O Scale Trains Magazine Online

Canadian
Pacific
Icehouse
Tom houle
I like smallish structures. They fit
nicely on my modest O Scale layout, and
don’t overpower my locos and rolling
stock. I spotted this CPR icehouse while
searching through an old stack of Model
Railroader magazines. The icehouse ran
as a one-page article titled “CPR Standard
No. 2 Icehouse” in the March, 1978
issue. The article had a prototype drawing
by Harold W. Russell and a few paragraphs
of text ostensibly by the Model
Railroader staff. What caught my eye
was the outside staircase and louvered
cupola details. It was a simple structure
with details that wouldn’t challenge my
scratchbuilding skills. I also had a string
of wood-sided reefers and no icehouse to
service them.
The icing on the cake was its size. The
structure was 40’ long and 32’ deep. In
O Scale that’s an 8” x 10” footprint. I had
no idea icehouses were ever built that
small. All the icehouses I’ve ever seen, in
prototype or kit form, were much longer
with elevated platforms that could ice
several cars at a time. Apparently, the
Canadian Pacific saw a need for a single
car icehouse. In any case, this beauty
was perfectly suited for an unoccupied
siding at a bend in my layout.
According to the MR article text, Mr.
Russell drew the structure from 1914
Canadian Pacific drawings. The structure
has four bays, with a total ice capacity
of 318 tons; small as icehouses go. Additional
bays could be added in 12’ increments
to increase icing capacity. MR says
an average reefer needs about five tons
of ice in chunk form. With its 318 ton
capacity, this icehouse is not likely to run
out of ice while servicing the handful of
reefers I operate on my branch line.
Interested? Let’s get started. I like to
gather all of the basswood stock I need
ahead of time. That way, when I’m in
the middle of a sub-assembly at 9:00 at
night, I don’t find myself running out of
critical material before I finish whatever
it is I’m working on. I began construction
with the cupola, as I thought those louvers
might be a bit pesky. I like to get the
pesky stuff out of the way first.
Cupola Construction
I began by breaking out my Northwest
Short Line Chopper and jigging it
to cut 32 louvers for the four sides of the
cupola. The louvers are cut from Evergreen
0.020” x 0.125” styrene strip. The
cupola end louvers are cut 27/32” long.
The cupola side louvers are cut 15/16”
long. As shown in Photos 1 and 2, and
in Figure 1 (see page 17) , the louvers
slide into grooves notched into the 1/16”
x 1/8” louver frames. The whole process
of cutting the grooves, pinning down the
louver frames over the drawing, and then
1
sliding each louver into its set of grooves
is kind of tedious. A pair of tweezers
helped me set the louvers in place. Bear
with it. It’s what we scratchbuilders do,
and you’ll end up with a respectable
looking louvered cupola. Visitors to your
layout might even take a second close
look at your cupola and mutter, “How’d
you do that?”
My inclination when doing this sort of
thing is to throw away a piece if it doesn’t
quite fit and just re-do it. I believe that’s
part of what makes great modelers great.
They aren’t necessarily more talented
than us peons but they are persistent and
willing to toss-and-repeat until they get it
right. A tiny dot of slow-setting CA glue
at the end of each louver will secure the
louvers to the louver frame.
When the louver sub-assemblies were
done, I cut out the cupola sides and
ends from 1/32” basswood sheet. The
louver frames were carefully positioned,
and then glued to the inside faces of the
cupola ends and sides. Before you assem-
2
July/Aug ’06 - O Scale Trains • 13