Repainting Athearn CN 50ft Mechanical Reefers

Canadian railways were relatively late adopters of mechanical reefers. CN placed its first order in 1962 to Pacific Car & Foundry and started to receive them by late 1962 and early 1963. These cars were completely alien to anything CN ever owned, being painted in bright CN Yellow No. 11 and black and in stark contrast with its fleet of brown and gray cars.

A poorly factory painted vintage Athearn reefer

I got the idea to model these cars a few years ago when I acquired Black Cat decals with the goal of repainting a few Athearn 50ft reefers. I knew they were 100% prototypical, but they were also being quite close. I had one of these cars in ATSF scheme with poor pad printing decoration in my stash and a visit at the local hobby shop provided me with another one for a few dollars. The bargain bin is quite often you friend!

A bargain bin find at the LHS

A few details were wrong, including the sides having 7 panels on each side instead of 6 and two rows of rivet. The clunky Athearn roofwalk was more a parody than anything else too. As for the roof, no picture I've found of these cars provided a clue as their exact type. On one picture, they seem to be flat panels but I simply decided to live with that blurry compromise.

Super Clean can't cut through the old Athearn paint

The first step was to remove the lettering by soaking the model in Castrol Super Clean. It worked wonders, but the paint stayed in place. I wasn't that much bother to do a second bath in 99% alcohol but in hindsight, I should have known better.

Removing rivets carefully with a chisel blade

The second step was to remove the second row of rivets with a chisel blade and smooth the surface with fine sandpaper. Unfortunately, the sanding process slightly gouged the paint layer and left a dipping surface parallel to the river rows. This is why I should have removed the paint. It's too soft to sand it.

Grabirons were carved out and the stirrups were also cut flush. Everything was replaced with wire grabirons and A-line stirrups for a finer appearance. The running board was made by splicing together two Tichy running board. By using 3 of them, it was easy to make two... if you wonder what happened to the leftovers, they became grilles and radiators on the Faguy generator!

A car ready for primer

The models got a generous coat of Tamiya grey primer then the nightmare called painting "yellow" started. First, all the prototype pictures I had were poor quality and often suffering shifting colors. I didn'T have CN Yellow No. 11 on hand (well, I did have the paint but wasn't aware of it at that time!) and tried to match it using various oranges and yellows from Vallejo. These colors had a hard time to cover the primer so I painted the car white prior to coating with yellow. Several coats were required and I ended up with a somewhat grainy surface.

Yellow pigments are notorious for their poor coverage

The black parts were painted dark grey and I oversprayed the raised details with a slightly lighter shade of grey. I rarely paint cars using plain black because it hides the details on scale models. And anyway, in real life, black is always dusty and looks greyer. When done, everything got a generous coat of Microscale gloss varnish and decalling started.

Decalling wasn't a walk in the park because the decals were extemely brittle and in poor shape. Even if they looked alright when set in place, they would fissures when Microsol was working its magic. One set of decals was also poorly printed and a notice in the envelope let me know that Black Cat was aware of that and they provided a second sheet with better decals.

Faulty decals with a frosted/fissured surface

Anyway, after of side decalled, I emailed to Al Ferguson from Black Cat Publishing and explained the issue and he sent me two replacement sets for free. Thanks Al for your prompt reply! That's how you gain long term loyalty from your customers!

The second side was decalled with success but I also made sure to not add the reporting mark nor the roadnumber. Indeed, these cars had a complicated renumbering story. When CN received them, they were lettered NIRX because they were in fact leased from North American Car Corporation. Then, CN acquired them and patched them, keeping the NIRX roadnumber. It would take until 1965 for CN to then renumber the cars according to its official renumbering scheme and they became the 231100 to 231174 series. This interesting story means that the cars were patched twice in less than three years. Some got CN noodle logos as reporting marks, others had very dark yellow patches. It was all over the place and brings a lot of interest in this fleet.

Small details such as patches tell a story of their own

To patch the cars, I decided to use Tru-Color Yellow Reefer and add drops of white and black until I got the color right. During this process, not only did I find the Yellow Reefer color was almost spot on for these cars but also that I had a bottle of CN Yellow No. 1. Once again, I should be careful to periodically look through my collection of paint bottle to keep knowledge of what I had. Lesson learned!

Completed cars ready for future weathering

The cars then received their last coat of gloss varnish to seal the decals, followed by a generous coat of AK Interactive Ultra-Matte varnish, which to be honest, works so nicely!

All in all, I'm quite happy with the final results. These cars are now ready for weathering and will be part of the Monk fleet in service to the Maritime. While they aren't prototypical, they look their part and to be fully honest, I will probably try to get one of these wonderful Kaslo Shop newly tooled CN mechanical reefers to complete the fleet.

Relettering a Walthers Proto 10,000 Gallong Tank Car

As I move through my pile of kits and cars to be redetailed or repainted, I sometimes stumble upon fruits that are so low hanging it would be criminal not to harvest them. An easy win is an easy win and for that reason, they should always be taken.

The story started with a set of Black Cat decals for a McColl-Frontenac Oil Company car. I had purchased it because I liked the name of the company, with Frontenac resonating with Quebec City a lot since that man of the 17th century was one of the most famous governor of New France. Frontenac Oil was a business based in Montreal that was merged with McColl & Anderson Oil in 1927. Their fleet of tank cars was in service until the very early 1960s. The company was partially owned by Texaco who became the main shareholder by 1941. In 1959, it became Texaco Canada until it merged with Imperial Esso in the late 1980s and became history.

While reading the instruction sheet, it was clear I would need a 10,000 gallons tank car. A quick search on the internet shown me a prototype picture of a McColl-Frontenac car which looked quite similar to a Walthers Proto one. I always thought the old Life-Like Proto 2000 tank cars were gems and since one in CNW OCS paint scheme was for sale at some Canadian hobby shop where I was doing some purchase, in the cart it ended up.

Factory painted car before modification

As with many relettering project, I knew it would be better to remove the old factory applied lettering and keep the original paint job. It would make it less likely to break details, particularly on such a delicate car. Fortunately, for a rare instance in my modelling life, the trick to cover the lettering a few minutes with towels soaked in Solvaset worked! Using a few cotton buds, I wiped the old lettering away until every little trace was gone. Sometimes, a few drops of Solvaset did the trick to remove the most stubborn remnants. In fact, it worked so well and so fast I was able to reletter the car only a few minutes after since the paint became extremely glossy and perfect for decalling.

The joy of erasing factory lettering with Solvaset

Black Cat indicates that the McColl-Frontenac name should be centered on the car, behind the ladders. However, the only available prototype picture online lifted up from Pinterest show the name on the right side. I felt it looked better and went forward with that. However, later during the decalling process, it occurred to me the Black Cat artwork was of a later version of the scheme while my prototype picture was from an earlier scheme that was used when the cars were built or acquired by McColl-Frontenac. The question raised was if I should redo the car with centered lettering or keep if on the right.

Early paint scheme (credit: unknown, Pinterest)

I have no answer with to that question. A discussion on Facebook with freight car gurus such as Ian Cranstone, Dan Del'Unto and others couldn't provide more prototype photos of McColl-Frontenac cars. The conclusion reached by all of them was that since no evidence was available to contradict my work and that I had, in good faith, followed a known prototype picture, I should keep it as is because it was an educated guess that made a lot of sense.

Completed car sitting on the feed mill siding.

So, after reaching that conclusion, I sprayed a coat of satin varnish over the car to seal the decals and restore the factory finish. I'm starting to really like AK Interactive satin varnish because it has that nice semi-gloss appearance so fitting for a brand new car. Until I weather it it the future, it will join the rest of the 1950s Monk roster.

Monk Subdivision - Building a Lift Bridge

When I designed the Monk Subdivision current staging room, it was clear I need to cross the doorway. In my mind, it would be simply a drop in module with tracks screwed in place. No hinges, no fancy systems... and sure I did build it and it worked until I tried to take out and it stuck because of wood expansion.

The plywood flat rest against a 2 inches shelf

I swore I would not replicate this system and decided to design a lift bridge with two hinges. However, I didn't throw away my previous module and a few basic ideas. First, I liked how the module was sitting flush on the layout due to two birch plywood overhangs. The plywood rest on a small notch were I didn't put fiberboard. This was, even if I use hinges, the module weight isn't resting on them.

In closed position, the hinges only serve for alignment.

On the other side of the doorway, I installed double bead catches as an alignment device but also as a way to lock the panel in position. Sure, it isn't as strong as a bolt, but so far, I've been impressed with the result. It's both strong, easy to adjust and convenient.

Cheap, strong and self-aligning: double bead catches

However, one shouldn't expect a moving device such as a bridge to work perfectly out of the blue and Louis-Marie helped me to adjust it until performance was optimal. A few styrene shim under the hinges, some careful sanding to get a perfect assembly and making sure the catches were on the right place did a lot to improve the finished product.

Pre-drilled PC board ties

As for track, the birch plywood used at both ends is also a way to provide a solid foundation to fix the track. A strip of plywood is also provided at each ends of the layout. The first ties on each side of the gap are Fast Tracks PC board ties nailed in place with their height adjusted as best as I could.

Flextrack was laid continuously over the gap and plastic ties removed where PC board ones were provided. I then soldered the rails on the PC boards to get a strong link. Using flextrack also helped to make sure both the gauge and rail height were a perfect match.

Rails soldered and with their gap

The nice thing with this method is that if the PC board tie tops aren't 100% flush, the solder will fill the gap. Once the rails cooled down, I cut the gaps with a cutting disk and tested if the lift bridge was working as expected... and sure it did! The key, indeed, is to make sure the hinges pivot is higher than the rail head to provide enough space for the bridge to fold over without ripping the track.

In open position, no risk at all.

I certainly won't win an award for this lift bridge and I know that humidity variation will have an impact down the road, but I made sure to provide enough adjustment room here and there to be able to make alterations if ever required.

Lessons learned with this experiment are most likely to be applied to the other lift bridge in the scenic part of the layout. I never liked the cumbersome swing bridge I built a few years ago and will cheerful disassemble it when the time comes!

Repainting a Tortillard du Saint-Laurent Generator Car

Tortillard du Saint-Laurent was a passenger tourist train operating in the mid-1980s with GO Transit bilevel coached and a GP9RM freight locomotive. As expected, this engine couldn't handle all the needs of the coach and an old CN baggage car #8085 was converted as a generator car. This rolling stock equipment was painted in white and green to match the GO Transit coaches and equipped with a Faguy diesel generator.

Old Tortillard postcard

If we can take the sponsors name painted on the car side as indicators, it seems to mean that Ultramar provided the fuel and CN the crew and motive power. The old baggage car was from the old Super Continental lightweight cars that CN had ordered in the 1950s and as such, a Rapido one could provide a good starting point. Indeed, given Rapido already made the GP9RM and the bilevel coaches, it was fitting to repaint a baggage car.

The generator car shot from the side (credit: Pierre Rochette)

In some way, it would be a very straightforward project... just repaint isn't it? Well, first, I had to design the lettering by using the very few good pictures available to figure out the logos. On some poor quality pictures or under glancing sunlight, they disappeared and one could believe they weren't there at all. In the beginning, it really fooled me because I thought no logo were visible in 1984 and they were added in 1985. Most likely, they were always there as later evidence surfaced.

When the decals were done and en route for printing by Bill Brillinger, I started to disassemble the car. This being an early Rapido run, it had some quirks, but I was finally able to get it in parts for ease of painting. The first thing I did was to remove the lettering with Solvaset and a wet fine grit sandpaper. I also used the same trick to smooth the paint lines between the black and white part. If you have painted a car that had some artwork still applied, you know too well that these demarcation lines always show up. So sanding them done was the order of the day because I didn't want to dip the model into the ultrasonic bath and mess things up.

I also reassembled the doors in open position and glued them permanently. The Tortillard always left them open to bring air to the generator and provide a way for fumes to exhaust.

Finding the exact GO Transit green color was a little tricky. Tru-Color Paint do have shades of GO Transit greens, but these are the modern ones and not the early green. An old bottle of a discontinued green made by Citadel was a perfect match, but I ran out of it quickly and it was too thick to give a smooth finish.

I went to the wargaming shop with a Rapido GO Transit coach and started to look at their different green until I found a decent match. It was Vallejo Deep Green 70.970. While testing the color on a piece of styrene, it became clear that color was somewhat too dark. So I started to create custom mixes until I found a decent recipe. It was 5 drop of Deep Green, 1 drop of AK Deep Yellow and 1 drop of White. I couldn't ask for a better match.

Now I had to decide where the white line should be painted on the car. I did the old trick that railways used. You measure the stripe from the rail head. Using a caliper, I measured the bottom and top of the white line on a Rapido bilevel coach, then transferred this data to another baggage car (I own several ones and didn't want to reassemble the model I had already put apart). When the white stripe location was known, I masked the car and sprayed the green paint.

A few coat of gloss were then airbrushed to provide a neat surface for decals. In hindsight, I should have been more careful and removed the Citadel paint early coat instead of painting over it. Laziness  is too often the mother of all sins isn't it!

Scratchbuilding a diesel generator...

While the varnish was drying, I decided to build a Faguy generator to decorate the interior of the car. A few pictures online provide references about a Faguy mid-1980s diesel generator. They were painted in turquoise and were mounted on metal skid. Which styrene pieces, sprues and some remnants of Tichy roofwalks, I was able to cobble together a decent generator.

A good coat of paint, some drybrushing and hand painting warning labels and Faguy nameplate on it made it somewhat plausible. A wash of AK Kerosene and Oil brought it to life. It was time to finish the car!

Painted and weathered

Decals were applied according to pictures and I feared, for a while, there wouldn't be enough place on the letterboard for the "Tortillard" moniker to fit. Fortunately, my measures were indeed right and everything fitted as intended.

Fitting the huge generator inside the car

I then sealed the decals, added the grabirons and retouched some overspray areas on black parts. The Faguy generator was cemented with canopy glue inside the car... and it became almost instantly invisible... all that work for almost nothing! Classic!

Can you see the generator?

The roof was added and I worked hard to fit the underframe. It was hard at the beginning until I found out bits of sprue gates hadn't been sanded down at the factory and interfere with the underframe. Once cut, everything fitted together and the car was assembled once for all.

I'm quite pleased with the result, except for the fact the roof doesn't fit tighly on the shel.. Some manufacturing issues it seems. Maybe I'll try to address the problem in a month when the paint will be fully cured. I also feel bad for not bringing the car to NMRA standards when I still had access inside. It's still doable, but less practical. 

With that said, I' proud to announce that after 27-28 years, I've finally been able to assemble a prototypically accurate Tortillard consist! Incredibly enough, without Rapido, this would have been a serious nightmare too! When I find the inspiration, I will probably replicate the banners hanging from the locomotive handrails and seen on many pictures, including the large "Bonjour!" at the front. I have yet to find out which type of paper would have the right look to create the folds.

Now, the next logical step would be to build the 1995-1996 Tortillard that was inspired by CN 1950s classic passenger trains. After the bankruptcy, this train ended up on the Waterloo and St. Jacobs were it was operated for a number of years until the F-units were sold to Ontario Southern Railway and lost their paint scheme.

While a little bit too late for our era, I expect the 1984 Tortillard to run from time to time on the Murray Subdivision!

Rapido GARX Meat Reefers - Custom Paint

Many years ago Rapido produced a very neat series of General American design 37' wood meat reefers. These were beautiful... and expensive. However, they would be useful for the Harlem Station layout and I waiting with patience. At some point, many of them ended up in the bargain bin because their only sin was to be either undecorated kits or unlettered assembled cars in the RTR era. I picked 2 kits and two unlettered ones for at a significant discount, thinking I could slap a paint job on them easily and for a few pennies. I started these projects, only to let them gather dust in my cupboard for many years, almost completed.

As usual, Rapido did an excellent job with this car but building their kits is always a not so fun challenge because they lack basic instruction. However, I soldiered on even if the plastic they used for this kit isn't great to work with.

It looks good... but that canary yellow won't do!

The first kit was painted in the GARX yellow reefer scheme and lettered using Clover House dry transfers. I tried to modernize the paint scheme to better reflect the early 1950s. However, I believe the word "Refrigerator" should be spelled in gothic font but I couldn't find any useful photographic evidence. Unfortunately, when painting it, I used Model Master Reefer Yellow which is almost canary yellow... It felt wrong, but I only measured the mistake fully when I put it together with a factory painted car. The difference is striking and I'm seriously thinking about removing the lettering and repainting the yellow with a better shade of it. That bright yellow would be a better fit for Fruit Growers Express reefers with a bit of white and buff  in it to tone it down.

Hard to believe dry transfers and old decals can look good!

The second reefer was painted in the attractive early 1950s Swift all-red paint scheme. Unfortunately, I found out the Clover House dry transfer I had was made for the 1954-built steel reefer. Since Harlem Station was set in 1952, it's too late for my era, thus I ordered a a suitable set of Champ decals. Thus, the lettering job is a mix of decals and dry transfer to better fit the prototype. I also limited as much as possible the use of Champ decals which suffer from thick carrier decal film. At the end of the day, I was really pleased with the results.

Unlettered cars with custom decals (for half the price!)

The two other reefers were already assembled and painted. I designed and printed custom decals which were installed on a coat of gloss varnish. They turned out very well and I will print other custom GARX decals to redo my old Varney/Life-Like kitbashed reefers and the Rapido kit I mentioned earlier.

Model Master Reefer Yellow (left) VS Rapido factory paint (right)

It was great to see these projects come to fruition. They are nice, classics and will fit any trains from the 1950s. No regret buying kits and unlettered cars. They provided their share of joy!