Throwback Thursday - TH&B Steel-Sided Vans

TH&B 71 is sitting in the van alley on the north side of Aberdeen Yard in Hamilton, Ontario.

By Peter Mumby.

The equipment roster of the Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo Railway was compact, even by model railroad standards.  In 1986, the last full year before total absorption by CP Rail, 17 locomotives wore TH&B's handsome maroon and cream livery.  The all-GM listing consisted of NW2, SW9, GP7, and GP9 models.  At the other end of the train, fewer than a dozen cabooses were available.  These cars appeared in three basic configurations.

THB 71 is representative of the end-cupola model used by TH&B. These cars featured placard holders that generally carried safety slogans such as the "Tight Grip Safe Trip" shown in the photo.  Bay window van 62 has an empty placard holder as illustrated, but I have an earlier photo of the same car bearing the slogan "Look Around Getting Down."

By 1986, the modern wide vision vans were seeing more use than the previously mentioned cars.  These four cabooses had been built in 1973 at CP's Angus Shops in Montreal.  They were virtually identical to the CP wide vision vans, with the major difference being the single rear spotlights at roof level.  Only the CP International Service cars shared this characteristic.

Bay window van 62 posed for its portrait at Aberdeen Yard on July 27, 1987.

On February 21, 1988, three quarters of the roster of wide vision cabooses was present and accounted for at Aberdeen Yard.