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.