Howdy y’all,

While the blog has been dormant, I’ve still been plugging along in a less tactile way when professional and personal life gives me the time. I’ve mainly been picking away at sorting through the approximately 35,000 PEI railway documents I was given by Steven Hunter, researching MDT reefers — including getting my hands on a copy of Merchants Despatch: Its History and Equipment by R. Hinman — and picking up odds and ends here and there for the future.

Last weekend, I was able to get out to an operating session at Derwin Cole’s. I rode along with Steve Dickie and Shawn Naylor, and it was great to spend some time with fellow train people I haven’t seen in a while.

Derwin has a beautiful fleet of Rapido MLW RSC-14s, and it is always a joy to operate with them. I picked up all seven Island units upon their release, courtesy of Rob Arsenault at Weather My Trains. Excessive? Yes. But it is certainly a glorious day when a PEI-centric piece of equipment gets mass-produced, so I really do not regret the splurge.

And here are mine: my entire PEI-assigned roster of MLW RSC-14s, in HO scale by Rapido, all courtesy of fellow Islander Rob Arsenault @ Weather My Trains.

Somewhere along the line, I also picked up a few Rapido GE 44-tonners. I got #2 in the classic green and gold scheme, along with an undecorated model to paint black and finish as as-delivered #7752.

Also on order are Otter Valley Railway’s CN transfer vans, Atlas PSC vans and potentially a thick batch of the new Intermountain run of MDT reefers…

So that touches on what I have purchased as ready-to-run. Now, here is what I have sitting in the silo of kitbashing.

Prior to my last update, I had been loosely working on a model of CLC / Fairbanks-Morse H12-44 #1639. The interest in building this was admittedly born out of Steve Hunter’s PEI files. In those files, there is a gallery of an H12-44 he had been building by doing fairly major surgery on a Walthers H10-44. I’ll be honest: I have no real need for this locomotive. It is out of era, and somewhat outside my intended prototype focus, as these units generally operated the boat train between Charlottetown and Borden. But there is just something so monolithic and alluring about the CLC locomotives, and seeing Steve’s effort definitely inspired me to give it a shot.

Below are builders’ photos, my model, and Steve’s. I can’t imagine he would have any issue with me using his models as examples.

As you can see, I actually got pretty far along in the build before I lost my workspace. All that is really left are the handrails, grab irons, marker lamps, louvers and footplates — likely done with Archer-style decals — and the pilot blocks, which thankfully I ordered from SH’s Shapeways store before they closed the 3D printing side of the business.

The final major decision is whether I’ll use the Walther’s drive and somehow fit Kaslo B-B side-frames to it, or scratch-build a new frame out of brass and use drive parts from a Proto FA1, as Steve indicated was his plan on The Diesel Detailer back in 2014.

Regardless, I’m pretty proud of the build so far. I don’t believe Steve ever had the chance to finish his, but I sure can finish mine. Honestly, I probably should before starting anything else.

Beyond the CLC locomotive, I received three MLW RSC-13 kits from Kaslo a few weeks back. I had the privilege of seeing the pre-production shells while they were being test-built on Taylor Main’s workbench, and I still can’t get over how well the final production kits came out. The print lines are minimal, and the detail is very crisp. It really should not take much work at all to get them paint-ready.

The intention, as of writing, is to turn them into #1702, #1729, and #1732 respectively, more or less based around the prototype photos I have. I’ve also managed to source three donor Kato RSC-2 locomotives for them to ride on.

Now… to find the time and space to get to work.

I can’t promise a quicker update next time, but I’ll surely forget to try!

CM/YYG