WRMRC Fall Open House – Saturday 15 October 2022

On Saturday, 15 October 2022, the Waterloo Region Model Railway Club cordially invites you to our Fall Open House to visit the CP Sudbury Division layout. This is the first time our club will be open to the general public since the COVID pandemic.

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The layout be open from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Feel free to invite any friends or family members interested in model railways, and plan on staying a while to see what’s new.

For maps and more information visit our WRMRC website, or our Facebook page.

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Extra 5025 East rolls under the LaSalle Blvd bridge on the CP Sudbury Division Layout.

Admission:

  • Adults: $5.00
  • Seniors and Students: $3.00
  • Children (12 and under) are FREE, but must be supervised by an adult

2022 Virtual Tour Video

For your viewing entertainment, our club is sharing what we hope will be our last ever virtual layout tour video.

To give some background, this was prepared as our submission for the 2022 Doubleheaders Tour last March, and features absolutely no (zero / nil / nada) trains operating. This was because every past video we’ve produced shows practically nothing other than trains running, and we wished to do something more instructive and completely different this time around. So sit back, grab a beverage, and listen as WRMRC VP Ted Kocyla  bores  enlightens you for 23 minutes about what the club has accomplished over two years of pandemic restrictions.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eNgZkcBe98r-EzmWHKptGvwZUZB4Xkxw/view?usp=sharing

If nothing else, this video helps us advertise all the new things you can see at our upcoming Fall Open House, where we hope everyone can visit us in person again. Stay tuned for more information about that. But for now, this video will have to do.

 

Virtual Doubleheaders Tour 2022

This weekend, from 9am Saturday March 26th to 9pm Sunday March 27th 2022, the Doubleheaders will be hosting a free, online Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph model railway tour. The tour features a number of great home and club layouts from the area that you’re sure to enjoy.

The CP Sudbury Division Modellers will be participating again this year, with a new video featuring the recently added structures, new scenery and CTC signalling progress that the WRMRC has made through the COVID pandemic.

This year the presentations will be posted as YouTube video links available on the Doubleheaders Facebook page, in addition to their main website.

With all videos being available throughout the weekend, this virtual experience will be more like the traditional home/club tour where you are able to view the layouts according to your personal schedule, and in any order.

For further information, please email:

dhtour at gmail.com (all together, replacing at with @)

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2021 Open House Cancelled

Due to Ontario being stuck in phase-3 of COVID reopening, it is with reluctance that the WRMRC executive has decided to cancel our 2021 Fall Open House which was scheduled for October 16th this year.

We had been procrastinating and hoping for better news from the province, but with the occupancy conditions currently in place our club could not reasonably hold a public event.

Phase-3 conditions require us to cap the capacity within our Quonset hut to 25 people, which would have to include the ten or so members volunteering to guide visitors and operate trains. Despite any limit our aisle-ways would prevent proper social distancing, and that cap would obviously cause line-ups before entry. There was also the matter of Ontario’s new vaccine passport system, something we would need to enforce and that none of us wish to police.

In closing, our club recommends you protect yourself and others by following the medical advice of your doctor, and to be vaccinated if you are able to. It is the only way forward for society to return to normal, and for train shows to happen again.

We are hopeful this will all be resolved by the end of March for our club to participate again in the 2022 Doubleheaders Layout Tour, and of course we fully expect to hold our Fall Open House again next October.

Stay safe and stay healthy.

2021 Virtual Tour Video

We are pleased to present another new video for your enjoyment, this time featuring a tour over the current operating portions of the CP Sudbury Division layout.

This video was originally created as our club’s submission for the 2021 Doubleheaders Virtual Layout Tour. Though the event was a great success, the nature of Zoom Meetings prevented the greater masses from being able to view our presentation. There was also the inconvenience of it only running once, and at a fixed time slot.

So we’ve decided to add our video presentation to the club’s YouTube channel for everyone’s entertainment, for anyone to view, pause and repeat at will.

All of us at the WRMRC are looking forward to the near future, where we can meet together again at real club open houses. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for October 16th. In the meantime, we hope this video will suffice.

 

Virtual Doubleheaders Tour 2021

COVID-19 scuttled the 2020 Doubleheaders Layout Tour, but not this year!

This Saturday March 27, 2021, the Doubleheaders will be hosting a free, online Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph model railway tour, featuring a number of great home and club layouts from the area.

The WRMRC CP Sudbury Division Modellers will be participating, with a 25 minute presentation touring the operating portions of our layout, and a live question-and-answer session afterwards.

The virtual tour is being held over the Zoom platform, and interested parties must register in advance for information, schedules and Zoom meeting links.

To register, please contact the Doubleheaders via their website.

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Switching ‘The Canadian’ Video Posted

Our club has been rather neglectful in video creation lately, due in no small part to COVID restrictions keeping us from hosting operating sessions and filming the events. However we’ve cleaned the cobwebs and dusted out our YouTube channel, and are pleased to announce a new video.

This explains how a typical 12-car consist of CP train #2 ‘The Canadian’ was switched out at Sudbury into Toronto (CP train #12) and Montreal (continuing as CP #2) sections, and goes through the shunting step-by-step.

Our club goes through this process each operating session, and the reverse process as well (combining Montreal and Toronto sections into one) at the close of the session. It takes up one scale hour (15 minutes real time) to complete, requires four operators to perform all the moves, and completely shuts down the yard while in progress. Needless to say, it’s a pain in the backside for whoever is performing the Sudbury Yardmaster’s roll that op session, but it’s also an operational highlight of the layout.

As the vaccine roll-out continues, we are hopeful that full club operating sessions can be held again later this year, and you may be able to witness switching ‘The Canadian’ in person again.

 

How Do We Do It? Volume.

There is a current trend among prototype railway modellers to build smaller more sustainable layouts. It was once an ideal to construct very large pikes geared towards operations, where you and a good number of fellow hobbyists would operate together. The problem was that layouts of such size rarely ever are completed within one’s lifetime. So modellers have been pursuing smaller layouts designed to be more faithful to the prototype, operated by a small number of friends, and which can be ‘finished’ within a realistic time-frame. This is a positive movement in the hobby, and a roll-call of some of the layouts featured within the Prototype Modelling Layout Links and Blogs section in the ‘Links’ page of this website shows this to be true.

But on the other end of the sustainable layout spectrum, you’ll find the WRMRC CP Sudbury Division layout. After over 20 years of our membership constructing an entire division of the Canadian Pacific Railway, we can report that this is not something any individual modeller should attempt. There is a lot of time, effort, research, and of course money, that is required to build a layout of this scope.

Volume 5 Rapido FAs

Fresh from some basic decoder programming, a bulk purchase of Rapido CP FA-2, FPA-2 and FB-2 locomotives are gathered together for their official company photographs on the WRMRC layout.

This topic came up at a recent Wednesday work night, when a bit of a WRMRC tradition was being observed. Our latest locomotives from a bulk purchase were belatedly gathered together for their group ‘official company photographs’. In this case it was a dozen Rapido MLW FA-2, FPA-2 and FB-2 locomotives, some of which had to be searched for as they were already in service. With the anticipation of club operating sessions being held again in the future, it was best to gather them all together for their official portraits now before the CP Motive Power Bureau scatters them to the four corners of the layout.

Volume 1 Hoppers

Three dozen 4550 CuFt Hawker-Siddeley cylindrical hoppers decorated for Canada Wheat Board (CPWX) and Saskatchewan Potash received from the  North American Car Corporation.

This brought up a discussion later among the membership present about layout size, sustainability and how fortunate we are in the WRMRC where we all get along so well. The obvious advantage of any train club is to be able to finance and construct a layout larger than any individual could. Unless you are independently wealthy, who can afford to buy 10 DCC sound-equipped locomotives in one shot? But there is much more than pooling our time and resources. From its founding the WRMRC set clear goals for modelling the CP Sudbury Division, and from this came not just a combination of talent and resources, but also friendships and an overall camaraderie have developed.

CP vans on WRMRC

After a delivery of 12 Rapido CP Angus wide-vision vans was received, a group photo of our entire cabooses fleet was taken. These include CP wood-sheathed vans from True Line Trains, some Overland brass cabooses, and a few craftsman resin models built from Sylvan kits.

Volume 2 Canadian

Two full sets of ‘The Canadian’ trainsets from Rapido Trains. This delivery made the longstanding WRMRC dream of operating the CPR’s transcontinental passenger flagships come true.

That said, when we do pool our resources together it really is something. One of our members suggested we show some of these bulk equipment pictures. This makes for a bit of a ‘shock and awe’ photo collection, but these are some of the pics taken over the years.

Volume 3 Paper Cars

Two Ontario Northland cars are dwarfed by 15 CP Rail models in a bulk purchase of NSC PD Boxcars from the Atlas Model Railroad Company.

Volume 4 Big Alcos

A delivery of ten MLW model M-636 locomotives from Bowser Trains.

That old advertising line ‘How Do We Do It?’ may be passé, but in regards to large club layouts, it is true.

Sudbury Icehouse

Another WRMRC landmark structure has been completed recently, this time it’s the large icehouse that once stood along the backtracks of the east-end in Sudbury Yard.

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The newly completed Sudbury icehouse, being set into position on the WRMRC layout.

We have not been able to pinpoint when the icehouse was first erected, but photos show it already standing by the 1920s. It was decommissioned sometime in the mid-1960s after the CPR discontinued “The Dominion”, and the need to ice any heavyweight coaches had ended. However the structure managed to survive until late October of 1974 when it was unceremoniously razed by CPR bulldozers.

Sudbury Icehouse

The Sudbury icehouse, as it appeared in the early 1970s.

This project was seven years in the making, and the first structure (kitbash or scratch-built) ever attempted by our club’s treasurer, Phil. He agreed to tackle the icehouse under the tutelage of our late president (and experienced model builder) Chris Bennett. Armed with official drawings of the CPR standard icehouse provided by the Canadian Pacific Historical Association, Phil and Chris began working out the basic structure out of sheet polystyrene. Chris’ untimely passing resulted in this project being mothballed for years. But Phil began to work on it again recently with fellow member Julius (who constructed the Car Shops building and Doran’s Brewery).

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CP RS-18 #8799 and assigned S-2 switcher #7090 share time alongside the icehouse on the morning of 08 July 1970. We can now recreate this scene on the WRMRC Sudbury Division layout.

We believe that this should be classed as an excellent job by a veteran structure builder, let alone someone’s first attempt at scratchbuilding.

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The icehouse, looking towards the southeast.

Due to the building only surviving the first half of the 1970s, the plan is to make this a removable structure. When operating sessions set in the later ’70s are held, just a foundation will be visible here.

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Sudbury icehouse, looking west towards the Elm St crossing and CP Express sheds.

As per Phil’s suggestion, our Sudbury Icehouse will be dedicated in fond memory of Chris Bennett. The WRMRC hopes this story inspires some armchair modellers out there to move over to a workbench and start working on an outstanding project.

WRMRC Op-Session and Activity Update

Due to Ontario’s extension of emergency orders regarding COVID-19, the WRMRC has cancelled the annual Junk Night operating session which was scheduled for Saturday May 9th; 2020.

At this point the club is planning to start the 2020-21 operating season again in the fall, with the next scheduled op-session planned for Saturday 12 September, 2020. Please continue to monitor this blog along with the WRMRC’s Facebook page for future updates.

While layout progress may have been hampered by the public health crisis, our members have been busy working on many projects from home, or coordinating amongst themselves to limit numbers when visits to the club are required. Here are just a few club ventures while under quarantine.

Romford/Coniston signal project

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Romford Operator Panel

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Reverse side of the Romford Panel – for those who love wiring

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Searchlight signals for Romford and Coniston

Wanapitei River Bridge

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Wanapitei River bridge (in development)

Nelson Street Bridge

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Bridge abutments and scenery repairs (in progress)

Sudbury Ice House

Ice House

Ice House (in development)

Ice House

Ice House

The club is also preparing to work on scenery in a number of areas which will require trees. Many, many trees.

Conifer 01

Conifer 02

One silver lining to the cancellation of operating sessions is that preparations have begun to build the permanent trackage into Espanola, home of the large E. B. Eddy paper mill. Thanks to Fast Tracks, a number of code-70 turnouts have already been built towards this goal.

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Code-70 right-hand turnout built with Fast Tracks jig.

While we certainly miss the comradery that comes with our group work sessions, we are fortunate to live in a time where we can connect digitally. All of us at the WRMRC wish you good health, and to keep up your spirits with good model railway projects.