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.