The Centennial Experimental Farm, aka LOL III, so far

I’ve been bouncing around a lot of blog topics over the last few weeks, so in the spirit of collecting my thoughts I figured I’d post this picture of what the HO-9 Centennial Experimental Farm layout looks like today and summarize its fictional history.

Layout construction started in September 2022, but research began in January 2022. It’s inspired by the streetcar line that ran through Ottawa’s Central Experimental Farm from 1908 until 1929.

The farm was established in 1886, and is still in operation today. Its purpose is to perform scientific research for improving agricultural methods and crops for use in Canada. It must be unique in the world that a country’s capital city has a 400 hectare farm at its core. Parliament and the symbolic buildings of government are along the Ottawa river, but at the centre is a farm. As an expatriate Torontonian I find that quite delightful. The farm is a great place to wander around on a bicycle, and I’m hoping my shoulder and back are now up to it again.

My layout is a whimsical speculation on what the farm’s streetcar system might have looked like had it been re-established in 1967, the 100th year of Canada’s confederation, and continued to operate today. In 1967 the federal government sponsored many ‘Centennial Projects’ as part of that year’s celebrations. This layout is a look at one such project, albeit a fictional one. I’m not sure where Cousin Cal figures in this history, but I see his truck parked by the Insectary :-)

The layout uses Kato Unitram N-gauge track as its basis. I’ve repainted the track, and performed a few hacks on it, to run HO-9 streetcars in an Ottawa-like setting (with some Toronto influences). All the streetcars planned for this layout are HO scale ones re-motored with various Kato N-gauge drives. There is a problem that I can’t run streetcars side-by-side on this track as the rails are too close together along the straight sections, but it is possible to have operating sessions with streetcars running on both tracks as long as certain rules are followed - these could form the basic rules of a game, although that’s not really my thing.

I’m planning to try my hand at scratchbuilding models of local deciduous trees, and this layout will eventually be their home. The real farm has lots of trees and incorporates an extensive arboretum, so various sorts of trees will not be out of place on the layout.

When will it be ‘done’? There’s at least another year of work to go, but these days I’m more interested in seeing the layout develop than getting it finished. I’m still in a random activities frame-of-mind, so work on this will proceed at whatever pace seems right at the time.