Hi guys, I am pretty new to the model train hobby and would appreciate your help. I currently have just a 4x8 HO scale Canadian Pacific train layout and have a few industries. The layout is dc.
This might start some contreversy but what is the best company that makes boxcars? I also want to know what the best company that makes oil tankers in HO scale.
(Moderators if there are any, is there a better place to post this? Feel free to move it if that is possible.)
I am a prolific H0 scale hobbyist.
I'm not the guy to answer this, but I'm sure our Canadian members can give you better answers if you can tell them what era you intend to represent, plus the general part of Canada that appeals to you, or your favorite CPR route.
Tom
ACY I'm not the guy to answer this, but I'm sure our Canadian members can give you better answers if you can tell them what era you intend to represent, plus the general part of Canada that appeals to you, or your favorite CPR route. Tom
Ahh yes something I completly forget whilst writing this.
My era is around the 2000's. I have a Canadian Pacific athearn gp38-2 number 7311 in the dual flags scheme. The real unit was repainted in the newer Canadian pacific scheme between 2010 and 2013 so I won't model anything after that.
There are numerous reviews on this website. Look here and use the search feature to look for the cars you want:
http://mrr.trains.com/news-reviews/product-reviews
Not sure what era you're modeling, but here is what I can tell you based on what I have on my layout. I've found a lot of Thrall All-Door boc cars with Canadian names available from Walthers. 50' Box cars with Canadian names from Athearn. Depending on what type of tank car, my trinity cars are Atlas and Intermountain. Larger tank cars are from Athearn with a mix of oil and food tank cars.
At one time Walthers and Life-Like made newsprint box cars in various Canadian roads. I happen to have a number of them in CP.
Neal
Yes knowing your desired era is important to knowing what to suggest to you.
The Walthers "Trainline" level CP newsprint boxcar is shown as in stock on the Walthers website. The other roadnames it used to come in are evidently out of stock or discontinued but still seen at swap meets. I search for Canadian newsprint cars at swap meets because when I was a boy a big block of such Canadian cars would come through my old home town on the C&NW, headed presumably for the big Chicago newspapers such as the Tribune.
Searching Walthers' site for HO rolling stock and making "Canadian" your search term comes up with all sorts of goodies. To me nothing says Canadian railroading like their distinctive covered hoppers, but of course those cars are frequently seen south of the border which might account for my impression.
One thing to remember is that the "good old" 40 ft boxcar had a somewhat longer life on the Canadian lines than it did in the USA because of the need to service grain elevators on trackage with relatively light rail, too light for the big covered hoppers that eventually dominated the grain rush. Those would often still have the 6 foot doors, too.
Dave Nelson
Which railroad's cars you get depends a bit on the time you're interested in. Before the 1990's, a Canadian rail yard would almost exclusively be filled with CN and CP cars, with a few US cars and a few private owners. After NAFTA came along, US cars became much more common.
True Line Trains have nice CP box cars.
Red Caboose and Intermountain cars are nice too.
The problem I've had is locating stock as often the one you want isn't available.
Although I mainly have CN cars, I do have a few CP too.
For the transition era which I model, Stix is right, a CP train would have mostly CP cars back then.
CN Charlie
dknelson The Walthers "Trainline" level CP newsprint boxcar is shown as in stock on the Walthers website. The other roadnames it used to come in are evidently out of stock or discontinued but still seen at swap meets. I search for Canadian newsprint cars at swap meets because when I was a boy a big block of such Canadian cars would come through my old home town on the C&NW, headed presumably for the big Chicago newspapers such as the Tribune.
The "Trainline" car is crap not well detailed and not accurately representative of cars owned by CP, but possibly an OK stand-in for beginners; the Proto1000 (or it was Proto1000, might just be the "Proto" line now) NSC newsprint boxcar is bang-on for a bunch of newsprint cars built for CN, CP and others.
Atlas also much more recently came out with a slighly newer NSC newsprint car with exterior posts (ribbed side) in CP, CN et al.
For older 40' cars True Line Trains has some good ones which represent some older (mostly 1940s) versions (but they lasted into the 1970s with updated paint jobs). Intermountain also makes a good 1950s 40' boxcar (but again, these lasted into the 1980s or even later in work service), but their paint job accuracy can be a little hit or miss sometimes.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
CNCharlie For the transition era which I model, Stix is right, a CP train would have mostly CP cars back then.
Like many things, this comes down very much to location, location, location.
If you're on the mainline between Windsor and Toronto, you'll get a lot of American cars from Detroit and Buffalo (via Hamilton) connections. A lot of New England and Eastern Seaboard will also come into Montreal, and you'll get a good mix of stuff travelling back and forth on the mainline between Toronto and Montreal as well.
Get off that main trunk though, and foreign cars drop drastically, unless they're for local delivery.
Also note that large numbers of CN cars on CP, or vice versa, actually aren't that common either, breaking that common model railroad's "rule of thumb" to have something like 50% home, 25% direct/close connections and 25% "other". CN and CP had extremely parallel systems with hundreds of interchange points, so CN cars wouldn't really be on CP mainlines for the long haul, and typically interchanged as close as possible to where the customer was.
(Basically, modelling Canada often requires tossing out a lot of the "conventional wisdom" into which model railroaders tend to distill reality. Even though it's essentially the same system and concept, enough of the specifics are often just subtly different...)
As always with the railways though, specific situations and exceptions occur.
You might try Accurail or Pacific Western Rail Systems. Accurail cars are inexpensive, but durable. PWRS makes absolutely beautiful Canadian, or Canadien if you prefer, prototype cars. Athearn Genesis also as some good offerings in CP/SOO as well as tank cars.
Edit: SOO line reporting marks would be acceptable as SOO was a subsidiary of CP, and a lot of cars still have SOO reporting marks but CP paint schemes. (Sunday I found SOO 75151, a covered hopper, in its as delivered Soo Line paint scheme, bearing SOO reporting marks)