BrickTrainDepot - Canadian Cylindrical Grain Hopper Review And Mods

[Supplement_Creatif]

Hello there!

I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday season and I wish you all a happy new year!

I would like to present a sort of review of BrickTrainDepot's Canadian Cylindrical Grain Hopper car, as well as highlight the modifications which I have brought to my model of this iconic Canadian grain car.

First a bit of history of the car in question. All research concerning the history and details of these cars, as well as photos of prototypes, were found on Eric Gagnon's Railfanning Blog; Trackside Treasure. His website and his two books Trains & Grains has a been a true well of knowledge of Canadian Prairie Railroading.

Here is a link to his fabulous website and the blog post treating the subject matter: http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com/2020/04/canadas-grain-fleet-covered-hoppers.html

Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, the two big railways in Canada, were transporting their grain using an aging fleet of boxcars. In 1972 the Canadian government began supplying cylindrical covered hoppers to transport grain. Over 19 000 of these covered hoppers were produced. Although today CN and CP have both moved to new hoppers to transport their grain, these 4550 cubic-foot capacity cylinders can still be seen. Some even got a fresh new coat of paint for Canada's 150th. Boxcars were still used to transport grain until the tail end of the 90's in Canada... but alas that will be for another post down the line.

The car I decided to model was called the Trudeau or Coke-Can cars. These were painted a popping red with two big wheat sheaves and a big Canada in white lettering, along with the bilingual government of Canada logo and the cars reporting marks.

Here is a photo taken by Eric Gagnon in 1984 in Westburne, Manitoba. We can see one of these government hoppers with an old CP grain boxcar.

Now with the prototype properly presented, let's dive into the review and subsequent modifications part of the post!

The plan for my grain fleet was to start with a PS 4740 hopper car (of which a WIP thread exists somewhere on this forum although a bit dated), however funny enough I am still working through some tough challenges with that MOC and what I needed was a win. Therefore I started doing some research into these government hoppers and thought hey, BrickTrainDepot has an instruction set and decals. I knew there was some things I wanted to change with the model, but the decals were there and I knew I could use them no problem.

I was very pleased with the quality of the product I purchased. A pdf of the instructions was sent to me instantly and the decals arrived in great shape. What to say about the decals other than the previous well deserved praise of OKBrickWorks work. The instructions were very clear and well presented.

The only complaint I have with regards to the product is that the decals only have reporting marks for a Canadian Pacific car and not a Canadian National car. As well with specific regards to the reporting marks, the reporting marks provided are CP with a CN number. CN cars had reporting marks starting at CNWX 101287 - CNWX 111877, and CP had reporting marks CPWX 606319 - CPWX 608591, for this specific livery. The reporting marks provided of CPWX 111900 do not match any of the prototype reporting marks. The train and layout I am currently working on is a fictional CN prairie branch line in Manitoba therefore I left the reporting marks off the car for now and will be getting suitable ones latter down the line.

So what did I modify?

- The first modification was to the colour of the car. The colour suggested is dark red. Although this colour matches the weather paint of older cars quite nicely, my layout plan is the mid 80's, therefore I wanted a new bright red car. Standard Lego red is what I decided to use. And would you know it, a quick stop at the Lego store and I had mostly all the plates and curved slopes I needed from the pick a brick wall to get this car going.

- Next I started with the length of the hopper body. Doing some quick brick math and using the 10ft = 8 studs the models cylindrical body was bang on! This was fine but I though it didn't sell the illusion of the end ladders well. Visually there is a good ladder width gap between the end of the hopper and the first vertical ladder bar. I therefore decided to shorten the body by 2 studs. Looking at the overall model and with the end ladders in, I am happy with how this mod turned out even though knowing that the body is a little shy in terms of length. The length of the chassis was left the same.

- The third modifications I did was to the hatches on the roof. I found that the model lacked the hinge details which are found on the top of the cars. I added these in using Plate, Round 1 x 1 with Bar Handle (26047). Due to the shortening of the cylinder body I had to use quite a few jumpers to compress the hatches themselves but overall it worked out.

- The fourth modification was using a different truck design. The trucks use roller bearing wheelsets and printed 1 x 1 roller bearing tiles for Brick Model Railroader. The design of the truck themselves are also closer to trucks seen on BMR cars. I didn't change the position of the trucks as the 1 x 6 tiles which work as the end bracing details protrude enough to land just on the middle of the truck, helping again to sell the look of the car even with a shorter hopper body.

- The last modification was brought to the end ladders. Besides the modifications which needed to happen to accommodate the top of the platform with the stud missing on either side, I positioned the rungs in a way to better reflect the rungs on the prototype. I had bought flexible 1/8'' pneumatic hose for the end ladders however it was too flexible and the clips would bend them out of shape. Ends up a 3L bar and and antenna element make up the distance pretty well. Looking at it closely you can see the gap it leaves however for now I am satisfied with it looking good from far, although being far from perfect.

As always any and all feedback is very much welcomed.

Thanks for reading, cheers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Darkkostas25]

Great wagon!

[supertruper1988]

Thanks for the kind words and review. I am happy to know that the instructions were clear because that is one area I dont get a lot of feedback on. (I did the instructions design for this model) 

As for the reporting mark, I will update going forward. Just to be clear, there are CN and CP marks for the same "Canadian Government" red paint scheme. 

The color was debated a bunch internally but we decided on dark red because it was the hard color to design with so changing dark red to bright red was easier for the customer. 

[Feuer Zug]

Nicely done. The modifications look great compared to the source material. The color is a compromise, but nothing like the lime green and lavender ones I built after getting an odd lot of Friends pieces. How you managed to get the large decals to perfectly apply over a curved and large surface is great.

[Supplement_Creatif]

@Darkkostas25 Thanks for the kind words!

@supertruper1988 Your welcome, It really was a fun to build! In terms of the instructions again everything was clear. The only part which required a bit of cross referencing to a few of the images on the BrickTrainDepot website was the alignment of the hopper chutes on the bottom of the wagon. But again besides that instructions were clear.

In terms of the colour I completely understand. At first I have to admit I was a bit puzzled by the dark red as I was referencing photos of new hoppers. But then taking a quick walk and or seeing these wagons pass by whenever I was at a crossing I realised how much the dark red is really bang on for older cars with old paint. I think the choice for going with the less available colour was a great choice as it was really easy finding swaps for red.

In terms of the reporting marks, reference Eric Gagnon's blog, he has great tables which shows the distribution of cars to both CP and CN and which liveries they carried. In total, specifically for the red Government of Canada hoppers, CN had just under 3000, and CP had just under 2300. Here are the tables which include all Liveries for early Government of Canada yellow and brown cars, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Canadian Wheat Board, and the red Government of Canada cars.

Again, these tables are taken directly from Eric Gagnon's blog.

 

@Feuer Zug Thank you for the kind words! Those decals were definitely a bit tricky but they really make the look of the car! Lime and Lavender, I would love to see a photo of those cars! Funny enough I showed pictures of this car to my local Lug and they all had the same response. Where's the colour, where's the graffiti which is so ubiquitous these days on the hoppers!

 

[Feuer Zug]

16 hours ago, Supplement_Creatif said:

 

@Feuer Zug Thank you for the kind words! Those decals were definitely a bit tricky but they really make the look of the car! Lime and Lavender, I would love to see a photo of those cars! Funny enough I showed pictures of this car to my local Lug and they all had the same response. Where's the colour, where's the graffiti which is so ubiquitous these days on the hoppers!

 

The cars can be seen in this thread: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/178582-bricktracks-wheels/ They were used during a test, and occasionally run under my grain silo when I run the North American styled layout.

[supertruper1988]

On 1/5/2023 at 4:03 PM, Supplement_Creatif said:

 Your welcome, It really was a fun to build! In terms of the instructions again everything was clear. The only part which required a bit of cross referencing to a few of the images on the BrickTrainDepot website was the alignment of the hopper chutes on the bottom of the wagon. But again besides that instructions were clear.

In terms of the colour I completely understand. At first I have to admit I was a bit puzzled by the dark red as I was referencing photos of new hoppers. But then taking a quick walk and or seeing these wagons pass by whenever I was at a crossing I realised how much the dark red is really bang on for older cars with old paint. I think the choice for going with the less available colour was a great choice as it was really easy finding swaps for red.

In terms of the reporting marks, reference Eric Gagnon's blog, he has great tables which shows the distribution of cars to both CP and CN and which liveries they carried. In total, specifically for the red Government of Canada hoppers, CN had just under 3000, and CP had just under 2300. Here are the tables which include all Liveries for early Government of Canada yellow and brown cars, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Canadian Wheat Board, and the red Government of Canada cars.

Again, these tables are taken directly from Eric Gagnon's blog.

 

Awesome thanks for the help!