CP Gantry Crane

Model railroaders often get garrulous about the wisdom of modelling team tracks. Originally named for the teams of horses that took wagons right up to the track to unload from a freight car, they're referred to as the 'universal industry'. For customers that don't have their own spur, it's a low-cost alternative.

 Opposite City Hall in CP's yard was this unique-looking gantry.

Photos or plans are hard to find, having tried Pinterest and the CPHA documents library. That's OK, I can gage it pretty well from the nearby boxcar. Note that it spans a track, an unloading ramp and enough room for a truck to drive underneath. That's a truck scale at the bottom left of both photos (above).

Careful study reveals the horizontal girder is an above-and-below set-up! Get me rewrite!

I decided to model this somewhat spindly crane. I used some Central Valley sprues, a random girder and a rather large crane hook. 

It's a proof-of-concept crane. It's in a high-traffic location and might get dislodged. or I might find a better prototype photo. A future version will have better block-and-tackle/chain details and possibly different proportions. I'd also like to find out when it arrived and when it was dismantled.

Freight Cars on Waterfront Trackage near City Hall

As I continue to repurpose my former CN freight shed/team track/CD&D operations into CN and CP operations across from City Hall (pre-Confederation Park redevelopment circa 1966, with a 1961 image - top photo), here is a list of freight equipment observed or photographed on this trackage in various eras. For reference and modelling purposes!

FREIGHT CARS ON CN WATERFRONT TRACKAGE NEAR CITY HALL

I'm not aware that CN had any loading or unloading operations here. As far as I know, cars spotted opposite City Hall were heading to/from CLC and the Kingston Shipyards. That doesn't mean that I might need to 'borrow' some CP trackage to spot occasional CN customer cars or use the lead for switching.

LEGEND – BO = 40-foot Box Car; RE = Refrigerator Car; GO = Gondola Car; CO = Coal Hopper Car; TA = Tank Car.

1955 – 3 TA, 3 BO, Train-Master locomotive

2/57 – 4 TA, NYC double-door BO, mill GO

1950’s – NKP and CN BO, 2 TA, 2 GO

1/66 – 3 CN BO, 1 TA

21/7/66 – 2 CN BO

FREIGHT CARS ON CP WATERFRONT TRACKAGE NEAR CITY HALL

With at-best limited road access to CP's yard at the foot of North Street, it seems CP served many of its non-spur-served customers here. Coal, equipment, lumber and anything else that can be transferred by dock, gantry or directly to/from trucks could be handled in the shadow of the seat of municipal government - including a Milwaukee Road boxcar at the unloading ramp!

1920’s – SP wooden RE

10/47 – 4 BO, 1 GO

1948 – Pere Marquette BO

1950 – 8 CP BO, 2 RE, 1 empty CO

1951 – 8 BO, 2 CN BO, 1 ATSF BO, 1 PFE RE

1952 – 4 CP BO

1955 – 12 CP BO

2/57 - 5 CP BO

1958 – PFE 40210 RE

1950s – PRR CO being unloaded, 4 CP BO (one double-door)

29/2/60 – CNJ GO

6/7/63 - CP 344119 covered GO

1963 – service cars, caboose

1964 – CN eight-hatch RE with CN multimark, Milwaukee Road 29071 double-door BO

17/6/65 – CP 280737 eight-hatch RE, 4 BO

2/66 - 7 BO

2/5/66 – 2 CP BO, 1 Soo Line BO

1960s – Seaboard BO, PFE RE, CP double-door BO

FREIGHT CARS AT CANADIAN LOCOMOTIVE COMPANY

Conceivably, as mentioned above, any cars heading to CLC on CN could be seen here, albeit temporarily. This gives me justification to spot Really Big Things (RBTs) produced by CLC or the shipyards here. A vast variety of dimensional and other equipment loads, and new locomotive - including new locomotives like new CP H16-44's 8549-8550.

LEGEND – BO = Box Car; GO = Gondola Car; FL = Flat Car; DC FL = Depressed-Centre Flat Car

With Loads, if available:

21/9/48 – CP 309925 DC FL with export locomotive.

1955 – 3 GO on Ontario Street, 2 on storage track.

7/55 – CN 663536 and 663587 FL with export steam locomotives.

10/55 – CN 663243 FL with evaporator vessel.

11/55 - CN 663360 FL with evaporator vessel, Illinois Central BO in background.

1955 – CP 336724 FL with export steam locomotive, CN 663280 and 66290x GO with evaporator vessels.

1956 - CN 663077 FL with export locomotive.

1/56 - CNJ 89196 GO with cooler.

7/56 – CN 600300 FL with styrene stripper.

10/56 – CN 661805 FL with combustion chamber.

15/2/57 - CP 330552 GO with classifier.

5/57 – CP 338726 GO with cyclone vessels.

7/57 – CP 341104 and 330624 GO with pot shells.

1957 – CP 307194 FL with classifier.

1957 – CN 662439 FL with industrial locomotive.

9/58 – CN 699959 DC FL with gate-operator.

1950s – CP 353130 GO with tank segments; IC 62361 FL with dryer; CN 662505 FL with industrial locomotive; GTW 145376 GO with export steam locomotive.

1960 – CP 301468 and 301396 FL with export locomotive.

12/4/61 – CP 301387 FL with Madras Port Trust export locomotive.

1961 – CP 301424 FL with export steam locomotive.

1963 – CN 660532 FL with locomotive.

1964 – CP 301353 FL with diesel engine.

9/66 – CN 666322 FL with cylindrical tank.

1966 – CN 666009 FL with cylindrical tank; CN 661618 FL with export locomotive.

21/4/67 – CP 309925 DC FL with export locomotive.

1968 – CN 666366 and 665269 FL with export locomotives.

1960s – CN 661140 FL with dryer; CN 662198 FL with Bechtel flotation cells; CN 661719 FL with autoclave; CP 33125x and 338859 GO with crated fuel transfer structure.

Modelling K&P's Ontario Street Station

I've recently repurposed the peninsula property on my layout from the CN freight shed, team tracks and Canadian Dredge & Dock to the CP and CN trackage across from City Hall, prior to CP vacating the area in favour of Confederation Park. A signature structure for the area, one that I'd long considered building but had no place for (well, until now!) was the second Kingston & Pembroke station on Ontario Street, directly across from Kingston City Hall. The first step was to gather feedstock for the model. This included some dairy walls' styrene, arched windows and heavy wooden doors I copy-pasted from Pinterest pages and printed:

Early on in the build, my predilection for being a rather lazy modeller led me to reject the idea of cutting arched (!) openings in the styrene and emplacing windows. So paper on styrene it would be. Scaling the structure from a prototype photograph was a challenge, which I got about 75% right. The other 25% niggled me throughout the build. Walls as thin as paper - printed stone from Pinterest with a bit of variation in the colouration to add interest, with doors and windows white-glued on:

Matched to styrene and assembled - four walls. But I viscerally HATE this style of roof, some sort of mansard with gables. I used a pre-existing template that wasn't quite right, so the pitch was off a bit:

Pinterest supplied lots of ideas. I pasted these images onto my Pages software as a document, and I was able to assemble a whole roof-full of two styles of shingles from tiny one-inch squares. Very inexpensive and easier than cutting and gluing shingles which I've already tried on the CN Telegraphs repeater station.

The roof was not quite the right pitch, but I decided to distract from that in a couple of ways. One was to build up the very top, flat surface, and the other was to add more interest to the roof. Gable windows ended up making a lot of styrene cutting. I had to be careful to get them up as high as I could but still keep them inside the first-storey walls!

My gables would end up not actually reaching the roof at their rear. Gables ready for installation (below). I printed some of the shingles lighter, then did some fine cutting to make the V-pattern like the prototype. There, that'll distract 'em! I then suspended in-build photography for awhile. Not shown: eaves work, roof top details, building two end-chimneys from brick-pattern styrene, adding a base to boost the model's height, and building roof-supporting eave-brackets. I used nearly-square styrene, cutting them and gluing them to a thin styrene strip, painting them dark grey, then cutting them apart and gluing them to the walls.

A note here about colours. Depending on the year, the station looks dingy, then when spruced up for the Centennial, arches, eaves painted white. That didn't seem right for my era, so I kept the overall look dingy, dark grey.

Signage reformatted from archival photos.

Philatelic History of Kingston book

While at the BNAPEX stamp show in August, 2024 I spent some time looking at the Hall of Honour displays outside the main exhibit hall. The organizers made a real effort to curate framed exhibits pertaining to Kingston's postal (philatelic) history. To quote the book blurb from the webpage where BNAPS books are posted:

Of the over 300 book titles BNAPS has published to date, this one is the most colourful. The pages of the Kingston exhibit come from 40+ contributors. The diversity of contributors and their contributions almost guarantees that the material on display will differ from page to page, and this is the case with this volume.

At the show, I made a vain attempt to photograph several of the frames that I was most interested in, but glare on the glass, photography challenges and time conspired against me. So when I found out from a Canadian Stamp News email update that the exhibit had been collated into a book, I jumped at the chance to order a copy. 

I received my copy this week and it is an excellent read! One can take the time to really focus on each exhibit, the postmarks, covers and stamp images ably illustrated in the book. I'm working backwards, and have made it back to the end of World War I, and I look forward to going back as far as the French era in Kingston's history! Sure, it's a philatelic history book, but it's first and foremost a Kingston history book. Many elements of our city's history are elucidated.

This book is highly recommended!

Modelling Confederation Basin as a CN/CP Station Yard

 

In a recent Associated Railroaders of Kingston (ARK) Zoom meeting, we got talking about modelling the current Confederation Park area when it was CP's downtown passenger station, freight shed and yard. It takes about 8-10 feet to do convincingly. I thought about building modules, as ARK member Andrew Jeanes has drawn up plans for. I'm limited by the 2x4 feet peninsula I have available on my Hanley Spur layout peninsula!

As it is now (above). Coming down 'Wellington Street' behind the Bajus Brewery, the CN lead splits to serve the CN freight shed, a phantom track to CLC/Kingston Shipyards, and a team track (right to left, above). This was a 6-8 car (per switching job) traffic generator, and a source of backhaul for empty boxcars from the freight shed. Other than that, the freight shed was gone by my modelled era. Canadian Dredge & Dock took up a lot of real estate, generating minimal traffic inbound (nearly half of the peninsula - below):

I started drawing some 2x4 inch boxes in which to sketch tracks. It was always going to be tight, but I hope to be able to include:

• mutual track 'crossing Ontario Street' with switch tender cabin (build a structure!
• CP station (build a structure!)
• CN track(s) to CLC/Kingston Shipyards
• CP lead to station
• CP unloading ramp/team track/freight shed
• CN feed operation/Crawford's coal yard
• Fire Hall/Richardson HQ/feed operation (build a structure!) on Ontario Street

Due to the curvature and placement of the incoming track, I have limited options for the location of other tracks. I've made an effort to document the progress. Structures moved out, CD&D mostly removed. Here's the 2x4 space I had to work in:

Tracks roughed in. CN feed operation/lead/Crawford's coal yard at left, CN track to CLC, CP freight shed/unloading ramp, CP station lead. I'll need to leave space for one car+one locomotive at the end of the CN lead at left to allow facing-point switching of the CN feed operation/coal yard:

I subsequently changed the CP track arrangement. I took out that wye switch, installed a switch off the CP station lead for that second track. I also added another switch for the unloading ramp track. The two-wire DC power for the whole layout was formerly under the CN team track unloading ramp. I repositioned the wires to now surface above the layout under the CP unloading ramp! I removed any bumpy scenery and painted the surface black/dilute-black craft paint to replicate cinders:

Opposing track-level views before painting and final track installation. My Rapido 'smooth-side' Canadian Pacific coach has made an appearance along with visiting CP officials in their business car.

Overhead views prior to final track installation. I need to fill in that dry dock!

The ex-K&P station is now in place, though the sidewalk/platform needs to be finessed:

This one is for Bill Godkin, who told me bikes from the Harley shop in the basement of the Hanley station (ex-GTR) were often ridden up the CP loading ramp for kicks!

The next steps:

• painting over current scenery to replicate cinder base - done
• initial installation of track (operation began at this point) - done
• paint sides of rails and ties of roughed-in track pieces before installation - done
• final installation of track - done
• building of structures (CP station above, CP gantry crane below - done)
• completion of scenicking

OPERATIONS

Unlike the CN freight shed/team track/CLC-Shipyards lead, this will be a two-railway peninsula. I'd like to be able to include:

• CN feed operation and Crawford's coal on facing-point spur
• CN cars to/from CLC-Shipyards
• CP cars at freight-shed/unloading ramp
• if necessary a 'shared' CN-CP track in between the above for switching. 
• CP station lead saw its last passenger service in 1957, so will only host Service equipment or occasional CP business cars carrying officials discussing the extreme-makeover of CP's railway lands to Confederation Park by 1966.

I currently have more empty other-railway house cars from CN customers that get reloaded at the CN freight shed than I have empty other-railway house cars from CP. With the CN freight shed gone, I'm considering interchanging these house cars to CP here, by virtue of terminal inter-switching rules (!), to allow either road to load cars for backhaul. 

Empty CN house cars can still get reloaded for backhaul at Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile or CN Express. 

Empty CP-lettered house cars can still get reloaded for backhaul at Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile or the woolen mill. 

For CN or CP to switch these tracks, there is no run-around, so once trains enter the mutual track, they'll have to leave to run around any cars. This means that CN will have to switch the spurs in both directions. I'm going to experiment with CP, since during this modelled era the small yard and turntable was still active at the foot of North Street. I may isolate the CP station lead so I can stage a switcher there. 

DOES THIS MAKE MY LAYOUT LOOK NEW?

For modelled era, the addition of these tracks to my layout necessarily dates the layout to 1966, when the CP tracks were removed, preserved CPR D-10 1095 brought in, and Confederation Park installed, leaving one lone CN lead closest to the lakeshore to reach CLC, which closed and was demolished by 1970. Problem is, the CP Rail multimark debuted in 1968! The acquisition of a CN RS18 in olive/black pushes the 1970 plausibility, too. So, I may re-era the whole layout to 1964 or 1965, unless there's a CP Rail car visible! Of course, many of my signs and vehicles are 1970s prototypes. I think I'll stick with the use of the word 'circa' to precede any discussion of my modelled era!

Well-Housed on Wellington Street Yet Again

Each Christmas season, I find myself in a dollar store looking at little Christmas-village buildings and wondering if they would make good HO-scale structures. I like to take the little plastic orphans and make them at home on the Hanley Spur, as a one-afternoon project to challenge my modest modelling skills! I've done it previously in 2021 and 2022. I found these three at Dollar Tree. I bought two green three-storey houses and one red schoolhouse/firehouse. Each was adorned with a wreath, and lightly 'weathered' with a spray of black paint. The Before photos:

I discovered too late that the backs can pop off each building. They're not glued on. Each had a hook on the roof where the hanging twine was attached.

Making liberal use of my scrap box, I conservatively dressed this one with some printed brick paper. As background flats, the idea is not to add too much detail to draw one's eye away from the foreground. But I just couldn't help myself. I left the windows blank, then added printed paper windows from the inside, as well as various roof and wall details.

Perhaps it's a small workshop or factory. I got caught up in the build, only remembering to take an in-progress photo, well, after. Here's the After photo:

The first green house struck me as having one too many storeys. I decided to cover the middle-storey windows with an awning. I also added a lean-to from a Durango engine house train-show find. Doors and windows are printed paper:

I removed the Walthers shingle paper from a previous structure I'd built. It's now fully depreciated! Paint job has weathered some storms, but remember, it's going in the background!

I test-fitted the first green house on the layout and realized that it automatically needed a street, lawn, driveway and/or sidewalk in front of it. None of which I'd likely have near the layout room walls. So I decided to model the rear of a house. Metal roof (printed paper again) applied. This is the last we'd see of this green side:

I painted the rear wall a nondescript brown with craft paint, adding paper windows and a downspout, window lintels and a stoop:

That was an enjoyable afternoon, and I think I succeeded in producing something that will be perfectly at home receding into the backdrop! It was time to take all three down to the layout room and play around with placing them. 

I did NOT have a lot of real estate available at the walls that was not already taken by structural flats or scenery. I wondered...to background flats always have to be at the rear of the layout? Could they be ON the layout?

Plunked opposite Anglin's office (above) and viewed aerially (below). Would any viewer ask, "Hey, why are your houses only six feet deep?" Maybe. Some of the houses in the Swamp Ward ARE pretty small.

Plunked along Wellington Street, next to Bajus' Brewery:

Nestled between Railway Street industries, innocuously:

Near Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile. Just no clearance because joint section of CN/CP track is behind that fence!

I think they will continue to be motile around the layout. They might also figure in to layout-level iPhone photography to provide background depth. In front of the CN/CP interchange yard:

Let's go, retro! 

Beside Dyeco (above) and Woolen Mill (below):

Near Anglin's:

I wonder what dollar deals I will find at the end of 2025?