A lot of western coal was shipped in boxcars on CP. Prairie towns had coal merchants’ bins with the trackside loading bins even with a boxcar floor and the coal was shovelled into them. OCS coal for C

I believe one of the reasons for speed was that insurance was paid per day. The trains were sometimes carrying a cargo worth over $1M. A lot of money then. Articles I have read also indicated the carg

There is a good description of the silk trains in Canada at the link. CPR dominated with their own steamships. The trade in Canada started in 1887 and petered out in 1930s with the depression and comp

Thanks Lester.

Here is the photo of the ladders on my express reefer under construction.

Thanks for sharing your technique. Do you use CA to glue the rungs to stiles? i used a similar jig approach with the photo-etched rungs. I tacked them in place with CA then when set flipped over the l

Here is a scan of the underside diagram for a CN wood express reefer. It’s from Sylvan models and is looking from underneath the car up. The fat pipe on one side is steam and the two smaller ones are

Note also that the “minibox” sides do not meet flush with the ends. There is an L shape up along the join on each side. An article on building them from the F&C Kit in Jan 2004 RMC. It was part of Ted

For the Z-bars, would it not be possible to form them from thin brass sheet using a small bending brake? Bending the stiles for Pierre Oliver’s etched brass ladders comes to mind as a similar type of

Thanks for sharing the great photos. Nice job.