Rail & Launch Control building shell done

It's been a very long time since I started on the Rail & Launch Control building for the Tintin 2001 layout. I had a good long look at the shell and decided there wasn't much detailing left to do, so I jumped in and had a go.

Interior for the garage.

The biggest job was to fill in the interior of the building's garage end. For this I built a little box from styrene sheet and stuck on some styrene pieces to give the walls a little surface detail. That big rectangular hole in the ceiling is for lighting.

Interior unit installed in garage end.

Most of that surfacing will not be readily viewable, but a little something was needed for visual interest.

Finally, I took advantage of some unusually fine weather and gave the shell a spray of matte white paint outside to help unify the look of the thing.

The next step will be to add windows and interior lighting. I'll deal with Moon dust weathering once it's on the layout.

TD Centre in Girder & Panel?

Left: A skeleton sketch for a TD Centre model | Right: The fire lookout tower frame

As well as the fire lookout tower, over the summer I also played around with the idea of building the TD Centre model in Girder & Panel. I was thinking it would be both an easier means of construction, and fit in with the vibe of creating the model with a construction toy made in Toronto during the same era as the TD Centre itself was built. Ok, well, that TD Centre frame shown up there is built from Kenner components. I'd have to find a lot more Peter-Austin parts to pull off this project.

It's an interesting concept, but as I framed out the structure it dawned on me it would be a much more difficult way of building.

Centre: A card sketch of a possible 'TD Centre' panel | Ends: Kenner box-stock panels

For one thing, I'd need 88 little, custom-made wall panels for covering the thing, plus some 'glass' ones for the bottom. Mass producing them is not something I'm interested in doing.

Although, I still like the concept of creating fictional construction kits of landmark Canadian buildings built in the 1960s from a Canadian construction toy from the same era.

As I dream on, I'll leave you with these silent movie clips of Toronto shot in 1978 I recently stumbled across. Watch for a glimpse of the TD Centre early on.

Floors for the lookout tower

It's not too straight without the diagonal braces

That red assemblage of Peter-Austin girders, aka the fire lookout tower, has appeared in several posts about the Inglenook Lake layout. I've been thinking a lot about how to transform it from a skeletal form to a credible HO scale forest fire lookout tower, but over the last few days I got out my tools and materials and got down to some serious work.

The first step is floors, and how to link them with stairs.

A floor template was made and then traced multiple times onto a sheet of 0.030" thick sheet styrene.
Those holes are stairway openings.

I played around with various stairway organizations: wrapping them around the interior perimeter in a spiral from floor-to-floor; keeping all the stairs to one side; and finally, settling on a simple zig-zag up the centre of the structure. This last one allowed for the most room for the imaginary hauling of things up the stairs, and for stepping off one stairway to the next with enough clearance, all the while keeping each floor's perimeter free and clear for easy viewing into the forest.

For stairs I'm going to use Plastruct item number 90662. The packaging of these items is weird in that it states the stairs are HO-scale and 1:100. I ignored that. When placed near an HO-scale figure they look right, and inside the tower any issues with scale won't be noticeable. 

Test fitting the floors. They aren't glued in, just press fit.

Maybe I shouldn't, but I'm trying to make whatever parts I create for this thing be as stylistically close to original Peter-Austin parts as I can. Yes, I'll be painting the parts, but I want to see if I can create the illusion of a fictitious Peter-Austin play set being used to create a credible HO-scale structure. 

The roof is a laminate of styrene squares with a corrugated piece on top.
The notches on the inner ply are to set over pegs in the girders.

The structure still looks a bit clunky at this stage with its odd, toy-like colours and not so straight frame. All readily correctable as construction progresses. So far so good though. 

Wanderin'

I stumbled across this simple improvisational kitbash of Revell's Engine House on a vendor's table at last month's model railway swap meet. It's always good to see these old things out and about in the world. No, I didn't buy it as I've got a lot on my plate as it is, and that relic needs a lot of love to bring it back to life.

Ok, after Billy Preston really lightened my mood, I stumbled across VIA Rail getting into the music genre for study, sleep, meditation, focusing, and unwinding with this video entitled, Relaxing Train Sounds for Sleeping:

In case you were wondering, there's a French version too (or maybe I should reverse things and say there's an English version too :-) ) ! 

As the calming train sounds got me all relaxed and horizontal I started again to think about the pleasant horizontality of the Expeditor floatplane:

The Expeditor and the Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior both are cool expressions of mid to late 1930s aerodynamic streamlining that I quite like.

The floatplane version of the Bronco doesn't have that highly planar sleekness, but it does have a purposeful look to it. 

Well, the time change is getting the better of me, so I'll leave you with some classic Billy Preston, and a dash of Anthony Bourdain:

The lights go on at the Repair Shop

I decided to spend some time finishing off the Repair Shop. All I had left to do was the roof and lights. I was getting all wrapped around the axle about what sort of business it would house, and what the interior should look like, and that was blocking me from actually finishing the thing. 

I made the roof removable by gluing to the kit's roof panels some rafters cut from 0.020" thick styrene. I also added a channel for an LED strip.

Roof with new, flexible LED wires.
Note the inside roof surface is painted white to reflect light.

I found when it came to placing the roof on the walls the LED wires weren't flexible enough, and their stiffness kept the roof from sitting properly. So, I rummaged around my odds-and-ends boxes for some smaller diameter, more flexible wire, peeled off the LED strip, removed the old wires, and soldered on the new ones. They did the trick, and the roof now can be made to sit easily on the walls.

To the exterior roof surface a ridge cap cut from 0.010" thick styrene was added, as were two ventilators (they're Walthers rooftop accessory products).

 That guy up there in silhouette is the same guy standing beside this side door:

Out front, him and the building look about the right size for each other, but as I noted in a previous post, he's too tall for the side door. I measured that door, and long story short, based on standard door heights, the model is probably somewhere in the 1:110 to 1:120 scale range, where 1:120 is TT-scale. On the Way Out Layout, the side doors will be out of sight, blocked from easy comparison views by neighbouring buildings. The new door that addresses the street though is HO, and doesn't look out of place on this structure. 

One last thing before coffee: kit history.

Left: Pola 'Quick' B 623 | Right: Pola 11623

I took another deep dive to see if I could find out anything about this kit. It turns out it was a Pola kit that was marketed in the US and Canada by AHM. It was first released by Pola in the late 60s or early 70s in their Quick range as kit # B623. Interestingly Pola also released an N-scale version as Pola 240. An internet search suggested that the kit isn't based on a specific prototype, but don't quote me on that as I can't find a solid reference for that assertion.