The Halifax South Western in 1996...

For a brief period in the 1990s the rare sight of a two axle GE U-boat could be found on the south shore of Nova Scotia, as HSWR's ten green U18Bs plied the route 5 days a week between Halifax and Bridgewater, with local switching 6 days a week down to Liverpool... 

The track was light, the bridges almost life expired and the U18Bs did their bit to keep this route open as long as was possible, but the inevitable decision was made in 2004 to abandon service south of Lakeside. These photos from 1996, somewhere between Lakeside and Chester show 1801 with a short train of empty cars bound for Bowaters in Liverpool.

Our photographer has got lucky as he's also caught one of the patch painted cars, which by this stage were quite rare as almost the entire fleet were repainted into the Brunswick green on the lead vehicle.

Of course, this is all a work of fiction and shows my TerraTransport 'what if' liveried U18B on my H0 scale 'Kinross' cameo layout with a pair of Branchline Trains 50ft cars. The lead car is now on it's way to Andrew in Alberta, so keep an eye out for it again on the blog soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the back-story, I find these works of fiction weave a rich sense of believability into our modelling. For now, more soon...