Gooderham CPR Van kit build

[CNR5529]

Although I am primarily a modeler of transition era CNR rolling stock one would find on small branchline operations, being part of an N scale modular club has allowed me to expand my modeling scope over the last few years. Basically, I now have a huge playground to run all sorts of interesting consists that would be otherwise out of place at home, like large transcontinental name trains and *GASP* CPR equipment. Niche market manufacturers like Kaslo, Briggs, Gooderham, Black Cat and many others make it easier than ever to accurately model all sorts of uniquely Canadian rolling stock, and I am always happy to support their efforts by expanding my collection. Slab side hoppers, Dominion/Fowler boxcars, mini-boxes, 8 hatch reefers, countless passenger cars... there is so much cool stuff to build now. That said, one car I have been wanting to to add to my collection for a long time is a proper CPR wood Van. Kaslo made some kits years ago, but I had not been able to track one down yet. Well that all changed a few weeks ago!

The planets were apparently in alignment recently when out of the blue @craigolio1 offered up a surplus van kit from a pair he had received from @Angus Shops. These Gooderham van kits were news to me, but I gladly agreed to give this one a good home. With a little work it would turn into a pretty fine looking model. For reference, here is a photo of the prototype as they appeared in the mid 50s era:



The kit contained 4 main castings (underframe, main carbody, roof and cupola), a set of steps, as well as a set of pre-bent and soldered end rails and roof ladders. Being a test kit, there were no instructions included, but this really wasn't much of a problem. I planned on attacking this one like any other of Geoff's fine kits, cleaning up the castings, adding a bunch of details and painting it up per reference pictures. Details would include replacing any cast on grabs with PB wire, installing all the missing grab irons, adding brake wheels, marker lamps, roof walks, smoke stack, storm doors, and a conductor/brake man watching over the train.

[CNR5529]

I started out by first cleaning up any flashing around the windows and proceeded to drill all the holes needed for the various grab irons and such. There was a bit of a mix up early on when the roof casting for this kit decided to stay in Craigs vehicle after we had arranged to meet up... so I continued on with whatever progress I could make without the roof until it made its way back here...

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Geoff's castings are usually pretty good right out of the gate, requiring minimal clean up. I was trying to see how it would all look, despite not having the roof casting yet

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After drilling a bunch of holes all over the car I was able to test fit the end railings in place. At this point the underframe, trucks, couplers and steps were also installed. I opted for Z scale couplers on this one, as they are a bit finer looking on the tail end of a train but remain functional as opposed to the True Scale couplers.

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Finally a first round of grab irons were formed and installed. This includes the curved carbody side grabs, the curved end stairwell grabs, the upper end grabs, end stirrups, cupola roof grabs, and all the step supports. The cupola grabs were installed using BLMA eye bolt etchings.

[Angus Shops]

As much as I’d love to offer this caboose as a ‘kit’, I can’t. The reason: the cupola and the roof castings are direct copies of the original Kaslo Shops kit parts. As CNR5529 notes, the CP caboose was a kit originally offered by Kaslo Shops and while I have 4 in my fleet, it was clear that I needed a handful more. I had been considering how I might go about this for a few months; the main body and floor castings are pretty straight forward, but the curved roof was a more difficult and I was putting off the whole project for this reason and the fact that I knew all the railings and ladders would have to be fabricated as I don’t have experience with etching. At one point I was pondering the problem and I decided to see just how solidly I had assembled the old Kaslo kits those years ago. It turns out one of the kits was easily disassembled without damage and I decided to speed the project along by using the roof and cupola as masters for my resin casting process.

So, because the ‘kit’ is partly made up from the work of Kaslo Shops, I can’t be selling kits for this car. In addition, because there are no etched parts for this car, all the end railings, ladders and grabs would either have to hand fabricated by myself (not something I’m excited about) or the purchaser (not much of a kit). And the steps are actually individually fabricated from strip styrene. I built 4 myself and sent of another 4 unassembled kits to a couple of modellers who had expressed an interest. I very glad one of them made it to CNR5529.

However, I’d be happy to supply the basic castings if there are any CPR nuts out there that would like to have a go...

Thanks to CNR5529 for the kind words about my previous kits, and I must say I was very pleased to see the beautiful photos of his completed car. The screen door is a nice touch; I had considered it myself but decided to omit them for the time being at least.

Geoff

[craigolio1]

Geoff,

First off let me say that you knocked these castings out of the park. As you know I have built several of your models as well and I can honestly say these are among your best yet.

Don’t feel bad about not providing etchings. I’ve built four of the Kaslo BCR cabeese. They were an earlier kit from an era where nothing came with etchings. Shapeways... no etchings. These are true modellers’ kits and bending handrails is a skill that is good to learn. That said I think I hate it more than any other task. Haha. None the less it makes the model that much more rewarding.

Regarding the cupola, I’m not sure if Kaslo still offers this kit, but I’ve had good luck in a few cases asking permission to make castings of parts. If you want to offer this as a kit then perhaps that would work out. Either way I admire your ethics in this case. These days people don’t put a lot of value on intellectual property.

Thanks again for the kits. You are elevating our hobby.

Craig.

[CNR5529]

So what I am hearing is this caboose is a highly collectible ultra rare limited edition bootleg? COOL!

Joking aside, I certainly respect and agree with the decision not to commercially release a kit that uses parts copied from another source. Still, happy I got my hands on one! I was afraid the only path forward was more time spent cadding and printing my own version... just for one car. CNR cabeese on the other hand, I need another half dozen or so... 

And I agree with Craig, bending grabs is part of kit building. Its not my favourite task, but far from being the worst. Stripping old paint from cars on the other hand... ugh...

[CNR5529]

At this point I was debating what the detail package should include on the tail end. I had seen pictures of CPR vans with extra or section flags, marker lamps, or nothing at all. I elected to go with the markers, partially because I had just printed a bunch of them a few months ago for the business car build, knowing I wanted a few extra dummy lamps on some key cars (not knowing I would be building this car though). Although I probably could have gone with the lit markers as was done on Burrard https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=47390.msg653192#msg653192, I settled for using dummy lamps this time. I know, I know... CNR markers on a CPR van... blasphemy!

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At this point the roof casting showed up again, so I was able to start fitting the cupola and ladder assemblies. Geoff, I'm still not entirely sure how you were able to assemble those ladders like that, but well done sir!

Side note, I painted one lamp up in black and scraped away the paint from the lenses, as I wanted to try shining light from the back of the sprue like a light pipe rather than casting leds in the lamp. It kind of worked and I may revisit this later.

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The next round of details included roof walks made from 20x40 thou styrene strips laminated in situ, a kitbashed smoke stack made from surplus shapeways parts and some brass tubing (though I strongly suspect these will eventually need to be replaced by MBE brass parts) and the grab irons on either side of the cupola.

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At this point the van components were basically ready for primer.

[CNR5529]

Time for paint.

First up, primer. I am a fan of Krylon rattle can primers, they sticks to just about anything, dry to a nice matte finish and have not had any compatibility issues with the other paints sticking to it afterwards. The oxide red primer is one I go through all the time as it is very close to CNR boxcar red... But in this instance, I went with grey, as I find it easier to look for areas that may need a bit of touch ups, body filler and/or extra sanding. The three sub assemblies were all painted separately, as I would need to add glass later. The roof section and cupola were temporarily attached to a block of wood to act as a handle while painting.

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Bit more body work, and it was ready to go for final primer coat and then paint. Really there was just a bit of touch ups to do on the roof.

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And now, for some colour. I started with the signal red ends on the cupola, main carbody, and under the roof ends. I also painted some Black Cat Publishing etched CPR storm doors. More on those later though.

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I wasn't exactly sure what colour of red/brown to use on the sides. Some prototype pictures show a very dark brown, while others show an almost red colour. I imagine it is CPR boxcar mineral brown, but it appears that all my usual go to LHS were out of this particular shade so I had to improvise. I ended up mixing three different shades of Vallejo Model Air acrylics, a dark brown, a lighter brown and red, in various proportions to come up with something that I liked and would complement the red ends. If any one uses the Vallejo cross reference list I posted a while back (see here if interested), the three colours used are roof red, boxcar red and signal red. I settled on a 5:1:2 ratio, which actually produces a colour that changes tone quite nicely from dark brown in the shade to a vibrant red/brown in direct light.

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I carefully masked off the red elements I wanted to keep, then shot the brown colour on the three assemblies and the trucks. Then, I masked off all the brown including the portions of the ladders below the roof and shot flat black on the roof and cupola.

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There were a few minor touch ups to the paint needed here and there after removing all the masking, but at this point it was starting to look like a CPR van!

[Angus Shops]

Nice work! I was going to ask how you did the storm doors, but apparently they come from Black Cat. That solves that problem. I still need a source for brake wheels; what did you use?

I used Vallejo paints on mine as well and was really pleased. I found that it brushed on very nicely, so I brush painted my 4 cars. I did primer my cars before painting, but I also discovered that the Vallejo paints sticks very well to the raw resin castings. I’m not sure what advantage that gives, but I’ll file it away under “useful information”. However, I’ve found that it doesn’t stick to the ladders very well at all for some reason.
Geoff

[bbussey]

Very nice.

Both Atlas and Fox Valley make friction-bearing leaf-spring caboose trucks, as opposed to using the Micro-Trains roller-bearing trucks. 

[CNR5529]

Brake wheels, right... forgot to talk about that. I found two sources of smaller diameter etched brake wheels that seem appropriate, Gold Metal Models set 160-55, and Detail Associates (not sure of # on this one, its just loose without a label). I went with suitably "old timey stem winder" looking ones from the Detail Associates set.

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As for paint, I have seen the light, and it is Vallejo! Like you say, it brushes on well and it sprays on even better. They have a bunch of interesting products for textures, washes, metallic paints, various finishes... its all fairly inexpensive and the results are always flawless. I still need to experiment a bit to find an equivalent for colours like CPR tuscan and grey, VIA blue and yellow, all the CN colours... but haven't started this yet as I still have a stash of TLT and Rapido Proto paints for those. If you have some recommendations for specific colours you use, I will gladly add them to the Vallejo cross reference thread.

Thanks for the info Bryan. I generally prefer MT trucks over Atlas and had these on hand so they got installed for the moment, but I do intend to swap them out in favour of friction bearing leaf spring trucks at some point. I kind of wish MT expanded the line of caboose trucks with archbar and bettendorf variants...

[CNR5529]

Next up was hand rail highlights, decals and a few final details.

Most vans in my era had the grabs painted yellow. I usually brush paint handrails and try as best I can to not get paint where I dont want it, but always end up making a bit of a mess at some point that needs touch ups. This time, I thought it would be smart to use a bit of masking tape to act as a shield as I brushed on the yellow. I tried it first on the curved grabs on the side of the carbody (the most visible ones... go big or go home!), and once it proved successful I painted all other grabs the same way.

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Once that dried, I was able to install decals. Black Cat Publishing makes a set for CPR vans, flangers and plows that includes both Script and Block lettering. I applied the main decals, build date and other ultra fine who-knows-what lettering on the sides, and put the car number on the ends, even if they would be partially hidden by the storm doors later. One thing that is really obvious between these two pictures is the colour shift the paint mix provides depending on the lighting.

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So about those storm doors... Both CN and CP had a set of doors installed on many of their cabooses/vans, which were used to stop the drafts in the winter or inclement weather. In the summer time, the glass was removed and replaced with screen so the inner doors could be left open to allow a breeze. That said, most of the time these doors could be seen latched open. Black Cat makes etchings of various styles of storm doors, and leaves it up to the modeler to install either glass or screen as desired. I opted to use that fine micro mesh material found in triangular tea bags. Yeah, scale wise its probably only going to keep out large birds, but it looks good enough to me!

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I carefully cut some to size, and glued it in the half etched frame.

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Once installed on the car, the doors allow the car number to show through somewhat. Its a pretty cool effect...

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I painted up and installed a Preiser figure to act as rear end brakeman/conductor, and installed him up in the Cupola. You only really see him at certain angles, but its a neat little detail to add.

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All that was left after this was installation of glass, and at some point a bit of weathering.

[CNR5529]

Last post for this build... promise. Window glazing was installed using thin clear styrene sheet. This is probably the one area where I struggled a little, as there is not much room inside the cupola to get glass installed properly. The corner structure is so fine and the windows are so close that if you install the glass on one window, the side of the glass is visible in the other opening. Maybe beveling the glass edges would have made it easier to install and provided a neater result, or maybe using some Krystal Klear instead would have been the way to go. Either way, I am really pleased with how this model turned out in the end.

Nothing left to do with this puppy but set up some modules outside and shoot it in the sun!

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[Angus Shops]

That’s some really fine work. Thanks for taking the time and effort to post.

Did you do anything to prepare the Vallejo paint surface for decals? The Vallejo paint provides a matt finish and I would have thought that might result in ‘silvering’ when the decals were applied. I’ve painted my vans but the LHS is low on Black Cat products so I haven’t applied decals yet. And mine are sitting on the MT roller bearing trucks for the time being as well.

The Vallejo paints are new to me as well and I haven’t tried to match any really specific colours yet such as CPR Tuscan. Like you I mixed up a shade of mineral brown for the vans, but for the most part I’ve been using it for things like weathering track and other scenery type applications so far.

Geoff

[craigolio1]

Having seen this model in person I can honesty say the photos don’t do it justice.

Well done sir.

Craig.

[CNR5529]

Thanks guys.

I have been able to spray vallejo paints either "wet" or "dry", which results in a satin or matte finish. You can also use their satin or gloss finish to make it glossier if you want, but so far I have had pretty good results applying decals directly on the base paint. I use walthers solvaset to set the decals, which is pretty strong stuff, and havent noticed silvering. Dullcote to finish.

If you need decals, you can always order directly from Black Cat's website. Allen is usually pretty quick to respond and ship. You will also be able to order those storm doors! They come 6 doors to a pack...