Thursday, October 17, 2024

Thoughts on: In Search of a Dream


I’ve admired the Pendon Museum for a long time and have wanted to visit for an equally long time. Finally in 2019 we made plans to go there in March 2020. It turned out that month they were holding a class in modelling buildings. That seemed perfect: I could visit the museum, take in a class from one of their master modellers, as well as tour Oxford and the nearby regions. 


Well, as we all know, March 2020 was when covid was beginning its onslaught. We cancelled our trip once it became clear covid was a global pandemic and not just a blip on the medical radar. The only good thing that came from that cancelation was the airline did eventually refund our tickets. Like everyone else we hunkered down for the long haul, and 2020 became a banner year for 30Squares posts. I hit an all time high of 287. 


We thought 2024 would be the year for visiting Pendon, but personal events conspired against us. Maybe next year. In the meantime though I went ahead and bought a copy of In Search of a Dream edited by Stephen Williams that was published by Wild Swan Books in 2022. It’s the story of Roye England, Pendon’s founder, and his account of his life and the museum’s creation and development. I had been holding off buying this book as I thought it would be nice to purchase it at Pendon when I visited, but with my questionable travel track record I thought I should just go ahead and buy one online from their shop. I’m glad I did since after reading it I think I’ll have a bit better appreciation of the museum if we ever do visit.


I thought this might be a rather dry and clinical book. I was dead wrong. It’s mainly Roye England’s autobiography supplemented by a large collection of fascinating photos, additional text by Williams to explain and elaborate on some of the more obscure passages in the autobiography, along with chapters by Williams to fill in missing information and update us on events after Roye’s* death. 


Roye was a very engaging writer and I found his accounts compelling. His autobiography reads almost as some sort of adventure story, which I guess in a sense it is. Although at times I thought the book’s title should have been In Search of a Dream and Money as creating what would become the Pendon museum often seemed like a constant struggle for money. Neither Roye nor any of the protagonists were flush with cash. It required tenacity over the decades to bring Pendon to life. There were no wealthy benefactors with big bags of moolah in this story, but there were plenty of good people who helped and contributed in many ways big and small, and sometimes with a bit of cash.


It strikes me that Roye was something of a charismatic figure as well as being a world class model maker. He seemed to have a way with people that got them to believe in the idea of Pendon as he did and attracted them to participate in its mission. However, he didn’t seem to be a scheming entrepreneur, but simply a good person with an authentic dream and a determination to realize it. The people he encountered seemed to sense that. Although the down side seemed to be at times he was taken advantage of and his honest authenticity brushed close to naiveté.


In Search of a Dream is also a story about model making of the highest standard and of the folk art buildings approach to modelling. This may seem like a contradictory combination, but it isn’t. I think part of the problem is that the common association with the term ‘folk art buildings approach’ is with backwoods bumpkins hacking out models with junk found on the back forty. As I’ve discussed before, it’s actually a person’s desire to communicate about one’s environment, built or natural, current or past, and one’s feelings towards it, using materials one can access. It’s ‘folk’ because these people aren’t necessarily trained professionals, just people from all walks of life that have the desire. Let me emphasize: it’s about desire and communication, not strict adherence to certain materials and signifiers. Roye seemed to have the folk art buildings spirit in him from birth to death, but he always wanted to express it with the highest standards of modelling, standards that were far from common in his glory days. He demanded it of himself and of others he worked with. And many worked with him to those standards.


This summer I also read Linn Westcott’s book, Model Railroading with John Allen, published in 1981. Allen and Roye were contemporaries of a sort. Allen was born in 1913, and Roye in 1906. Both created in the mid-century era what would become two of the 20th century’s most famous and influential layouts. Unfortunately Allen’s would be destroyed by fire soon after his death in 1973 leaving behind only a few relics. Roye died in 1995, but Pendon continues on. I have no idea if Allen and Roye ever communicated, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew of each other’s work, at least through the model railroad press.


It’s tough for me to think too deeply about Allen’s motivations for building the G&D as Westcott’s book doesn’t contain Allen’s autobiography - I don’t think one exists? Autobiographies can provide an important view on a person’s life from which patterns might be discerned. But, I will note from the layouts and modelling work, both Allen and Roye were committed to high standards, both were determined, and both took model railroading beyond what had been the norm for hobbyists. Allen’s project was more of a private undertaking; Roye’s a more public one. Allen didn’t seem to struggle for money for the G&D as he lived frugally on good investments; Roye had a constant financial struggle to bring Pendon to life, but he lived frugally too.


Needless to say, I highly recommend In Search of a Dream.


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*I am taking the liberty of referring to Roye England as “Roye” as it seems odd to me to keep writing “England did this and England did that”, and using the full “Roye England” seems cumbersome.

Friday, October 11, 2024

Even mountains evolve

After

Even though I'm deep into surfacing the mountain and casting rocks I still spend time just staring at the thing from different angles.

I began to think the portion of the mountain on the parking lot lobe that partially obscures the track going to the inspiration point stub needed to be taller. If I left it as it was it was going to be the same height as the granite gate, and that I didn't want. So, I glued some foam pieces on above the portal to make it taller. No doubt it'll undergo some revision as I continue shaping, especially once I put in the granite gate.

All this is just to say that I keep revising the mountain even at these later stages. The idea that once a phase of construction is done it's done for good and I move onto the next is fiction. 

Before

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Found while searching for Rolliam photos


I stumbled across this old film footage of the Grasse River Railroad, the owners of the Rolliam (the inspiration for E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach), while looking for pictures of the vehicle that might help in modelling a motorized version of Mr. Moore's creation. It's fascinating to watch even though there are no up close and personal shots of the Rolliam. However, there are a few places in the film where there are blurry but tantalizing shots of a boxy, Rolliam-like vehicle parked on a siding like these two screen captures:



There might be more and better images out there hidden in the backgrounds of obscure films. The search continues.

Monday, October 7, 2024

More Coming Attractions: Motorizing E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach

Left: My build of E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach | Right: BD Concepts drive unit with my base attached

If you are a longtime reader here you may recall I've had it on my to-do list for quite awhile to motorize E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach project. If you follow that link you'll see that back in 2016 I noted that what E. L. Moore, Lucious Beebe, and Charles Clegg thought was a regular old coach operated by the Grasse River Railroad was actually a self-powered vehicle called the 'Rolliam'. Since finding that out I've been toying with the idea of motorizing the coach, but have never gotten around to doing it.

BD Concepts HO gauge (16.5mm), 28mm wheelbase drive unit

Recently the magazine Voie Libre has been promoting some drive units manufactured by a company called BD Concepts. I found their motor bogies intriguing and thought one of them may be a good choice for a motorized coach.

Mr. Moore notes in his article that he used a passenger truck from Central Valley that had an 8' scale wheelbase. I didn't have such a truck on hand, so I used one with a 8'-6" wheelbase that John generously gave me. BD-Concepts has an HO-gauge drive unit with a 28mm wheelbase, which translates to 8 scale HO feet, so that seemed a good choice for the project. I bought one from here, and the instruction sheet can be found here.


There are two ways one can attach the drive to a body: using a screw through the centre post, or by clipping on a flat base by way of those 4 sprung protrusions near the centre top of the unit (there are 2 on each side). I chose to use the second method as I think it's more appropriate for this project. 

0.040" thick, 19' x 8' styrene base with a 21mm x 12.5mm rectangular hole in the centre

The BD Concepts instructions note that if you're using the second method, the base needs to be 1mm thick, with a 21mm x 12.5mm rectangular hole for accommodating the top of the drive unit. The 1mm thickness translates very closely to 0.040". E. L. Moore notes his base is 19' x 8', so I cut a piece of 0.040" thick sheet styrene to that size with the recommended hole cut in the centre. You may recall Mr. Moore used a scrap of yard stick for his base, and so did I, so this is a big change!


The base fits the drive quite well and is held in place very snuggly by the little clips. I was chomping at the bit to give this thing a try, so I went ahead and got it ready for a test spin on the Way Out Layout.


I put a piece of electrical tape over the centre opening because I didn't want my weight shorting out the motor. The instructions say that for the unit to run reliably it needs a little weight, so for that I used a 1 euro coin, which the internet tells me weighs 7.5 grams and seems appropriate for this test. I used some household tape to attach it to the base.


The BD Concepts instructions say the unit's operating voltage is 0 to 12V, and not to exceed 15V. To be on the safe side I ran the test with my Rokuhan RC-02 battery powered controller. It only puts out a maximum of 10V when the batteries are fresh, so the recommended maximum can't be exceeded. As well, I did some loops of the track simply by pushing the terminals of a new 9V battery against the track. In this video of one lap of the track, the Rokuhan controller is set to about 2/3 maximum.

  

The unit runs quite well and I think it will be alright for the Spumoni Club Coach, er, Spumoni Club Rolliam :-) This is another project awaiting the snow to fly, but in the meantime I need to think about whether I'll just replace the truck on the coach I've already built, or build a new Spumoni Club Rolliam specific body. The current body doesn't have an interior control station, or a place for a driver, and I would suspect there'd need to be a radiator out front as the Rolliam was powered by an automobile engine. Well, these deep questions need lots of coffee :-)

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Tunnel portals

I think I'm at the point in mountain surfacing where I need to install the finished tunnel portals so I can blend them in cleanly with the rest of the mountain.

The portals are cut from some fine grained, 1/4" thick Midwest brand foam sheet I bought many years ago. The year carvings are some plastic numbers I had in my scrap box. I've given the portals a basic painting before installation, but weathering will be done in situ with the rest of the mountain when the time comes for that.