Thursday 8 March 2018

Throwback Thursday: A Hobby Promotion Courtesy of the Real Thing.

British Columbia Hydro Railway 7533 gets a roll-by inspection in London, Ontario on April 01, 1988.
By Peter Mumby.

I suspect that we've all seen photos of the Model Railroader logo on a real freight car, but here is a similar design on a car belonging to a relatively obscure railway.  This BC Hydro Railway car (BCH 7533) was photographed in London, Ontario on April 01, 1988.  In the photo a railway employee is doing a roll-by inspection while standing on the inside of the red and white crossing gate.  (How many of you remember when they were painted black and white?).  At this time BCH had a group of similar cars in a yellow/red scheme in the 6xx number series, but I don't know how many of these blue cars were on the roster.  I also have a shot of BCH 7611 bearing this special logo; I suspect there must have been others without the logo.  This logo promotes the 1985 PNR convention in Richmond, B.C. Refer to the close- up view.  I vaguely recall an HO scale MDC rendition of this car being offered complete with this PNR logo, but for some reason I resisted the urge to order one.  Opportunity missed!  Oh well, one more item to watch for at the next train show!

This close-up view of the same car shows that the logo was promoting the 1985 PNR convention of the NMRA.  Thanks to Don McQueen for engineering this scan.

2 comments:

  1. Hi George. I checked with some friends who were on the convention committee. BC Hydro did 21 cars with the convention logo. They had a contest looking for proof of the farthest car from Richmond (a suburb of Vancouver BC). The farthest spotted was delivering a shipment of lumber to a business in Florida. The convention sold both HO and N scale models of the cars. This was my first convention and it was great fun

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    1. Thanks for the additional information Ken. Interesting to hear that many cars had been done. I know Peter will be delighted with this information...George

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