120 Squares of Ontario

Bill Schopp's take on southern Ontario railroading | RMC Sept '61

Cal's Lumber Yard seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.

While rereading E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumber Yard construction article again I realized I'd forgotten that there's a narrow gauge track - represented by some N-gauge track - running into the main building for hauling lumber out to the yard for stacking. It got me wondering about all the narrow gauge projects he'd done, and I started to look back at them. The September '61 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman has his Slim Gauge Carriage project on building an HOn3 passenger hauler, and right below it is a Bill Schopp article on a layout design of his for a 10' x 12' HO pike called the Toronto, Lake Shore & St. Lawrence Ry: a railroad based in southern Ontario running from Toronto all the way over to Cornwall in the far east.

Is it realistic? Yes and no. The cities and towns are in the correct east-west order: leaving any of the platforms in Toronto (A: I assume the platform setup is Union Station, and that roundhouse is the the John St. roundhouse) the first stop going east is Oshawa (B: Oshawa is indeed east of Toronto, but being a Scarborough lad I would have made the first eastern stop Guildwood :-) ), then following the loop we next stop in Belleville (C: which is east of Oshawa), continuing along the inner loop we reach Kingston (D: which is actually at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River, so I assume the generic 'River' is the St. Lawrence), and finally at the end of Ontario is Cornwall (E: it too is actually on the St. Lawrence, but not on this layout). And this being a Bill Schopp design there's a line for RDC operations - his gas-electric line - for making runs between Toronto and Kingston.

I don't see me building this - even though an N-scale version might be interesting - but I admire Mr. Schopp's ingenuity.

Cal's Lumber Yard in 1/24 scale?

With talk of Cal's Lumber Yard flitting through my brain these days I went looking for the 1/24 scale end wall elevation I drew up many years ago on a piece of leftover Gator Foam. I thought a 1/24 scale Cal's might make an interesting set for photographing 1/24 scale car and truck models, but once I got a physical sense for how large it would be, I stuffed it away with a lot of flat stock in the workshop. It now has a grubby patina, but is still in good enough condition to use. I don't think I'll be building this thing, but I'm still intrigued.

Was E. L. Moore's VW pickup a Husky toy?

Left: VW pickups at Bunn's Feed & Seed | Right: 1965 VW pickup made by Husky Toys

I've been doing some looking around to see if I can identify the VW pickup diecast toy that E. L. Moore used in many of his photographs. I'm wondering if it's an item from Husky Toys. It's possible, but it doesn't quite match. The search continues.

Moore in the summer of '77

Left: Cal's Lumber Yard | Right: Grusom Casket Co. (both snipped from July '77 MR)

Galen tipped me off to some E. L. Moore goodness in the Trackside Photos section of the July 1977 issue of Model Railroader. On the left is a build up of Cal's Lumber Yard by George Landow, which is appropriately called the E. L. Moore Lumber Co., and on the right is a build up of the Grusom Casket Co. kit on Lila Martin's Sierra & White River RR (I also see what looks like another Machine Shop build up in the full picture, which I didn't include here). I sometimes think a list of all E. L. Moore project sightings in model railroading magazines since the '60s would be as thick as a telephone book, if telephone books still existed :-)

A model engineer's workshop

I seem to have a thing for model engineering these days and was particularly taken by this workshop tour.

Model engineering in all its glory

I stumbled across this charming video and it made me wish for such a club here.

A European model railway to sell a prescription drug to North Americans?

Snipped from ENBREL's 2022 tv commercial

Michael alerted me to a tv commercial he recently saw for ENBREL as it opens with an interesting model railway scene, which is something of a rarity in mainstream tv. What struck me is the layout looks European, and I only note this because the commercial is being aired on American tv. I haven't seen it yet on tv, but now I'm on the lookout. My assumption is that a European commercial was repurposed for US tv to save some money, but that's all just speculation on my part. It looks like quite a good layout. I especially like the water feature seen in the lower left quarter of the image. It appears to be cast resin so you can see what's under the water's surface. Has this layout appeared in Continental Modeller magazine? Was it custom built for the commercial? If anyone out there knows anything about this layout, please leave a comment.

Prototype loons

We went out on the weekend to see if we could see some loonar prototypes. We were lucky and did. Although, we didn't see the Space Hopper :-(

E. L. Moore's little layout stand

1" = 1' model of the stand for E. L. Moore's EHRR

Paul pointed out the layout stand bares a resemblance to the stand E. L. Moore built for his Enskale Hoentee RR. I had forgotten about the EHRR stand, but I did have a couple of photos of the model Mr. Moore made of it. They can be found in this post, and over on the left for convenience. These days I think the stand would be a nice piece of conversational furniture in the same vein as Bill Baron's mid-century coffee table layout. These sorts of tables could possibly make model railroading a little more convivial. Hmmm, but first it needs some wheels :-)

Scenes from a working day

Before the day gets going.

Clearing away windfall.

A quiet time for a few test loops.

What the drone saw.

We'll have your money today. I promise.

Sunday swim

My first attempt at digitally replacing a background with a photograph. I gave this a try because I realized the lack of trees in the distance was giving me a problem. More practice, more practice.

An heir apparent to Revell's Engine House?

Left: Walthers Brick Millworks | Right: My build up the AHM Weekly Herald kit

Galen tipped me off to Walthers new Brick Millworks kit, and how it looks a lot like the old Revell / AHM  Engine House / Superior Bakery / Weekly Herald kits. The similarity is no doubt due to this architectural style being a fairly common one. The Walthers kit looks interesting, and I suspect that like the older item it has a lot of kitbashing potential.

7 August 2022 update: Speaking of engine houses, it looks like this kit might be a variation on Walthers 2-Stall Enginehouse kit.

Throw a couple of stakes on the layout

Three more from the bag of N-scale rolling stock. The flat cars are Roco #2308 German stake wagons, and on the end is a British brake van from Peco (I don't know its product number, but it appears to be a common item from Peco).

These stake wagons are the longest freight cars I've attempted to run on the layout. Their axle to axle measurement is about 52 mm, which is around 28' in N-scale, and 14-3/4' in HO. Previously, I thought the box car, with its overall length of 15' in HO, was about the limit for this track, but I had to give these stake wagons a spin to see what might happen.

There's a little hesitation as the 0-4-0 pulls through the switch, but after chipping out some ballast that was glued against the inside rail, the bump through the switch is gone. However, if the speed is too low when pulling these wagons and the van, the loco will stall in the switch when it rolls over the switch's plastic parts.

No such problems when pulling the stakers with the HO-9 Gmeinder diesel. These wagons don't look too out-of-place scale-wise as HO-9 items - as long as the viewer doesn't know better. One of the wagons has a broken stake that's been lost to time, and I'm thinking of giving it a proper yellow Lands & Forests paint job to see who I can fool :-)

E. L. Moore's Old Red Barn

All model photos courtesy of James L. Dixon

You might recall that back in May Paul figured out that one of the E. L. Moore mystery pieces was the cowshed from the barn described in ELM's article, The Old Red Barn, that appeared in the January 1966 issue of Model Railroader. Recently, I generously received some detail photos of the rest of the barn from E. L. Moore's grandson.

A photo of this view of the barn's end wall is clearly shown in the article, and one thing that strikes me about the model on the left is that it has no window in the peak, and the decorative circular designs on the middle of the wall are missing. So, I'm wondering if this is a duplicate of the model that appeared in the article. As Mr. Moore notes in the article's opening paragraph,

I really built two barns, one for a fellow modeler who wanted a bit classier barn with matched siding and a cupola to set it off. But both barns are basically the same, with similar skeletons serving both. The difference is in the finish.

So, I'm thinking this is the less classier one.

You can see from this interior shot that there are no cutouts for windows near the end wall peaks.

But, I do like that interior, and the straw is still there.

Here's a closer look at the straw and interior framing around it, which is quite neatly done and precise.

It's even got a curious pig, and what looks like a rooster.

Here's a view of the framing looking in the opposite direction. Again, the joinery is quite well done.

Animals abound in this barn. Here's a collie.

A chicken looking for some seed.

Another chicken and what looks like a goat, or maybe that's the animal I thought was a pig in a previous photo.

Looks like it's feeding time. 

As you know, I consider E. L. Moore an American folk artist who plied his art in the world of model railroading. A number of his builds are more in the folk art vein than strictly model railroading, and this is another example in the folk art category. In the article's introductory paragraph ELM notes as much,

I wanted a souvenir to recall a phase of my wasted youth, so I set about building a barn with memory - it being some 40 years since I was last down on the farm - as my only guide.

ELM was raised on a farm in rural Michigan in the early years of the 20th century, so this sounds like it was a model of the barn on his parents' farm.

Testing ol' 99 on the test layout

When Donna dropped by yesterday she generously gave me a bag of N-scale rolling stock courtesy of her equally generous brother-in-law. I'm starting to work my way through the bag to see what's what and what works.

One of the more intriguing locomotives, especially for the Loonar Module, was this classic 0-4-0 dockside switcher. It was in a clear plastic box marked as Fleishmann product number 8053. I'm not sure if it's actually a Fleishmann product. It might simply be in the wrong box. I wonder if it's a Bachmann item? I'll need to investigate a little more.

Regardless, it ran quite well straight out of the box, so I hooked it up to two Roco #2309 open goods wagons which were also in the bag. Here's a clip of the train running over the worst section of track:

There's a little bounce, but it's ok as there's no derailment, even after many loops. It turns out there's a bit of ballast that needs chipping out to improve the ride. The 0-4-0 has deep flanges, so they found the sloppy ballasting problem.

The 0-4-0 is a nice size in comparison to the Minitrains HO-9 Gmeinder diesel.

Well, that wraps up the first test session on the test layout. Stay tuned.

Eye-level diorama stand: a working test article

Posing in a living room nook

For the past few weeks I've been working on a design for a Loonar Module stand that would allow me to test some ideas on viewing layouts and dioramas at eye-level. I finally settled on the design shown at the left, and decided to build it.

Some things to keep in mind. This wasn't meant to be a piece of fine furniture, but something to test out ideas. This being the case I wanted to use as much scrap has I had on hand for easy, low-cost construction.

Also, I wanted this to be as flimsy and scrawny as I thought I could get away with. And it had to be as lightweight as I dared build because it has to be carry-able from the basement to anywhere in the house. Any carpenters out there will readily see this isn't a proper, robust structure. In the end I found it isn't too bad stiffness and stability wise, but it certainly won't stand up to rough handling, or children.

With this stand I wanted to create a particular visual experience: I wanted my eyes to be level with a locomotive on the track, to be forced to look up at the tall trees and down to the water, just as if I was actually standing in the Loonar Module's world. I thought the tallness of the trees wouldn't come across if the layout was at standard table height and the viewer looked down on them. That is physically wrong.

I'm short and eye-level for me is around 64", so given that and the above requirements, I arrived at the following dimensions and material sizes:

1. The Loonar Module has a 2'x2' footprint, so the platform it rests on is a 2'x2'x1/4" piece of Masonite I had in my crawlspace scrap pile. This is a standard size one can buy at a Home Depot or other home reno store.

2. The verticals are 1"x2" pine, cut to 55-3/8" lengths. I had to buy these as I didn't have any suitable scrap material. I was going to use 2"x2" framing spruce, but couldn't find any in the store that were straight enough, so I went over to the finish lumber section and bought 4, 1"x2"x6' pine pieces for about $6 CDN each. Expensive, but they're good material.

Awaiting paint

3. The horizontals are 1"x4"x2' pieces of cedar. I had 2, 8' pieces stored outside behind my shed for a few years, so I figured their time had come. They were badly stained by the weather, but dry and straight. These 8-footers were cut into 8, 2' lengths.

4. The stand is mounted on 4 of the least expensive furniture casters I could find. I didn't have any on hand and had to buy 4, also for around $6 CDN each. Each is rated for a 50lb load, which is quite sufficient for this featherweight project. The wheels are 2-3/8" tall. I wanted to put the stand on wheels because I want to have the ability for it to be placed in the centre of a room so it can be looked at from many viewpoints. 

5. The whole thing is held together with 1" and 1-1/4", No. 8 wood screws. Luckily I had plenty on hand. 

Once built it was painted flat black to visually de-emphasize the stand and its quirks. 

My initial impression is I'm liking it. When I walk up to it and look at the layout I do see the views I see in my mind. However, there are many tests and improvements ahead. A few that come to mind:

1. It will likely need some weights at the bottom. My plan was to staple wire mesh to the bottom horizontals to form a tray for a few bricks. Visually, if the mesh is also painted black, the red bricks won't look too bad. If I could find an old section of rail to replace the bricks, that would be most excellent :-)

2. The top platform needs a ledge to prevent the layout from accidentally being bumped off. 

3. I need to make a battery powered throttle so that there aren't any electrical extension cords radiating off this thing for viewers to trip over. For casual viewing and use, such a throttle should be sufficient.

4. I'm thinking I might add a diagonal shelf for showing supporting material and adding a little shear strength to the tower. Some battery powered LEDs on the underside of the platform would provide some light. 

No doubt there are other things that I'll find out, but so far, so good.

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Afternoon update: Donna dropped by, had a look at the setup, and provided the first problem report: “Buddy, it may be eye level for you, but it needs to be adjustable.” Problem noted. Hmm. I’m going to need a problem tracking system if this keeps up :-)