The Contemporary House is now in move-in condition

I'd like to think that if I was driving down the street and saw a house like this for sale I'd pull in and buy it. Although in today's world it would likely cost a fortune, so I'm happy with just the model.

I like this old Bachmann kit, even though it's rather crude by today's standards. It's easy to put together, paints up nice, and has lots of potential for enhancement and customizing. I focused on making this project mainly about painting, and only did a few simple modifications to boost its curb appeal.

The kit's windows are a little odd. They're self-stick items with curtains printed on. That's them on the right. I set them aside and panelled each window with clear plastic from my scrapbox, and then glued some coloured paper behind for curtains.

Another enhancement was to add a floor and interior wall to the garage. This was done so I could stage scenes with the front and rear garage doors open. 0.040" styrene was used for these pieces, and they were painted light grey after being glued in place.

Well, it turns out I didn't size them properly, and they had to be pried out in order for the garage-top patio to fit. Luckily I had used a tube glue on them, so the structure wasn't welded into a solid, unmovable mass of styrene.

Once the patio was in place, I recut the two pieces and glued them back in. 

Note, there's some copyright information embossed on the inside back wall. I should have ground it off, but in the garage's dank light, they're more-or-less undetectable.

Oh, and then there's the minty fresh brick work:

Vince alerted me to this video that explains how to use toothpaste for simulating mortar between bricks. The technique works quite well and is fun too. And if you need to know, I used ProNamel toothpaste :-)

It wouldn't be a 30Squares project if hammers weren't involved. The roof fits quite well, but it's good to put some weight on it while the glue is drying so that you get a good, gap-free bond to the walls.

The kit provides some plastic shrubbery to install in the front and rear planters. I used some Woodland Scenics ground foam instead. It's held in place with white glue.

The patio above the garage has lots of scenic potential, and the kit comes with lounge chairs, barbecue, and a picnic table with umbrella to help you get the party started. I'm painting those up as we speak :-)

That garage door is too pristine to be realistic. If I did find this house during the drive of my dreams, that door would undoubtedly be covered in grey and black circular marks from balls slap-shotted during driveway hockey that didn't even come close to going in the net. Hmm, I need to invent a new weathering technique; maybe some sort of Crest / Addams Family thing :-)

The pen never sleeps

I'm continuing to doodle a track plan for a new layout, and am particularly interested in making the plan streetcar-like instead of train-like.

Meaning?

A few things: those tight curves at the ends of the long straight section at the back - the city's main street - will be something like 8" to 10" in radius; the passing sections are based on ones in the old Morecambe Tramway; I'm trying to make it sort of omnivagant with lots of looping. Loops are passé for model railways, but I think they're one of a streetcar layout's defining characteristics, not to mention providing great ambience Mechnical Fish Tank-wise :-)

The New Pretty Village by the McLoughlin Bros. via Dover Publications

A few weeks ago I wrote a bit about the miniature cardboard buildings manufactured by the McLoughlin Bros. in 1897. Soon after making that post I was surprised to find out that Dover Publications reprinted all the brothers' cardboard buildings in a single book back in 1980. The surprises kept on coming as I was able to find an intact copy in reasonable shape for a low price at an online reseller. 

The book measures 9.25" x 12.25" and is about 1/4" thick. The box that sets of the originals came in was 8.5" x 11.5" by 1" thick, so I speculate that the pieces in the book are probably the same size as the originals, although the originals were likely printed on much different cardboard.

There are 18 models in the collection:

House No. 1

House No. 2

House No. 3

Boat House

Hotel

Florist

School House

Engine House

Church

Photographer

House No. 13

House No. 10

House No. 12

House No. 14

House No. 15

Rip Van Winkle House

Blacksmith's Shop

Tent

Red arrow marks the figures

So what about scale? I don't think the originals were made to any particular one other than something that was big enough for children to easily handle, yet small enough to fit in a compact box for shipping. 

And, the models weren't built to one scale, several were used. There are some models that are approximately S, others approximately OO, and a few others that are approximately HO. For example, on the right is the boat house on which I've placed an OO Airfix civilian and my HO avatar. Those figures don't look too bad size-wise. Although maybe the OO figure is a tad big, but in comparison, the printed children look rather large, as if the building was a kid's play house. 

Here's the same test with the engine house - the fire engine house that is. Those OO and HO guys don't look too bad, but the model is on the edge of being too big for either scale. Those firemen over at the engine entrance look quite large. 

All this obsessive scaling on my part is only to suggest that these little models could have been used on early HO or OO layouts. With the first known model trains that could be construed as HO being manufactured in the early 1920s, and the earliest known HO layouts dating from the late 1920s, and with these models remaining in production into the "early 20th century", maybe these buildings wound up on some of those early layouts. Of course, this is all speculation on my part.

The last page has some guidance on building a layout with all your little buildings. It's mentioned that the recommended layout can be built on a piece of 22" x 42" chipboard, and a colour photo of a finished layout is shown on the outside back cover. It's a charming setup, and would look good on a variety of model railroads.

Did E. L. Moore's track plan actually work?

I've been thinking about scrapping the N scale EVRR layout along with the HO Ocean Park Loop as part of making a new start. I've stalled out at wiring the control panel. I was talking about this with Vince a few weeks ago during a discussion about wiring reversing loops, and he asked an intriguing question: Did E. L. Moore ever get his layout - the HO scale EVRR on which my N scale version is built -  to run?

It's a good question as the track plan is complex, and Mr. Moore wasn't a person who liked dealing with complex electricals. I've not seen a control panel for his layout, although he hints at the block locations in his postcard. I think his layout did run, but if he wired it, what the control panel looked like, or if he ran it much are interesting questions likely to never be answered.

Layout boredom and other maladies

Current thinking on the right hand page

I’ve concluded that my layout, the Ocean Park Loop, is boring. Its got some nice points, and I’ve learned a lot during construction, but at the end of the day it’s missing something essential that my old Lost Ocean Line had. The only reason I gave up on the LOL after a couple years of fiddling and use was that I felt I had exhausted all the things I could do with it. 

Problem is the new modular layout seemed to exhaust itself far sooner than the LOL. 

One of the big issues with the current layout is it’s too big. All the modules can’t be left assembled because the layout takes up too much room, and since it’s always disassembled, I can’t run streetcars on a whim to try things. But most importantly I think the current layout is too rigid in its concept and doesn’t allow me to explore all the ideas I have. I realize that I’m not interested in rigorously replicating Toronto streets, but in capturing the essence of my experiences and thoughts.

Beginning thoughts

I’m thinking these days a variation on the LOL - adding the missing aspects the old one lacked and fixing problems - is the way to go. 

What were those LOL issues? The track plan was too complicated and unnecessarily chewed up space that I could have used for scenery and buildings - making buildings and scenery are the things I like the most. I need a simpler track plan that is more streetcar-like than train-like. It needed an urban mainstreet - long and straight, but not too long - for staging ‘typical’ Toronto streetcar scenes that allowed for buildings to be swapped in and out. It needed to be a little bigger - maybe 25% bigger - for ‘breathing room’ as well as providing space for a few more buildings and trees. It was too heavy and used too much wood - I was paranoid that it wouldn’t be strong enough so I over built. I think I could build something a little bigger than the LOL that would be significantly lighter than the original.

Next steps

Back when I was first thinking about the LOL I posted a list of things I think it needed to incorporate. Reviewing the list, I’m still more-or-less in agreement, but I’ve added a few things, so here’s an update.

1. Continuous loop

2. Flat, lots of real estate for buildings

3. Double track, switch-free, straight, downtown street

3. Buildings can be swapped in and out and re-arranged

4. Portable, easy to carry, fits in my econo-box car

5. Easy to take upstairs from the basement for showing off at Christmas and such

There's a Bill Schopp trefoil in there - more later

6. Lots and lots of trees and vegetation

7. Beachfront 

8. Ocean

9. Any and all switches at front

10. Streetcar to the beach

11. The smaller, the better, but not too small

12. Scattered Toronto and Los Angeles

13. One storey residences

14. Innocuous track

15. Lights and lighting and LEDs

16. Surfboard sized

17. Lots of pathways

18. Lightweight

19. No corners

20. Turntable

21. Retro-future, modern, re-purposed stuff

22. Eye-level views

23. DCC and DC

24. Landscape view 

25. Sydney-by-the-Sea

26. Blue, green, sunny, open

27. Percherons

29. People, figures, easy living

30. Streetcars, small diesels, trolleys, railcars and any other small rolling stock

31. Clean construction

32. Houses, cottages, and cabins

33. Streetcar-y track arrangement, not train-y track arrangement.

Most layout planners are far more rigorous than me. I don’t make formal drawings or elegant sketches or use software tools. I have some notebooks and just make rough sketches as my thoughts develop. 

With passing loops a la the Morecambe Tramway

Once I think I’ve settled on a basic plan I’ll pull out the old brass rail and make some full-size sketches in track. 

I’m not trying to be precise at this stage, I’m just playing with lines at present.

Cardboard thoughts in The Art of Architectural Modelling in Paper by T. A. Richardson

Given that this book was published in London by John Weale in 1859 one might say my review is a bit late, but I say better late than never :-)

The title tells all: it’s a manual on how to make models of buildings out of paper. The target audience is architects and their assistants, so it’s for professionals whose goal is to use the models to help clients better understand the various aspects of the designs they’re buying. As well, the models are meant to be competitive marketing tools, as the author notes in the Introduction:

With many clients, even “perspectives” are poorly understood, which seldom fails to cause slight dissatisfaction on their part when they see too late certain things that the eye would have detected in the model and corrected in the outset. Models are becoming very general, where buildings are subjects of competition; and as this course of procedure and honourable encounter bids fair (when weeded of some of its present objections) to open up a good and honourable system, whereby the “race may be to the swift”, the importance of the following brief and simple Treatise on the subject, becomes double clear.

I usually stay away from this genre of model making books because hobbyists and folk artists have different goals, which in turn drive different modelling techniques. But, in this case I make an exception because of the book’s publication date, which I think makes it one of the earliest books on creating model buildings from paper and cardboard, if not the earliest. Later in the Introduction Richardson comes around to suggesting that the book might be of interest to those outside the profession as well as architect's assistants:

To a large and increasing body, the architectural assistants, it is hoped that this little hand-book will prove to be acceptable; and though written principally for the professional man, it is hoped it may not prove utterly useless or uninteresting to others, who though not members of the architectural profession may yet possess sufficient taste and skill to wish to perpetuate

A DESIGN IN PAPER.

One thing I found rather curious about this book is that although the title says it’s about modelling in paper, the author uses a specific type of paper to make his own cardboard from which the main parts of the models are built. The cardboard is made by pasting together layers of paper, and Richardson describes at length how to make a press for laying up the cardboard as well as mixing the paste. 

The paper I use, and have always found the best for all purposes, has a surface similar to that of Whatman’s double-elephant drawing paper, and is, I believe, sold under the name of Crayon paper: a specimen is bound with this book, forming the next page*; it is of a pale cream-colour, bearing a strong semblance in tint to Bath-stone, but I have procured it from this to the shades necessary for the roofs of models. It is firm, though not hard, in texture, and not being too spongy, does not absorb to too great a degree the paste used in fastening together the sheets for the various thicknesses required, thus ensuring their firmness, a matter of the highest importance, otherwise in thin strips consisting of four, five, or more thicknesses of paper, upon their being cut each would part and defeat the desired end. 

It’s not like Bristol board didn’t exist at the time (it was invented in the early 1800s, so it had been around for awhile when this book was published in 1859), but Richardson notes:

I have constructed several models in pure white Bristol board, but it is a tedious hard material to work in, though the result is very fine.

I wonder if the composition of today’s Bristol board is different from that of the past, or maybe it’s a question of suitable cutting and shaping tools that were available. It’s interesting that commercially available Bristol board is pooh-poohed in favour of homebrew cardboard. I’m curious to see if I can find anything about miniature building construction in Bristol board dating from say the early 1800's to the 1850's.

*I’ve only seen a scan of the book, never a physical copy. Scans always leave me feeling like I’m missing something. I know the scan provides replicas of the document's words and pictures, but the physical book gives me more. Maybe it’s just higher resolution, or the feel of the paper quality, or marks from who owned it or where it had been. In this case it sounds like a physical copy of this book might provide me a sample of Crayon paper if the sample hadn’t been pulled out all those years ago. 

A start on Bachmann's Contemporary House kit

I've taken a little break from the HQ build and thought I'd have a go at Bachmann's Plasticville Contemporary House kit I bought earlier in the spring. 

I guess it's something of a build-it-yourself toy masquerading as a model kit, but I rather like it and thought it might be good for getting my mojo back. I decided to do minimal improvements and just concentrate on painting and assembly. The walls are almost done and waiting for window installation. More details once it's a bit further along.