develop the layout concept.

The first one was shot by Gerard Donnelly Jr back in 1995 at Villeneuve. For once, the track layout under the silos is clear, but better, there's a train doing switching chores. It appears that as alte as 1995, cement bags were still shipped in boxcars. Those are NSC insulated and heated boxcars. I would guess cement is quite sensitive to humidity and such cars were useful to make sure cement bags were kept dry. Of particular interest is the vegetation growing all over the place. At that time, the plant didn't use coal anymore and we can see the coal unloading siding isn't in use anymore.

The second photo is also from Donnelly's and taken on June 8th, 1995. This is the same cement train we saw in the first photo. The location is D'Estimauville and Domaine Maizerets is in the background. Trees aren't as big as nowadays and the scene feels more open. Remark the amount of vegetation on mainline (the train is on the siding). This shot will be extremely useful for my actual scenery efforts. I must admit I always wanted to model these CFQ SW1200rs. I remember buying two Athearn blue box EMD SW switchers back in 1998. Finally, I painted them as CN units.

The third one, from Donnelly's collection, date back to 1978 and show us a neat RS18 in Limoilou yard. Must I say I'm tempted to paint my pair of kitbashed RS18 in zebra instead of wet noodle... I'm still not sure. Of interest are the numerous colorful american boxcars from the "per diem" era. Murray Bay was crowded uniquely with CN rolling stock and subsidiaries, but Limoilou saw much more variety back them. Marc Carette's collection is quite educative on this subject.

Finally, the fourth one shows a CFQ train in Villeneuve, west from the cement plant (which can be seen in the background). This is where the brick plant was standing. On our layout, this is the area located in the furnace closet and where we enlarged the hole in the wall.

Mr. Donnelly did a great job capturing those pictures. It remembers us 20 years ago, Murray Bay Subdivision was still a healthy railway with a strong industrial base. Nothing remains of that era. Bach then, when CN sold the line, we felt this weren't good. Funny how the historic perspective can change our perception.

I'm quite happy I was direct to this nice collection. It is exactly the information I need to start my scenery work.

No comments:

Post a Comment