Connections: Bruce MacRae to Brick Price to Railroad Modeler

Scale Modeler, March 1974

Late August to early September this year is more or less the 50th anniversary of when I got seriously interested in model building. I look back at the period from August 1972 to sometime in the spring or early summer of 1974 as the time when my interest in all things related to model building gelled into a lifelong pursuit. There were many periods, often years long, when the only expression of that interest was buying a model building magazine or two, but the interest persisted.

I still have many of the hobby magazines I bought at that time and have been looking through them again; this time with an adult’s critical eye instead of a boy’s unbridled enthusiasm. I don’t want to get all weepy and nostalgic as no good will come of that, but I do want to try to understand myself and my immersion in that time better. 

Around the end of that period, maybe in February or March of 1974, I bought an issue of Scale Modeler magazine, which was also published by the same company who published Railroad Modeler, Challenge Publications. Buying it was a bit of a risk because there was a No War Comics edict in my house, and that issue of SM clearly had a painting of two warplanes on the cover. Even so, it wasn’t those two planes that made me take the risk of having the $1.50 magazine confiscated, but the extensive set of photographs of a diorama built by a gentleman named Bruce MacRae. They appeared in an article called The Wine Tasters. It spanned 8 pages, and included 9 large black-and-white photos as well as a double page spread of 3 equally large colour photos. I was fascinated by the diorama, and had to buy the magazine to study the diorama at my leisure instead of under the accusatory eye of the smoke shop owner where I bought my comics and magazines.

Railroad Modeler, December 1974

I’m still impressed by that diorama. I think the reason is the high level of animation in the figures and vehicles, coupled with strong story telling all throughout the scene. The models are also excellent, but that wasn’t the main attraction. I’m usually blasé about military subjects no matter how great the modelling, but this one was - and still is - compelling. 

So, I wondered who is Bruce MacRae? A little bit of internet searching informed me that he is a professional model builder, and at one time worked for the legendary modeller for movies (Star Trek: The Motion Picture being one of the more famous), tv shows, and NASA, Brick Price. Mr. Price featured a number of photos of MacRae’s work in his 1981 book, The Model-Building Handbook, which, as well as a train, has a photo of a scene from a MacRae diorama on its cover.

Over at Memory Alpha there are entries for Brick Price’s company, WonderWorks, Inc. (founded in late 1977 as Brick Price Movie Miniatures according to the site) and Bruce MacRae, who is noted to have worked for Price’s company in 1979. WonderWorks still exists.

I learned with the Tom Daniel surprise that if a famous model maker lived in the Los Angeles area in the 1970s, it might pay to see if they were ever published in Canoga Park based Railroad Modeler magazine. Bruce MacRae’s work had appeared in one of RM’s sister publications, so I wondered if he or Brick Price ever had anything published in RM?

Railroad Modeler, February 1975

I haven’t found anything yet for Bruce MacRae, but so far I have found two articles by Brick Price:

Economy Log Hog, December 1974 (how to convert a Far East Distributors 2-6-0T into a logging locomotive)

Jack O’Vall’s Machine Shop, February 1975 (kitbashing an AHM Weekly Herald into a locomotive repair facility / machine shop / Ford dealership / gas station complex)

I don’t see any mention of these articles at the WonderWorks website, although the Memory Alpha article notes Mr. Price published extensively in International Modeler magazine, and those IM articles were instrumental in getting him noticed in the movie and tv business.

These 1974 and 1975 articles predate the founding of WonderWorks by 2 or 3 years, so maybe Mr. Price still had time for model railroading in the early to mid ‘70s. The 1975 article notes he was building a 3’ x 12’ HO scale narrow gauge layout.

Hopefully there are more interesting surprises still to come. The search continues.

Into the Blue

A layout is not what I think it is

While reading Justin E. H. Smith's newly released The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is I came across an interesting discussion starting on page 160 of what sounded to me like a layout construction proposal by none other than Gottfried Leibniz.

Smith notes that in 1711 Leibniz suggested building something like a temporary layout of Russia's terrain on the floor of a dining hall for purposes of providing dinner entertainment for Tsar Peter the Great of Russia and his entourage during a diplomatic visit to Germany. If you're a long time reader here you know I've talked a little about H. G. Well's floor layouts in his book Floor Games, Pretty Village toy town floor layouts, as well as floor layouts scattered throughout Meccano Magazine, as precursors to today's model railroad layouts. In Leibniz's layout there aren't any trains of course, but he does talk about building a three dimensional surface on a floor, complete with depressions for streams and seas so that when water was poured in them they would simulate the flow of water through the land. Miniature model people were also to be included. The 'operation' and perusal of this layout was to have replaced more conventional dinner theatre as entertainment for the delegation. Unfortunately, we're informed this layout was never built.

This story, although not intended to be interpreted as I have, underlines to me how little I know about the history of layouts. They're likely related to maps, and maybe to certain types of pre-modern and early modern scientific apparatus, or even military campaign planning devices. I found it surprising that reference to them can be found in the early 18th century, and they probably stretch much further back than that.

Birches near the track bend

Three Ws

Three Ws: The Where, Which, and When that are central to creating a layout's atmosphere.

Usage: Bob spent a lot of time attempting to understand the Three Ws of the backwoods switching yard layout he was planning.

Source: The Three Ws is a concept developed by David Jenkinson and laid out in his article, In Search of Atmosphere in Railway Modelling, that appeared in the October 1973 issue of Model Railways. He defines the Three Ws as follows:

It is possible to isolate three basic ingredients which are central to the theme [Ed, the layout's theme] and I have for some years referred to these as the 'Three Ws', standing for Where, Which and When. 'Where ?' concerns itself with the setting of the railway in geographical terms; 'Which ?' establishes the identity of the railway company being modelled and 'When ?' deals with the period in time which our model represents.

In the same article Mr. Jenkinson also discusses his belief that it's easier to capture atmosphere in the smaller scales than the larger ones:

... 4mm and smaller scales offer to the average modeller a better chance of capturing atmosphere than do the large scales. It follows that I believe smaller scales are much more for the artist than for the engineer....it is high time that modellers in the smaller scales ... accepted the limitations of their chosen scale and concentrated on the advantages that the miniature gauges possess over their larger equivalents, one of which is the capacity to create atmosphere.

See also, Full Observation.

from The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms, 2nd ed., 1999.

“Under the cellophane wrapper, the parts!”: The Secret History of Kitbashing*

Dodge AT-AT Kit-bash

From chapter 13 of Lew Voltz’s Gluestick Traces, the definitive history of model railroading’s punk era*:

The term ‘kitbash’ first appeared in print in the 1967 book, The Society of Spectacular Models, by French Groucho Marxist theorist, Polystyrene philosopher, and model railroading expressionist Guy Dekit. In the book Dekit argued that capitalist production of polystyrene model kits that began in the 1950s and skyrocketed in popularity throughout the 1960s was a debasement of the centuries old folk art of making miniatures of beloved, iconic, and worshipful objects of personal interest. Dekit considered the once creative activity was being steamrollered by a mass-market simulacra of true model making.

The book was the culmination of many years work by Dekit and a number of other plastic radicals who formed the group Polystyrenist International in 1959 (the same year the first edition of The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroading Terms was published), whose purpose was to critique, divert, and subvert the tidal wave of polystyrene-based model construction. 

Dekit developed a détournement, which he referred to as ‘bashing’, whereby the components of several commercial polystyrene models were used to construct miniatures that held no resemblance to the objects that could be constructed by following official instruction sheets. Bashing was often an act of performance, undertaken in a party like atmosphere (aka a ‘bash’, or using the term of the time, Le Bash), and commonly began with a shout of, “Under the cellophane wrapper, the parts!” The bashing of polystyrene components became so strongly associated with Dekit that the activity was colloquially known as ‘bashing de kit’, which quickly became today’s plain, old 'kitbashing'.

But for every radical intervention is an associated mainstream recuperation, and kitbashing’s started with none other than Dekit’s closest colleague and PI co-founder, Au Courant. 

In the mid-1970s Courant broke with the PI and formed Craft Light And Magic (CLAM**) for the purpose of building kitbashed miniatures for the movie War in the Stars. The movie was a monumental success, but not necessarily for Courant, who lost control of CLAM through some complicated legal maneuvering by his investors. Fed up with movies, and ostracized by his old PI colleagues, he took a job offer from an American model railroading magazine and left France forever.

Courant went on to global acclaim with his innovative kitbashing techniques and educational programs; however, he and Dekit were never to speak again. That didn’t stop Dekit from commenting on Courant and his work in just about every interview he ever gave. It was clear Dekit had mixed feelings for Courant, who Dekit would often flippantly refer to as The Dark Lord of Kitbashing. 

On the one hand Dekit’s comments towards Courant could be spiteful and derogatory***, but were just as often admiring and praiseful***. He admired Courant’s ability to help show a powerful way forward to restore creativity and authenticity to the ancient art in the face of overwhelming kitization, but frequently condemned Courant’s success as simply a way for the companies to further increase sales of their plastic kits, thereby continuing to help degrade the art.

Dekit and Courant never reconciled.

Hot Rod Falcon Kit-bash

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*It should go without saying that this ‘history’ is completely fictional, and has no relation to any person, place, or thing either living or dead.

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**Urban legend has it that within CLAM an entire CLAM-based insider speak developed that included such terms as: CLAMity, meaning a kitbash that had gone seriously wrong; CLAMbaked, meaning a CLAM employee was exhibiting symptoms of breathing too much plastic solvent; CLAMedup, meaning someone had signed a non-disclosure agreement with CLAM; and so on.

***When Dekit was being spiteful and derogatory towards Courant he’d refer to CLAM as Courant’s Lazy American Modellers, and when he was admiring and praiseful CLAM became Courant’s Legendary American Modellers. It’s not known what Dekit was thinking when he said these things as Courant and CLAM had parted ways several years prior to Courant’s great success.

From above

Kit # 5978

Hey kids! Collect 'em all: #5973, Moore's Balsa Products; #5975, Speedy Andrew's Surf Shop; and #5977, Cal's Coastal Cafe.

Blue skies

A couple of weeks ago I submitted some photos of the Loonar Module's de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver to Max's Models for his Canadian Group Build video. I was pleased to see my photos were included, and that one up there was one of them. I shot it the same day I was outside taking the ones of lake water. This is the blurb I wrote to accompany the photos:

This is my build up of Osborn Model Kits’ 1/87 scale DHC-2 Beaver. It’s a laser cut wood kit that I built last winter. The prototype was manufactured by de Havilland Canada, and many were used by the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. My paint scheme and markings are reminiscent of those flown by Lands and Forests, but aren’t 100% accurate. This little plane now resides on my model railroad.

I like that picture, but the sky's colour isn't right. It's the wrong shade of blue for a sunny day in southern Ontario. Now, over on the right, that's a classic sunny, summer Ontario sky blue - at least as far as my camera can capture it.

These days I'm starting to gain an appreciation for layout lighting. In most photos I see, and have taken, the lighting is poor, and doesn't properly convey the essence of the scenes being recorded.

For my outside photos I can make improvements by changing my backdrop, trying different orientations with respect to the sun, and taking pictures in various natural light conditions, but I'm not sure what I'll do when the weather forces me back inside. Well, today's the first day of summer, so I'm not going to worry about that problem until the snow flies again.

Birch grove

Last week I spent some time finishing off the three birch trees that have been languishing on my workbench. 

I discussed armature construction in a previous post, but once that was completed I was a bit puzzled on how to finish them. After trying a few things, and discarding some bad ideas, I finally settled on this approach:

1. Each armature had two coats of white glue painted on to help hold the branches and limbs in place. The nice thing about white glue is the armatures are still fairly flexible when dry, so more adjusting can be done if necessary.

2. A piece of grey duct tape was cut into 2mm wide strips, and these strips were wound over the trunks and major limbs. I made sure the strips didn't overlap, but left no gaps. Once applied I made sure the strips were fully stuck in place.

3. The taped armatures were then painted with two coats of white acrylic paint. 

4. The end branches were loosely painted with brown and grey acrylic paints.

5. The birches' distinctive black trunk slashes and bruises were then painted on with flat black acrylic paint.

6. When the trunks were dry they were painted with loose washes of Tamiya X-19 Smoke acrylic paint.

7. Stringy tufts were teased from a piece of Woodland Scenics Green Poly Fiber for the foliage bulk. These tufts were slid onto the branch ends and then fluffed out. The poly fiber tufts on the rightmost tree are way too dense and had to be thinned out - more on this further down in this post.

8. I then sifted out some fine material from a bag of Scenic Express's Summer Lawn Flock & Turf. The tufts were soaked with Mod Podge Ultra Matte spray, and the fine flocking was lightly sprinkled on. The key word is lightly. Unfortunately I got a bit of flocking on some trunk sections and I need to take a little more time to remove it - it looks like some weird moss.

9. When completely dry the leaf canopies were trimmed with scissors to get rid of stray strands and clumps.

I thought the resulting trees didn't look too bad, but the one on the right was still weird. I didn't want to discard it, so eventually I did two modifications:

1. I pulled the poly fiber off and discarded about 3/4 of it. What was left I teased out into something more stringy and see-through before reinstalling. And ....

... 2) I cut off most of the trunk so that the tree was now one of those examples you see that have a short main trunk where two trunks branch off. 

You hear of film on the cutting room floor, well there's a trunk on the workshop floor :-)

There's the modified tree. It's still a bit odd, especially the canopy, which got a little more fluffing and trimming later, but it's looking much better.

Individually, these birches aren't super detailed, and I still need to work on canopy shaping, but on the layout, placed together in a grove, and photographed in sunlight, I'm quite happy with them. I plan to build maybe two or three more for placement elsewhere on the layout to balance out the composition. Hopefully on those I can work out the canopy and trunk moss issues.

Annals of the Lands & Forests Railway: The Personal Flying Sub

In 1966 the Department of Lands & Forests contracted the Allen Irwin Company to build a personal size, single operator Flying Submarine. Given that Ontario was estimated to have over 250,000 lakes, 1/5 of the world’s fresh water, and an area 1.5x the size of Texas, it was thought a fleet of flying observation subs was a prudent investment. The 1966 purchase was to be the first of many; however, a strange series of events in late 1967 put an end to that plan*.  

The Department took delivery in the spring of 1967. The inaugural trip saw the sub stop at several ports of call in Ontario, one being the Loonar Railway Testing Facility, before heading to Expo ’67 in July. This is the only surviving photo** - taken by a passing canoeist - of the visit to that remote railway test facility.

Lands & Forests Flying Sub #8 is Moebius' little Flying Sub kit built more-or-less box-stock. The only changes I made were to leave out the interior and add my own decals.

The internet tells me this model of the fictional Flying Sub that appeared on the old tv show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, is around 1/128 scale. That's too large for N-scale, and too small for HO. However, if it was indeed for a single HO submariner, and that person was small and skinny enough to squeeze through the hatches, then this vehicle sizes out to maybe about right for a personal-sized submarine. Just maybe.....

The hull was brush painted with loose applications of yellow, grey, and black acrylics. I didn't want that pristine yellow of the tv show's vehicle. 

I built this model during the darkest part of winter as a break from layout construction. At that time I had no idea what its story would be; it was only meant to be fun. It was only after I had printed up the decals for the loco that I thought about incorporating the Flying Sub into the scene.

*Within Lands & Forests a group of upstarts were plotting to create a new department called Skies & Waters, and the acquisition of the Flying Submarine by the old guard L&F executives was the last straw for the S&W gang. The S&W faction felt L&F was getting too big, and couldn’t properly administer lands, forests, skies, and waters. The S&W faction felt that splitting L&F in two would allow better focus on the emerging concerns of air and water pollution. And as is common in organizations where there are too many executive strivers and not enough executive seats to be strived for, the S&W faction felt a new department was just the ticket to provide them. So, a vehicle that could command both the skies and waters with equal ease was just too much for the S&W gang to bear. And to add insult to injury none of the S&W faction had any input on the Flying Sub acquisition, so it was de facto bad. Memos were drawn up, white papers circulated, cabinet ministers were wined and dined, lobbyists schmoozed, contractors courted, many nights of long knives were endured, and old favours were called in. When the ink had dried and the paper cuts healed, the Flying Submarine purchase was but a hazy memory, and a bright , shiny new bureaucracy was birthed to end off 1967.

**All official photographs were destroyed by Skies & Waters.

Lake water

A week or so after applying 'water' to the Loonar Module's lake bed I took the layout outside to see how it looked in sunlight, and to take a few pictures.

The water was made by first applying two coats of Golden gloss medium to the lake bed to seal it. Then a layer of Golden semi-gloss soft gel was sponged on to give the surface a slightly wavy texture. This was left to dry for a day. I wasn't happy with the reflectivity of the gel, so I went ahead and applied two glazes of gloss medium on top. Next time I'll simply use some gloss soft gel.

In natural light, and when viewed from the correct angle, the water surface looks rather convincing. Although, the bright late afternoon sun caused the water's surface to soften a little. After 15 minutes the airplane's floats were settled into the lake, and some considerable prying was required to unstick them when it came time to pack up.

If it stops raining long enough, I'm looking forward to taking more outdoor layout photos this summer :-)

First test run of the HOe scale canoe car

First test run of the canoe car. I can see it has got a wicked backward tilt that I’m going to need to shim out. But, I’m glad to see it doesn’t track too badly, and it goes through the switch without derailing even though the loco shows just a little hesitation.

A canoe car in HOe

Canoe car #7 straight from the paint shop and ready for a test run

Last winter Dave told me about a special canoe carrying freight car the Ontario Northland operated. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have something like it for the layout. To get started I looked around the workshop and found a set of trucks I had liberated from an N-scale freight car a long time ago and enough suitable styrene leftovers and scraps for an HOe version.

The overall size and shape were established by playing with the parts and pieces until an idea gelled. The only firm requirement was the car had to accommodate a stack of three canoes, and run on my test track. Once I had the basic shape figured out, I then established some dimensions so I could move onto cutting styrene. The only 'plan' was that scrap of notes to help me remember some key dimensions and component shapes.

I'm not going to go into a detailed, step-by-step how-to, just show some photos of the car after construction, but before painting.

The car is made up of three sub-assemblies: a flat car, two tall bulkheads, and a rack for the canoes.

Dimensions? It's 21' long x 5 3/4' wide. The end bulkheads stand 9' tall from the deck.

The flat car is just a rectangular frame of 0.080" x 0.080" strip styrene, with the top and sides cut from 0.020" sheet styrene. The support structures for the trucks and couplers are built up from scraps of styrene strip stock. One of the reasons I'm not a YouTube presenter is that I don't have a tried-and-true recipe for a lot of the things I do and just muddle through as best I can. I've never built a complete piece of rolling stock of my own design before, so I just winged it, which doesn't make for an authoritative video.

However, if you're looking for some construction guidance I'd recommend reading Freelanced Narrow Gauge Flatcar by legendary modeller Doug Leffler that appeared in the June 1972 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. Although the article doesn't deal specifically with a car like the canoe car, it inspired me to jump in and build because it made the basic structure of a flat car model understandable, so I felt confident I could successfully build one. Because of its concise focus on structure and basic principles I consider the article a classic. It's too bad RMC doesn't collect up articles like this one into some sort of reprint collection. Hmm, it might not sell that well as the collection I have in mind would focus on the basics of construction and other fundamentals instead of the minutiae of detail, airbrushing . . . wait, stop, I see I'm heading for an off-ramp, so let's get back on the highway before it's too late :-)

I forgot to mention that I glued some weights to the bottom of the flat car to give it a bit better tracking. Years ago I bought a strip of self-adhesive 7g weights at George's Trains for just this purpose. I cut one off the strip, then chopped it into 4 pieces, and stuck each to the underside of the flat car's deck. Somewhere in the workshop is a scale, and I need to use it to see how much the finished car weighs.

The couplers on this car are weird. I don't own any Minitrains brand cars, so the couplers on the canoe car are guesswork. No doubt at sometime in the future I'll need to replace them with something else.

On one end I've added a post (a piece of 18 gauge wire) at the coupler position and at the other end ...

... the coupler is a loop of 30 gauge wire, which allows the car to couple to the locomotive.

Those end bulkheads are crazy tall. I can just imagine how much the full size ones would weigh if they were made of steel. The cars would have to be speed limited in corners to prevent them from toppling over. And the aerodynamic drag! Would there be weird vortex threads shed from the bulkheads buffeting the canoes, loosening their tie downs, and tossing them overboard? Maybe I need an HO scale wind tunnel to find out :-)

One important thing that doesn't come across in the photos was how pleasurable this car was to build. It didn't drag on and on as my projects usually do, but was done in three sessions, and each induced mental flow. That's not something that often happens for me these days, so that was a bonus.

Although I like the colour of the Ontario Northland car, I wanted to keep the family feeling in my rolling stock and sprayed it with some Krylon yellow so my canoe car would match the Loonar Module's locomotive. The car needs a few more markings and some light weathering, but for the time being I'm declaring it done.

Ramsey's Park Square: Finished!

In the previous instalment I had finished the base layer painting. That layer didn't look too bad, so I thought, why not do a little concentrated work and finish the thing. So I did :-)

The biggest job seemed to be adding mortar lines to the brickwork. I haven't settled on a preferred technique and have used a wide variety over the years. I think the oddest was rubbing on toothpaste, although it did produce pretty convincing results along with adding a minty fresh smell to the project! This time I rubbed in some white, fine modelling paste from Liquitex. The procedure was simple enough: rub a dab into some mortar joints, then rub off the excess that got on the brick surface. I must have had dirty fingers when I applied the paste as the bricks came out with an aged tone. Maybe I need to market my finger oils as a high quality weathering compound :-)

The window frames were sprayed with a leftover can of Krylon green paint. It turns out none of the window frames fit properly in the wall openings. I didn't have the patience to file and fiddle with each frame and opening to get a perfect fit, but just pressed and squeezed each until it wedged in its opening and then applied glue. 

The draperies are printed paper items leftover from the Kibri apartment project.

Eventually I'm going to add a staircase below the door on the back wall. I admit I've copped out on this detail, but what I'm interested in with this model is the front facade that'll be seen from the street. In the meantime, for safety's sake, maybe I better add a danger sign to the door as that first step is a lulu :-)

Why are those windows bricked up? Won't the apartments be dungeon-like on that side? Well, yes, but maybe they just need the right tenant :-) Ok, well, this wall came from a Grusom Casket Co. kit, and not from its ancestor, the Ramsey Journal Building, so there's the reason. I was just making due with the parts I had on hand, and I didn't have either a complete Ramsey Journal or Grusom Casket kit in my stash. 

The roof is quite simple. The skylight is from the kit, and the air conditioner is from a collection of Walthers rooftop detail accessories. Other than adding some pigeons, and maybe some droppings, to the upper ledge of the facade, that is that. It's not the most detailed of models, but I like the concept, and I think it'll add a little unique character to the layout.