Brief Blogging Break

Ivor the Inquirer comes knocking; Eagle Annual #8 

Going on hiatus for a little while. 

With summer weather beaming down I don't want it to go to waste.

Now where's my bug spray and suntan lotion?

Sébastien Pajot's HO scale Ville du Nord in the Belle Epoque

Galen alerted me to the amazing HO scale work of Sébastien Pajot. You can find more at Pajot's YouTube channel and website. I'm still going through the videos and photos, but Pajot appears to be a master of card modelling. In some ways his approach reminds me of the buildings at the Pendon Museum. 

A review of the Bodys Isek Kingelez MOMA exhibition catalogue

The Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition from 26 May 2018 to 1 January 2019 of a large collection of Bodys Isek Kingelez’s miniature buildings and layouts. Apparently it was the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Kingelez’s work to date. I recently read about his work, as well as the MOMA exhibition, and had to get a copy of the exhibition’s catalogue. It’s an excellent book: hardcover; full colour; 144 pages, 77 of which are high quality photos of his models and layouts; 5 essays on his work; comprehensive references; and some writings by Kingelez himself top it off. I’m quite impressed by the book’s design and organization, and I’m thinking some variation on it would be good to use for the E. L. Moore book.

I found the book’s most striking aspects are the collection of model photos, and the lead essay by the exhibition’s curator, Sarah Suzuki, the MOMA’s curator of drawings and prints. Suzuki’s essay gives an excellent overview of Kingelez’s life and work, although one statement gave me a little concern:

Kingelez’s practice, though unquestionably appealing to curators, critics, and art historians, has presented them a maddening challenge. In collapsing the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and design, it eludes the categorization and classification on which institutional collections rely, and in its lack of known art historical precedents it evades the genealogy that we love to document and trace.

When I first saw Kingelez’s miniature buildings they immediately struck me as being well within the long folk art tradition of miniature building construction. I’m not saying any of the analysis in the catalogue is wrong, only that the practice of folk art miniature buildings is another lens through which Kingelez’s work can be viewed. It helps resolve the categorization issue Suzuki raises, and places Kingelez’s work in what I think is a global art.

Long time readers of the blog will know that I think E. L. Moore is a figure in that tradition, and that my thoughts on this coalesced when I read a 2014 New York Times article on the American folk art buildings collection of Steven Burke and Randy Campbell. Burke and Campbell have also documented their collection in their own catalogue, which when viewed in parallel with Kingelez’s makes for an interesting bit of comparative reading. 

Ok, so why do I think Kingelez’s work can be viewed as part of the folk art miniature buildings tradition? First, let’s look at some of the characteristics of work in this field and their creators.

1. The models are made from fairly simple materials and tools that are readily found around the home. Cardboard, wood, paper, foam board, and paint are mainstays. Cast-offs, junk, and recycled materials are also often incorporated. Chosen materials usually evolve with the artist, but don’t stray too far from their roots. Simple tools are used. Modern craft and hobby lingo would call this a basic form of scratchbuilding.

2. This is often a lifetime activity, or one that has been part of the artist’s life for decades and only ends when the artist dies. It’s not unusual for the artist to start as a child, but coming to the art when older isn’t unheard of - for a few it’s started in middle age. It’s generally not something an artist picks up for a commission or two and then moves on to something else as if it were just another assignment in the corporate world.

3. It’s a compulsion. A compulsion to create something that expresses something important to them, and that something has buildings as its core means of expression. This doesn’t mean the works ignore the market and the artists live in poverty, only that the work isn’t created solely based on market demands. Commissions, sales of works, articles and stories, even at times commodification, and so on, aren’t unusual. The artists haven’t taken vows of poverty or exclusion from the world, it’s just that the work, to a large degree, is self-propelled. 

4. I don’t like the term ‘folk art miniature buildings’ as it carries all sorts of unconscious associations about the works and their creators. It’s easy to find pieces that have been cunningly created to cash in on subconscious assumptions about folk art buildings; these are imposter works. For example, one stereotypical aspect is that of crude construction. Just because the materials are unassuming, cast-offs, or junk, doesn’t mean they’ll be used without skill in a clumsy and unthoughtful manner. Manufacturers of knock-offs will often focus on what they think is folksy crudity to signal to uninformed buyers that they’re getting real folk art.

5. The artists in this field tend not to be professionally trained in the arts. This doesn’t exclude those with arts training, it just means that it’s an activity that’s usually undertaken by non-professionals, which may have lead to the categorization problem Suzuki alludes to. 

I’ve written about a few people I consider to be in the tradition, but Burke and Campbell note in their book that many works from past ages are anonymous, so historical documentation is often almost impossible to find. They also speculate that the art in America more-or-less died out after World War II, thereby ending a long run that possibly started sometime after the Civil War. I think in the post-WWII era it was subsumed into other arts, crafts, and hobbies, although many of its characteristics did die away in the process. It’s indeed a rare thing to see today, and I think the internet will speed the demise of whatever is left.

Here’s a list of a few artists I’ve written about that I think can be argued to be in the field, or did some work in it.

1. Laurence T. Gieringer. His work and origin story is a classic.

2. E. L. Moore. Most of my writing at this blog has been about his work. He’s also a good example of a person who had he lived his entire life in the pre-WWII era, might have been thought of as a true folk art building artist, but it turns out he’s one who’s work has all the characteristics of folk art, but was subsumed into post WWII model railroading, which I think he did so he could earn some money in the industry’s publications.

3. Roye England. He’s Pendon’s founder. I haven’t written about him here, but his story and work in the creation of the Pendon Museum is squarely in the wheelhouse.

4. Michael Paul Smith. He had arts training and worked in some arts related jobs, but his personal work is purely in the field. I highly recommend the 2015 book, Elgin Park: Visual Memories of Midcentury America at 1/24th scale, about about his projects that was written with Gail K. Ellison.

5. Mark Hogancamp. I’d say his work and personal history skirts the field, but I’d feel remiss about not mentioning him. One thing I’d recommend is watching Jeff Malmberg’s 2010 documentary about him, Marwencol, and then watching the 2018 Robert Zemeckis film, Welcome to Marwen, based on Hogancamp’s experiences and world. Pay special attention to how Zemeckis and team have reimagined Hogancamp’s miniature city for purposes of the movie against Hogancamp’s orginal. 

6. Seth. The famous cartoonist is clearly a mainstream artist; however, his personal long-term project of making buildings for his imaginary city of Dominion is definitely in the field. Surprisingly, when I saw Kingelez’s vibrantly coloured buildings I immediately thought of how they contrasted with Seth’s rather grey and monochromatic ones. Although, both Seth and Kingelez only use real buildings as starting points, if at all, and don’t concentrate on creating replicas.

7. Kim Adams. I much admire his work, but it’s another that skirts the field. When it comes to exuberance, his work is certainly up there with Kingelez’s, but Adams’ work is based on kitbashing as opposed to scratchbuilding, which I think is modern craft lingo for what happens in folk art miniature buildings. This opens up questions about how far a folk artist can go with using found objects and still be called a scratchbuilder instead of a kitbasher. Kingelez wasn’t a kitbasher.

8. George Iliffe Stokes. Although ostensively in the model railway field, his miniature buildings transcend it and document a serious love of English architecture. 

No doubt there’re more. This is all a work-in-progress and I’ll write about those I find.

From Suzuki’s essay and the model photos Kingelez’s work checks the field’s major boxes, but like all the field’s practitioners he brings things to the table that are uniquely his own. Kingelez, unlike most, didn’t make replicas of existing buildings, even though as Suzuki points out, a few of Kinshasa’s buildings may have influenced his early work. And as his work developed, it grew in expressiveness and complexity. His work was about ideas and designs that were uniquely his own. Often artists in the field stick with replicating, to various degrees, things that are meaningful to them that already exist in the world. That wasn’t Kingelez’s style. The thing to remember is that doesn’t exclude him from the field.

Before wrapping up, I should note there does seem to be a little railwaying in Kingelez’s work. Take a look again at the book’s cover. I spread it open for a reason: front and centre is a railway station with tracks entering on the right and leaving out the back on the left, that then rise up to meet some elevated track. The cover photo is one of a section of an approximately 19’ x 8’ layout called Ville Fantome, presented in plate 28 on page 116, which shows the elevated track, once down range from the station, making a hard 90-degree turn, and then dropping down to ground level to run parallel to what looks like a canal. It appears the layout is built from side-by-side placed modules, although personal inspection would be needed to confirm this. Scale? Hard to tell if there is one, but I’d hazard to guess if there was any explicit scaling it wouldn’t be larger than Z. Ville Fantome is a layout, a non-functioning one by the standards of the model railway hobby, but a layout nevertheless.

HeliPad 76

No, that's not an LP, it's a helipad

I was rooting around old family photos and found that one of the helipad on my layout from the ‘70s. Surprisingly, unlike most of my old photos, this one has a date stamped on the back: May 1976. These days I’m thinking about things to include either on the current layout’s ocean park module or on a new layout. I’ve been playing with the helipad idea.

Or maybe it should be an airship aerodrome. Or maybe it’s just May weather that gets me thinking about flying machines. Back in May 2019 in one of the From the Time Machine’s Glovebox posts I pulled out the E. L. Moore-esque setup story from a fictional project called Al’s Airship Aerodrome. If you don’t like clicking links, here’s the setup:

I was renewing my liability insurance this afternoon and started to wonder if I had ever told you about the time I built the airship hanger.

Well, one day a couple of years back this Brazilian gentleman called me up from Paris – Paris, France that is – and asked if I could build him a hanger down in the County for an airship. I was glad to hear that my reputation for frugality was known in some quarters of the City of Light. This fellow – I never could pronounce his name properly, so we agreed I’d just call him Al, which it turns out he rather liked, and he’d call me Monsieur M, which Cousin Cal thought was hilarious, but I was partial to the sound of it, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Al was a ‘Personal Blimp’ builder. I hadn’t heard of such an occupation, but I figured there are personal computers, personal trainers, even personal pan pizzas, so why not personal blimps. 

Anyway, he was coming over to the County for a few months to get this financier-turned-gentleman-farmer fitted out with a personal blimp, and all the things needed to own and operate one. That included a hanger to park it in. That’s where I came in. You might ask, why was a railroad man like myself called up for this project? Like I said, there’s frugality, but it did involve a considerable amount of railroad gear.

For one thing, there’s the doors. A blimp, even a personal-sized one, is mighty big. The doors on the garage needed to park this beast are 50 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Now, Al is one smart cookie and on the hanger his guys built in Monaco, he figured out how to make the doors ride on rails so that even a 10-year-old kid could push them open. Given that Cousin Cal is the spittin’ image of the ‘before’ guy in those Charles Atlas ads, this was just his speed. 

But, as things turned out, it wasn’t Cousin Cal’s lack of muscle power that tripped up this project, it was his lack of brain power. A blimp garage is more-or-less one gigantic loco shed, so the other railroad thing you need, is some track for hauling in blimp parts, and for bringin’ in helium tanks if hydrogen just won’t do. Al’s one of those renegades who swears by hydrogen for these things – none of that expensive helium for him. No sir. He makes it – hydrogen that is – himself right there in the shed. According to Al, hydrogen is like a woman – if they are treated with care and respect, then all will be well. Unfortunately for him he never met Cousin Cal and his ancient loco. Track, an old sparking loco, lots of hydrogen nearby: you can see where this is going. Well, more on this later. Here’s what you’ll need to build a blimp aerodrome to service the more responsible personal airship aficionados on your pike...

Luckily there’s a balsa shortage or I might give this a try :-)

Back when I built Mr. Scott’s Dilithium Crystal Factory I included a shuttle craft landing pad on the roof, but I don’t think roof-top landing is what I have in mind these days. It’s got to be at ground level.

Hmm. Blimp handling likely requires too much real estate. A heliport can likely be made more compact than my youthful attempt in the ‘70s. I need to look around for HO scale helicopters. 

The HQ gets a removable roof

I think roofs are odd things in HO scale buildings. In real life down here at ground level we often don't see much of roofs, and when we do they usually aren't the main attraction.

On a layout we observe our little HO world like giants. We're confronted with acres and acres of roofs in all their glorious detail. The sight of all those roofs should make it clear that we need to configure our layouts so they stand near eye level.

Ok, that's my pre-coffee rant, and my my way of saying why I don't like to spend much time on roofs.

Now that's out of my system, with coffee in hand, let's look at the HQ's roof.

The roof trusses were glued to the underside of the roof. This takes a bit of careful alignment because the kit's roof is non-removable, and is installed by first gluing the trusses to steel columns inside the building and placing the roof panels on top.

The trusses need to be spaced so that they will go around the outside of the elevator shaft. 

You can see that I had to notch the roof's corners so the assembly wouldn't interfere with the building's corner pilasters. I think I the notches are a little too big, but they're not visible.

Along the ridge I glued on a strip of 0.010" styrene, and off to the side is a Walther's air conditioning unit from their roof-top accessories kit. The a/c is placed so it's directly above the elevator shaft.

I often add air conditioners so I have something to hold onto when I'm removing a roof, and that's why I added one to this project. The a/c is attached to the roof panel with plastic solvent, so when dry it's solidly held in place and can resist handling.

Lighting is from two LED strips that have been stuck in channels built up from 0.020" styrene sheet. The short strip is located at the front, and in retrospect I should have made it as long as the one at the back. The wire leads snake down the elevator shaft and out through a hole in the building's floor.

To finish off this side the roof panels were brush painted with some gloppy white acrylic to improve the interior's reflectivity.

The roof's outer surface was first base coated with Revell's Aqua Color Tar Black, and when dry, several layers of thin washes of Tamiya's XF-1 Flat Black, XF-80 Royal Light Gray, and XF-49 Khaki were applied. The chimney, also from Walther's roof-top accessories kit, and a/c were based coated with flat aluminum before applying washes. 

I make no claim to this looking realistic, and I tend to let the paint move and settle as it wants to. I'm more concerned with achieving an interesting pattern more than anything else.

The lighting isn't too bad and one can see inside fairly clearly. 

Argh, I see I haven't set the roof's front edge properly. That'll need a little touch-up painting along the edge and some adjustment.

Not much more to go to finish this. There're a few interior detail parts I need to order, but I think I'll finish off some inside wall detailing on the upper floor while I wait for delivery.

A review of Toy Buildings 1880-1980 by Patty Cooper & Dian Zillner

This book was published by Schiffer Publications in 2000, and you might ask why buy a book from the early days of the internet when what’s inside has likely been obsolesced by what’s available on today’s internet? Well, first off, I don’t think the information on the internet is complete, and is no doubt not without errors and inaccuracies of its own. Also, I think books bring structure and thoroughness to a subject that is often beyond the internet's capability. And, I like getting pre-internet and non-internet perspectives on things, not to mention I found a good copy for a low price :-) 

As the title says, it’s filled with photos and information on toy buildings that were sold in the US from 1880 to 1980. It doesn’t cover doll houses, construction sets, or most kits of buildings available for model railroads. I had hoped it would cover Kenner’s Girder & Panel construction sets, as I had one as a child in the ‘60s, but no such luck. Pre-assembled toys sold as children’s toys is more or less it. However, that in itself is a lot, and the book provides a good overview of the field. There are many interesting items covered in its pages, but I’ll mention just one collection that I found particularly interesting: Chapter I, The Village, Town, and City, and in particular, The New Pretty Village play sets.

Pages 10 &11: Cardboard village play sets

Starting in 1897 the McLoughlin Brothers company, a New York publishing company founded in 1858, sold a series of build-them-yourself cardboard miniature building sets under the name The New Pretty Village. These were sets of lithographed cardboard model buildings, sold flat-packed in boxes measuring 8.5” x 11.5” x 1”, that could be easily assembled by children. Folding and interlocking were basically all that was needed to be done to quickly build up a little village. The miniature buildings are quite charming, but take a look at the box art the sets came in. What we see being advertised are layouts; layouts made from McLoughlin buildings of course, but layouts nevertheless. 

Box art for the Engine House Set

The Engine House set in the series was released in 1900, and I found this image of its box art on the internet. I should note that 'engine house' in this case means that the set includes a fire engine house, not an engine house for a railway locomotive. Also, the same box art, or variations on it, were used for the other sets in the series.

You can see the layout is front and centre. It looks like it has been set up on a dining room table, although the faint background painting suggests the table’s location could be somewhere between a dining room and parlour. The layout seems rather sophisticated and embodies a few good design principles that even many of today's model railroad layouts have problems adhering to: the buildings are well made and quite detailed, their positioning seems logical, negative space is skillfully sized and apportioned, and we see several judiciously placed accessories like boats and wagons along with plenty of trees and shrubs. Overall, nothing seems crammed together or out-of-place, and everything looks rather natural. The box’s artist knew a thing or two about layout design as well as making the set as compelling as possible. I suspect an actual layout, arranged by actual children, would look far different. It’s clearly an adult’s view of how a layout should appear, which I guess is to be expected as an adult was likely the one who paid for these things.

As well, there are a few other things I think need noting, or at least numbering as I've done in the photo. 1, In the back of the layout there appears to be a locomotive pulling a boxcar. It isn’t the layout’s focus, which appears to be the hint of a lake, complete with a boathouse, in the front corner pointing directly at the viewer. 2, Those are pieces of buildings waiting to be folded up into structures. The models were comprised of foldable two-wall pieces, instead of the 4 used in the strip method, so they’d fit in the set’s relatively small box. 3, Even in the late 19th century kittens demanded attention regardless of whether you were trying to build a layout :-)

I rather admire that box top layout, but I wonder if formal layouts like this one were something cooked up by marketeers to sell all the things needed to outfit them, or if those same marketeers were just trying to take advantage of something children and adults were already familiar with. I'm thinking the history of non-model railway layouts is intertwined with that of miniature buildings and the rise of railway oriented layouts. 

The Rancocas Valley Interurban fleet

I found this 2-page spread on some of Bill Schopp’s scratch built traction cars in the June ’54 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. What caught my eye was the opening statement that Schopp’s traction layout, The Rancocas Valley Interurban, was built and operated between 1940 and 1945 - the same era that John Page noted he had the opportunity to see Schopp’s layout. So, these could be the cars Page noted: "were built sloppily, even by the more permissive standards of that day ... but ... I realized they fascinated me. I found them endearing, even loveable. In place of precision they had something else very special. I suppose "character" or "personality" would be the word, and for all their construction shortcomings, they looked realistic and quite at home in their environment." We don’t see much of anything of their environment - which is the key to Page’s assessment - in these photos so it’s hard to judge if they’re casualized, or just not that well built. 

These photos highlight some of the problems with looking at model work from pre-digital eras. Photos were harder to take, fewer were taken, magazine paper quality wasn’t that good for reproducing images, and many photos - then and now - don’t give the viewer a sense of what was really going on, mainly due to poor composition. Yeah, I know, the last statement seems odd, but it’s easy to just snap photos and then later wonder why what was there and felt doesn’t come across. That might be happening with these photos. We think we’re seeing what was actually there because we’re looking at a photo, but just because it’s a photo doesn’t mean what it records is true - I now remove my Captain Obvious hat and return you to regular programming :-)

Bodys Isek Kingelez: Extreme Maquettes & City Dreams

It was just a few days ago I came across the work of Bodys Isek Kingelez, and I regret discovering it so late. He was a model builder of fantastic vision and impressive creativity. If that wasn't enough, these quotes of his seal the deal in my mind:

Without a model, you are nowhere. A nation that can’t make models is a nation that doesn’t understand things, a nation that doesn’t live.

and

If you succeed in building a model you visualize what is living inside you so the outside world can adapt it, study it, discover it, see it.

The following video gives a good overview of the 2018 MOMA Kingelez exhibit. I found the camera work a little annoying, but you'll see a decent selection of models.

Also, make sure you check out the images of the MOMA exhibit of his work. I'm impressed with how his work was displayed, and there's lots of lessons there for modellers of all sorts.

And all that was done with paper, cardboard, cast-off commercial packaging, push-pins, straws, scissors, glue, Gillette razor blades, and other odds-and-ends.

One last video. This one is an interview with Sarah Suzuki, the MOMA curator of the 2018 Kingelez exhibit. Superficially this might look like a dry, talking-heads type of thing, but around the 4 minute mark things start to get interesting when she begins talking about Kingelez's beginnings, how he started building these models, and his discovery by the mainstream art world in 1989. Suzuki is an interesting speaker, and the video is pretty much cant and jargon free.

Around the 10 minute mark there's an interesting exchange where they try to classify and slot Kingelez's work. Was he an architect, sculptor, etc? Model maker of the miniature building folk art heritage sort doesn't get mentioned, but his work, origin story, and practice has all the hallmarks. It is something of the human experience, independent of place or time of origin. I need to think some more about this.

Will it go 'round in circles?

Yes it will.

Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?

I sure hope not*

In this 3rd wave lockdown I seem to have the attention span of a squirrel, running all over the place with no rhyme or reason. I've been thinking about track plans, and have been wondering about adding a small streetcar turntable to the layout. Having temporarily lost my motivation to install a roof on the HQ model, I thought I'd see what was around the workshop that I could use to build a simple, manual turntable.

I've got a build, I ain't got no steps, no.

I'm gonna let the components move me around.

So, I got started by searching the internet and old magazines for ideas, as well as looking through my parts stash. I'm not saying that what I settled on is the best, but it seemed workable with what I had on hand and my current temperament.

Some design considerations in no particular order:

1. I had a cheap Lazy Susan bearing from 30 or so years ago that I was keeping around to use 'one day'. 'One day' arrived last week. Its square metal base measures 4" on each side.

2. All the turntable has to do is rotate a streetcar 180 degrees. There's no track indexing or massive roundhouse to be serviced.

3. I'm perfectly happy with it being powered by pushing it either by finger or stick. Motorization isn't needed. Cheap and cheerful is the name of the game.

4. Its track has to fit streetcars with the longest wheelbase in my fleet, which are PCCs. The body can overhang the turntable.

Soldering the plug to the rail.

The part that concerned me most was how to get power to the track?

The method I used is based on the one presented by Bob Hayden in an article called An inexpensive, easy-to-build turntable, in the Feb '87 issue of Model Railroader. It used a 1/4" headphone plug as the turntable's rotational mechanism and method of transferring power. I used a much smaller 2.1mm x 5mm plug instead as I had some on hand, and since I was using a bearing for rotational motion, I didn't need a 1/4" plug.

I've got a story that's got a moral.

Don't use two axes ever again.

I should mention there's a problem with my design. There are two axes of rotation: the bearing has one, and the plug has one. These two axes need to be perfectly lined up, one on top of the other, for the turntable to freely spin. 

It turns out because I eyeballed the installation, these two axes aren't perfectly aligned, so there is a little bit of binding when you turn the thing. This isn't a big problem because there's no motor that'll burn out, and no large number of tracks to be indexed, but eventually something will wear out or break: likely the plug, or its supports. Given how little use this thing will get I'm betting wear out will happen long in the future. But, we'll see.

A better scheme would likely have been to solder wipers to the rail bottoms and have them rub against contacts from the fixed layout track when rotated into position. This gets rid of the plug's axis and eliminates binding, although you'll need to make sure the wipers have sufficient spring to make good contact - I didn't have components on hand for that kind of system, so I didn't pursue it.

The top and bottom circular plates are cut from 0.080" sheet styrene.

In this photo I've inserted the plug into a whole drilled into the centre of the upper plate after the plug's leads have been soldered to the underside of the rail. 

The track has been attached to the plate using plastic solvent. 

I'll probably have to adjust the rail lengths when installing the turntable into the layout. I cut them a little long so fine tuning can be done.

The plug to plate connection was stiffened with four gussets, each cut from 0.080" styrene. I spent a lot of time trying to get the plug dead centre and as perpendicular with the plate as possible, but as I noted above, it wasn't quite good enough.

After drilling a matching hole in the bottom plate, the turntable was glued on with epoxy and left to dry for a few hours.

One thing I should point out before I forget is that I was checking the electrical continuity after just about every step. 

I'd hook an old 9v battery to the track, and then use my continuity checker to make sure the light came on. The light is quite faint in the photo, but that's because I'm using an old battery.

I don't have any photos of the struggle to align the two plugs, but basically once the plates were epoxied to the bearing, I pushed and persuaded the joined plugs until the turntable seemed to rotate back-and-forth without much friction. The bottom plug was then epoxied into place along with 2 torsion supports cut from 0.080" styrene. 

And this is what it looks like once everything was glued in place. 

I applied a little light oil to the bearing to help smooth its operation.

From here on the rest was painting and decorating to make it sort of look like a turntable.

Styrene sheets were used to build up the upper surface so styrene brick sheets could be used to panel the top. 

I took care to make sure the brick sheets were below the rail head, because if they're level with it, it's often possible for wheels to ride up on the plastic and lose rail contact. 

Some 0.040" x 0.060" styrene strips were glued to the perimeter to neaten the edge. Then it was on to painting. 

I continue to dabble with Revell Aqua Color. The basic brick hue is mixed from their #37 Reddish Brown and #39 Dark Green using the same technique applied to both the Weekly Herald and the HQ. Alternating thin layers of the brick mix, #75 Stone Grey, and Tamiya flat black were used to build up the final colour. The edge trim was painted with Stone Grey.

I'm finding I rather like those little blue cubes Aqua Color comes in. I often use them as supports for work-in-progress.

Those Ls for rotating the turntable are cut from piano wire and inserted into holes drilled through all the top layers.

*Well, that's that. Given how I've mangled Billy Preston's lyrics, I should leave you with the legend so you'll know how great the song is.

The scissors-and-paste model is the watercolour sketch in three dimensions

There are those among the modelling fraternity who profess to despise glue and card, paper and parcel-tape, paper-clips, pins and drinking-straws as the raw material from which to construct engineering models. I disagree entirely with this view, and I hope that in writing this book I may help to sway readers to my way of thinking.

The truth is, of course, that there is ample room for all points of view. The magnificent examples of model engineering, products of lathe, milling machine and sometimes years of skilled labour, may be likened to the great gilt-framed oil-paintings which dominate the walls of Art Galleries and ancestral homes; masterpieces, often, but sometimes a little oppressive to humble mortals like myself, who find it refreshing to leave them in their majesty and spend a while amongst the watercolours. Myself, I find watercolours easier to live with, greatly as, in theory, I admire the Reynolds and the Lanseer! And so it is with models. The scissors-and-paste model is the watercolour sketch in three dimensions. It conveys its message by suggestion and simple devices, it can catch the colour, shape and essential character of its subject, and please its beholder no less than the rivet-for-rivet and true-to-half-a-thou. masterpiece in gleaming steel and brass. Its cost, however, in time and material, is a mere fraction of its more elaborate counterpart, and to the man whose fingers itch to be making things, but whose circumstances rule out workshops and elaborate tools, this simple scissors-and-past craft can be a most satisfying answer, as I shall try to demonstrate in the following pages.

From the foreword to Cardboard Engineering with Scissors & Paste by G. H. Deason, Model Aeronautical Press Limited, 1958.

One thing I always find interesting about these old model building books are the records of their authors' philosophical musings on the craft. I hadn’t thought of drawing a parallel between card modelling, Deason’s scissors-and-paste genre, and watercolour painting. It’s intriguing, and certainly stands in stark contrast to mainstream thinking on what the craft’s about. There’s something about the phrase, it conveys its message by suggestion and simple devices, that I rather like. 

I think it would be mistaken to take the analogy between card models and watercolours too literally, but maybe there’s something to it. It reminds me of Casual-ization, and John Page’s observations that Bill Schopp’s models and layout didn’t seem to be built to the most exacting standards, but there was something compelling about them nevertheless. Mix in a little artistic stylization from Francis Lee Jacques, and maybe there’s an interesting old trail that needs to have the overgrowth cut back. Just don’t use a digital camera on your hike :-)

A Review of Architectural Models by Robert Forman

These latter [JDL: ‘latter’ meaning ‘architectural models’] have for many years been the almost exclusive province of card and paper, such models being used extensively by architects in the course of their profession, and these are really a special subject, rather outside the scope of these pages. For those readers who may be interested, an excellent little book on the elements of this craft is “Architectural Models”, by Robert Forman, published by Studio Press.

I ran across that statement in G. H. Deason’s 1958 book Cardboard Engineering with Scissors & Paste, published by Model Aeronautical Press Limited, when I was investigating mentions of ‘Fashion Board’ in old books about miniature building construction. Deason’s book is excellent, so I had to hunt down the one he recommended as an excellent little book on the elements of architectural modelling.

I found an inexpensive and well preserved copy online, but upon arrival I soon discovered what it had to say to be somewhat less than expected, even by the standards of the time it was published - that being 1946. In contrast, John Ahern’s article Madderport’s Buildings that appeared in the July 1942 issue of The Model Railway News is a good example of the beautiful models achievable in that era.

The book itself is a little 64-page gem. It’s full of beautiful line drawings and well written text. The problem seems to be the book is a somewhat simplified overview of the subject, and it never seems to settle on who it’s written for. The dust jacket blurb mentions the book is suitable for children, but once inside the text focuses on the needs and uses of architects, architectural students, and various other professions and students. I don’t think the construction examples and explanations would well serve any of those audiences.

The venerable wall strip technique is shown on the left-hand page - that could be the children's part.

By 1958, when Deason’s book was released, a number of better books on constructing miniature buildings had been published in England: Modelled Architecture by P. R. Wickham in 1948 and Miniature Building Construction by John Ahern in 1950 to name two. Thomas Bayley’s Model Making in Cardboard, which deals almost exclusively with miniature buildings, was also published in 1958, and although quite good, it seems unreasonable to expect Deason to have mentioned it for timing reasons. The point is that by 1958 there were better books on miniature building construction available. Maybe Deason and Forman were friends? Or maybe miniature buildings wasn’t something Deason kept up-to-date on? Who knows? These are more of those unanswerable questions.

And what about recommended materials? The book isn’t focused exclusively on card, but in the materials chapter it mentions: Various papers and cardboard are used, ranging from strawboard to Whatman. I assume Whatman is a brand name of a cardboard, and is being bandied about in the same manner that Strathmore often is by some writers when referring to their Bristol board products. Bristol board is mentioned a few places in the text, as for making window frames, but is not called out in the materials section.

One last thing. Take a look at the following spread:

The so-called American bubble house is shown in the upper left.

I hadn’t heard of an American bubble house, so off to the internet I went. It turns out in the early 1940s there was a Los Angeles based architect, Wallace Neff, who invented a type of semi-spherical house by spraying gunite over an inflatable form such that when the concrete was dry the form could be deflated and removed leaving a dome-like structure behind. What you see in the drawing is a fairly close representation. So, I guess the book was fairly advanced in showing the reader how to model one of those houses.

And then there’s this weird association. Neff? Neff? Where have I heard that name before? Yes, in my favourite movie, 1944's Double Indemnity. Walter Neff was the main character, played by Fred MacMurray. Wallace Neff, Walter Neff? Odd. The movie was based on a 1943 book of the same name written by James M. Cain, but in the book the lead character was called Walter Huff. So, Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder changed the name from Huff to Neff, the last name of our bubble house architect, who by the way was quite famous and made his fortune designing houses for Los Angeles’ elite. Coincidence? Probably, but Architectural Models doesn’t say :-)

Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy...

... especially if they're in your head*.

I keep thinking about the various details I should add to the ground floor. Support columns here, shelves there, a workbench in the corner, and on and on. 

But I realized the project has gone on a little too long and decided to just glue up the walls and elevator-floor insert and get on with original plan: creating a removable roof and detailing the second floor.

After a little more trimming and fitting on the interior insert, I glued up the whole shebang.

That upside-down tobacco can is an item from my father's workshop filled with nuts and bolts just as he left it. Makes for a fine weight for holding stubborn parts while glue sets. In this case it's sitting on top of the elevator shaft to hold it square to the floor and walls.

Elastic bands hold the corners together.

The model was left this way for a day to allow the glue to fully set.

Once dry I had a good look at the foundation and realized the brick pilasters didn't have concrete bases, so I added some made from 0.030" thick styrene strips. 

Afterwards, the concrete caps were glued to the tops of the walls, and a lot of touch-up painting was done to the foundation, wall caps, walls, and window sills.

The next step will be to install the removable roof.

Take it easy and stay tuned.

*with apologies to the Eagles :-)

Ironmasters of Upper Canada

I was surprised to find this documentary on the history of the Marmora ironworks featured at the Marmora Heritage Foundation's website in honour of Marmora's 200th anniversary this year. It's a little on the long side, but there's lots of interesting information in there. 

If you're a regular here you may recall that last year I searched around for the location of some old speeder sheds in Marmora and Havelock. I decided to send my location question to Anne Philpot at the MHF. She generously responded and sent my question off to some local experts. She also sent me these interesting links to photos of old Marmora railway structures: The Central Ontario Railway and the Marmora Station and News from the Train Station. In amongst the photos is one of a rather intriguing water tank, and another of one of the boxiest freight warehouses I've ever seen.

Hobbs’ Choice…of materials

46 year old Mineral City Depot model in card with balsa bracing

Galen wondered in the comments section of the review of Pictorial House Modelling by Edward W. Hobbs if Hobbs recommended any materials we might consider unusual. I didn’t think he did, but I decided to go back and have another look. Here’s a list of Hobbs’ recommended materials along with some one-liners about what he  suggests using them for:

Bristol board

2-ply for small models like those in 1/8” = 1’ scale; 4-ply for larger works; although various plies can be used in different situations.

Bristol board seems to have been around forever as a primary model making material, but as with all manufactured things, it was invented at some point in time. Looking around the internet the short story appears to be that it was first made in Bristol, England (I’m not sure by what company) sometime around 1800; however, it wasn’t named in honour of Bristol the city, but after Frederick Hervey, the 4th Earl of Bristol. Strathmore’s 500 series Bristol board, which is a mainstay of cardboard structure modelling and the one I like to use, was invented in 1893 by the equally old Strathmore Paper Company that was founded in 1892 in West Springfield, Massachusetts. Apparently Bristol board was the second paper product the company manufactured. There are lots of Bristol board manufacturers, and everyone seems to have their favourite, but the key here is that it’s been around in one form or another for 200+ years. Given its high quality, it isn’t surprising that Bristol board has long been a preferred modelling material.

Fashion board

A lower cost, and somewhat lower quality, substitute for Bristol board.

I don’t know what this is other than the book says it’s cheap, not as white as Bristol board, and spongy. I’ve looked through my old books on making miniature buildings and I find mention of Bristol board substitutes such as strawboard, ticket board, pasteboard, pulpboard in many of them, but only saw ‘fashion board’ mentioned in Wickham’s 1948 Modelled Architecture, which noted that it, along with ‘watercolour board’, are artists’ materials, being high-quality cards faced on one or both sides with papers of various texture. 

What seems to me the most interesting non-Bristol board cardboard for miniature buildings, at least as far as story is concerned, is ‘International Pasteboard’ that Chris Pilton mentions he used to build the models in his 1987 book, Cottage Modelling for Pendon: 

The material which I use for making Pendon buildings was bought in Bristol in 1941 by Pendon’s founder, Roye England, just before the shop was destroyed by enemy bombing. He bought £10 worth, which in those days meant a good large stock ever since. Although bought in Bristol, the card was not in fact Bristol board (apparently its skin is too brittle). It was apparently called ‘International Pasteboard’ and came in sheets varying in thickness from 0.2mm to 0.75mm.

Whether it’s fashion board or some other product, it looks like Bristol board has always been a pricey material, and most writers have had to mention some reasonable quality, lower cost alternatives. 

Mounting board

Their textures can make them useful in special situations.

Plaster of Paris, Plasticene, Playwax, Sealing Wax

Could be used to make entire models or parts of them.

Necol

A type of plastic wood.

Pine, mahogany, or oak

For bases.

Strip-wood

Species and sizes aren’t specified.

Fine sand or emery powder

For roads and paths.

Small pieces of slate or stone

For scenes needing rocks.

Small pieces of mirror or waved glass in blue or green

For representing water

Sponges or loofahs

For modelling vegetation.

Flock or flock wallpaper

For covering surfaces like lawns or fields. Hobbs notes that flock is hard to obtain except near cotton mills.

Seccotine, LePages, Croid

These are glues.

Oil, watercolour, or poster paints

Poster for cardboard models; Oil for wood or plaster models; Watercolour for small models.

It’s important to keep in mind the book was published in 1926 in England, and so it deals in brandnames and materials that were common then and there. However, the list doesn’t seem that odd reading it here in Canada close to 100 years after publication.  After substituting a few modern brandnames and materials, it could be used as a list for shopping the internet. Although, you’d be missing out on many modern developments.