Views From My Week

A few views from my week of sorting through some older photos, watching a lake freighter, doing some weathering, etc., etc.

Routine freight rolling along the GTW

GTW SD38 passing beneath the overpass

Began the weathering on not one, not two, but three boxcars this past week.  Just getting the paint fading done on them all at the same time makes things a little easier or more efficient, not that I'm cranking them out like a factory or anything.  Two of 'em are my own, and the third one belongs to Jamie.  Sometimes it seems just as easy to do more than one at a time.

B&O 86 foot parts car from Tangent.  The dark patches are done by putting masking tape in that spot, and then airbrushing the fade colour over the whole car.  Pull the tape off, and there's a darker paint patch.

SSW 65003 after it's been sprayed with the paint fade layer.  This is an Ahearn blue-box car that I've modified with the external ribs, some roof work, and coupler box replacements.  My friend Sean printed the big Cotton belt letters for me.

And thirdly, I've got this 50 foot Rapido boxcar underway for Jamie.  As you can see, I've got the masking tape on it to create some paint patching the same as I mentioned above.

Here's a photo from earlier in the summer of the lake freighter Lee A. Tregurtha.  This beauty was originally built in 1942 (so now is 84 years old - wow) as a tanker for the Pacific war effort, and later purchased and converted by Cleveland Cliffs shipping into a bulk carrier.  It's been lengthened twice so now it's 826 feet in length, and was also widened and deepened. I certainly don't have any idea how they would do that. But it's still sailing the Great Lakes.

Passing under the Blue Water Bridges heading out into Lake Huron

And I'll close out here with some local (Sarnia) news, VIP Rail had this announcement this week:

https://sarnianewstoday.ca/sarnia/news/2026/09/24/vip-rail-expands-railcar-storage-capacity-serving-sarnia-industry

That's it for now.