The Centennial Experimental Farm's Biodome*

In 1966 NASA, the Canadian National Science Research Establishment, and the Centennial Experimental Farm agreed to build a biodome test facility on the farm's grounds to simulate growing exotic tropical plants on the Moon. It was believed that if these plants could thrive throughout an Ottawa winter, the Moon would pose no difficulties. If successful, lunar construction of such a facility was slated to begin with NASA's Apollo 30 mission. 

Funding ran out in 1970, and the project was scrubbed from Apollo 30's manifest. However, the facility was revived in 1977 in anticipation of the creation of the ExoBioLab facility for the then in development Space Transportation System. 

*Hopefully I don't need to say this is all made up nonsense, but in case you were wondering, it's all made up nonsense.

Bill Schopp, Trefoil Micro-Layouts, and Me in 2023*

Trefoil planform (according to Bill Schopp) shown in blue outline

There’s a brief note by Bill Schopp in the Trouble Shooting column of the May ’68 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman about a new idea for a layout table’s planform: the trefoil**. The idea was brought to Mr. Schopp’s attention by an enthusiastic reader identified only as ‘R.W.D.’. It seems Mr. Schopp was both intrigued and dismissive about the practically of the idea even though the reader said he was well into construction of a trefoil shaped layout. On the one hand Mr. Schopp notes his conflicting views:

“This idea held me enthralled for 3 days now trying to draw interesting layouts for it in N, HOn3, and HO traction with little success. I discarded at once the idea of ‘scenery first, track afterwards,’ as suitable for prototype but not model railroads: it’s the kind of idea an armchair expert could convince himself was the ‘only way’. I’ve drawn and redrawn the trefoil design with variations and have come to the conclusion that as a site for a layout, the trefoil table has little or no merit. But, I am constantly gnawed by the suspicion that I may be putting down one of the greatest ideas to hit model railroading since…well, since 2-rail.”

But then he firmly concludes that the trefoil planform probably is “not a good model railroad table” and goes on to list 3 issues he has with it:

1. “…it would restrict the design of a pike either to just following the curves, or making a 3-lobed version of a figure-8.”

2. “…takes up a terrible lot of space.”

3. Requires advanced carpentry skills to build.

In the Sept. ’68 issue a R. W. Bide of Lethbridge, Alberta wrote in to comment on Bill Schopp’s assessment,

“Thanks for not squashing the Trefoil. It’s the first sensible island design I’ve seen and I’m an around the walls layout fan. Two very good treatments for a start. Very high center of the lobe for scenery and a central valley full of action or very high ridges along the center lines giving three lovely scenes. Treatment could be a gorge or canyon, Lake Superior Shore or other Canadian Shield stuff. Or even a horseshoe curve. Walk around control with complete success. One lobe might be enlarged to the width of the others. The biggest problem I can see is radii but horrible curves can be hidden.”

When I read that letter I wondered if R. W. Bide was actually the mysterious ‘R. W. D.’ who alerted Bill Schopp to the trefoil planform. RMC didn’t have the most stringent copy editing in those days, so I wouldn’t be surprised if R. W. B. of Lethbridge was ‘R. W. D.’. I’ve looked in later issues for any mention of Bide’s trefoil layout, but I haven’t found any, so I don’t know how his worked out. If I find a story I’ll post an update.

Then in the Oct. ’68 issue a David Zavadi of State College, Pennsylvania wrote in to say that he derived the area of the trefoil plan and gave this equation***:

A = R² (6 √3 + π)

A is the area of the trefoil, and R is the radius of the circle upon which it is based.

Given the aforementioned copy editing issues I decided to see if I could still manage some high school level math and tried to derive that equation for myself. It was tough getting the brain going on these sorts of problems again after decades of neglect. I felt faint at times and had to lie down :-) but in the end I was able to confirm the equation is correct.

After getting this far I wondered what would R have to be for A = 4 sq.ft., which is the largest allowable area for a micro layout? The area equation needs to be re-arranged for R,

R = √ ( A / ( 6 √3 + π ) )

Plugging in A = 4 sq. ft. and evaluating the equation it turns out R = 6.5 inches. Ok, I should clarify the actual answer is 0.543699 ft, but I converted it to inches and rounded down a tad to get the more conservative and easily usable value of 6-1/2”.

4 sq. ft. trefoil compared to 2' x 2' foam square

I wanted to see how a 4 sq. ft. trefoil compared to a 2 ft. x 2 ft. foam square like the one I used to build the Loonar Module. So, I got out some paper, masking tape, scissors, compass, ruler, and protractor and went to work to make a paper trefoil. That's the result over on the left.

It looks like a very large fidget spinner.

4 sq. ft. trefoil overlaid on 2' x 2' foam square

Overlaying the two planforms gives a slightly better size comparison. 

Could this be the basis of a micro-layout, or do Bill Schopp's concerns squelch layouts in this category too?

I don't have a definitive answer. I think many of the points raised by Schopp and Bide still apply; however, I'll note that unlike back then we can build layouts from foam slabs, have wireless DCC control, have lots of specialized track and power trucks available, and it's not unusual for micro-layouts to be just simple track loops where scenes and scenery are the main points of interest. There need not be a concern with trying to simulate a fully operational, real railroad, or even a piece of one. So, maybe Mr. Schopp's concern with only being able to build a 3-lobed figure-8 track, or some such variation, might actually make for an interesting micro-layout. I look at the trefoil planform and think that it might be the way for me to build the Mt. Lowe layout I've wanted to do for years now. I can imagine each lobe providing a separate scene: circular bridge, granite gate, and the look out all visually separated by some suitable central rocky outcropping. 

4 sq. ft. 3-circle trefoil compared to 2'x2' foam square

If you look at this post's opening drawing with all the packed circles you can see that it's possible to slice out a three-lobed planform from the matrix based on just 3 circles instead of 4. This gives a less spindly and more compact planform.

The area for this shape is:

A = R² (4 √3 + π)

and the radius of the circle upon which it is based is:

R = √ ( A / (4 √3  +  π) )

If A = 4 sq. ft., it turns out R = 7.5" (again, I slightly rounded down R to yield a conservative and easy to use value).

4 sq. ft. 3-circle trefoil overlaid on 2' x 2' foam square

The overall shape is a bit blobbier than the 4-circle version, but it still has three distinct lobes. 

I've got to admit an advantage of the 2' x 2' x 1" pre-cut foam square is its convenience. I bought mine at Home Depot, but I should point out they are expensive for what they are: around $7 or $8 per square, which is crazy on a per sq. ft. basis compared to a 4'x8' sheet, however the pre-cut convenience can't be beat. If you're going to build either of these trefoils some cutting and gluing of foam slabs will be necessary. Or, maybe a base could be built up from corrugated plastic sheets. All this is just to say that some base construction will likely be needed, but likely no expert carpentry will be required as Mr. Schopp noted for his 1968 readers.

I haven't done a comprehensive scan of the internet, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot has been done with trefoil planforms and their variants, so please excuse the naiveté on my part if this is obsolete news and it's just new and interesting to me.   

Digressions:

*What does this have to do with 1977? Well, nothing in the actual 1977, but in the alternate, phoney, time travelled to world of 1977 where I found this June 1977 issue of Rail Model Experimenter, a lot. Apparently that issue contained a lost article by Bill Schopp called, Advanced Trefoil Trackplans. In retrospect, I should have consulted that piece before even considering this post. If you have the issue, please let me know what's inside :-)

**The trefoil entry in Wikipedia shows shapes somewhat different than the ones in Bill Schopp's Trouble Shooting note. In this post I'm going to go with the nomenclature used in the old May '68 RMC story and leave investigating strict definitions for another time.

***The letter and the editor's associated comment mentions integration, polar coordinates, high symmetry, analytic expressions, "equasions", "plain" geometry, and so forth being deployed to find the area. For the trefoils shown in this post finding a closed form equation for the shapes' areas is not too hard, but what if you wanted to figure out if an irregular trefoil you were planning to use was less than 4 sq. ft. so it would still qualify as a micro-layout? It could be a tough go to calculate the area by developing equations for an arbitrary shape. It might be far more practical, and just as accurate, to use this method described in The Scientific American Book of Projects for the Amateur Scientist.

Sprucy speeder

Sourced from Railroad Modeler, Sept '77

While on my trek through 1977 I came across an interesting article in the Sept '77 issue of Railroad Modeler called Railroading in the North by David Winter. It's a fascinating look at railroading in northern Ontario. I find it odd that it appeared in a California-based model railroading magazine focused mainly on the western USA, but I guess they needed stories. I was particularly taken by the school bus like speeder shown in the above photo. It's noted the photo was shot in Kapuskasing, the speeder was owned by the Spruce Falls Power & Paper Co., and the vehicle was parked next to a turntable designed just for speeders. No doubt this might make for an interesting little micro-layout just for the colours alone that are in that picture.

Bill Schopp, Micro-Layouts, and Me back in '77

As 1976 morphed into 1977 my interest in model railroading was not what it used to be. Then as ’77 rolled on I didn’t do much model railroading wise, and my reading of the hobby’s magazines was minimal. A few MRs now and then was all I managed. I was no longer the obsessive I started out as four years earlier. By the fall of ’77 the transformation to nearly casual bystander status was almost complete because at that time I was starting my last year of high school and there was a lot of pressure to do well and get into a university. My focus was elsewhere.

When I found out recently that it was 1977 when the N-scale version of the Ramsey Journal Building was released I realized I had missed a lot that year as I paged through the old magazines from that time.  I was intrigued, and I’ve started to more methodically read through RMC, MR, and RM from ’77. Better late than never I guess.

The biggest thing that passed me by was that was the year RMC began its now famous series on Allen McClelland’s Virginian & Ohio model railroad. The series got started in the January issue and concluded well beyond 1977. RMC recently celebrated Mr. McClelland and his layout in their March 2023 issue, and there’s an associated book by Tony Koester.

Maybe by March ‘77 publisher Hal Carstens was feeling the focus on very large layouts could alienate readers with more modest circumstances as his editorial in that month’s issue focused on the beauty of small layouts. Mr. Carstens noted the work of legendary model railroader Bill Schopp as a pioneer in small layout design. This may surprise some modern readers as Mr. Schopp is often misremembered, if remembered at all, for designing only large spaghetti bowl layouts. Writing against the day, Mr. Carstens had this to say in his Notes on an Old Timetable column:

Schopp’s forte was building and designing layouts for apartments, small homes and other habitations not having room for the larger-size model railroad. Schopp was doing the impossible back in 1940 and earlier, when most locomotives required a 24” minimum radius. If Bill needed a sharp No. 3 switch on a curve, he built one. When Walthers’ 4-6-4 Baltic wouldn’t negotiate the 14”-radius curves Bill had to use, he built a 4-4-0 that would take those curves. When Bill tired of standard-gauge steam railroading in small space, he plunged into narrow gauge and traction which were also novelties in those earlier days of HO.

Most books and articles in the early days recommended 24” minimum radius, which meant a layout had to be at least 6x8 feet in size to be much more than a loop. By using sharper radii, Bill dropped down to 4x6 feet, and even as small as 2x3 feet, all in HO. The smaller pikes demanded use of sharper turnouts, usually custom-made by Bill.

It reads like Mr. Schopp was a pioneer in what we would today classify as micro-layouts. Ok, according to Mr. Carstens the smallest of his layouts had a 2’x3’ (6 sq. ft.) footprint, and, by definition, today the largest a layout can be and still be classified as micro is 4 sq. ft., say 2’x2’. But, we’re comparing layouts built with technology available in the 1940s to today, which is hardly an apples to apples comparison. What is comparable though was he was confronted with many of the same home spatial constraints we are today and did amazing things - considered radical at the time - with what was then available. 

My reading has gone a bit further back than 1977, and I’ve stuck a toe or two into 1976 - time travel has many attractions :-) Mr. Carstens also explored the topic of small layouts in his September ’76 Notes on an Old Timetable, and again discussed Bill Schopp’s work in the area, elaborating a bit on some of the aspects he raised again in March ’77,  

Bill’s available space was usually very limited. For many years he lived in an apartment, later moving to a Trenton row house which we know today as a condominium. It follows that the layouts Bill preferred to make and operate were small ones: 3x4 or 4x6 or some equally small size. Bill did commercial track design work for all comers, many of them giant multi-track pikes based on the Pennsylvania’s busy four-track mainline.

Bill’s layout ideas make increasing sense in this time of rising costs. 

I wonder a lot about Mr. Schopp’s model railroading work. He was to model railroading and RMC what C. L. Strong was to amateur science and Scientific American. Mr. Schopp published over a 1,000 articles on just about every conceivable model railroading topic making him the 20th century’s most prolific writer in the field. Mr. Carstens started his September ’76 column off with a paragraph on Bill Schopp’s legacy in case modern readers were unfamiliar,

The late Bill Schopp was one of those likeable hobby pioneers who learned HO model railroading the hard way by doing it himself. He scratch built steam locomotives when there were hardly any to be bought. He successfully ran overhead trolley when O gaugers said it couldn’t be done. He dabbled in HOn3 and later in HOn2 years before you could buy it commercially. He also delighted in making oddball special track units such as grand junctions, switches on curves and other weird formations not available commercially.

Bill Schopp died in 1974. He retired years before and had not written anything for awhile when I started in the hobby in ’73. He had no direct influence on me at the time, although indirect influences were likely many (for example, he briefly collaborated with E. L. Moore during ELM’s ‘fantasy’ building period). All that talk of small living spaces and rising prices in Mr. Carstens’ editorials gets me thinking that Bill Schopp likely has things to say that are relevant for us here in the 3rd decade of the 21st century. Maybe ’77 holds other surprises.

Model Power's Star Journal Building origin year?

Source: Model Railroader, Apr. '77

I was reading through a random stack of old Model Railroader magazines and stumbled across that announcement in the Off the train wire column in the April 1977 issue.

That N-scale Ramsey Journal Building is the so-called Star Journal Building that was the basis of my Ramsey's Garage conversion. Given the lags in publication, I speculate the kit hit the hobby shops sometime between late 1976 and early 1977.

As you can see the fire station* is simply the Ramsey Journal Building's shell with different add-ons. In fact, it would have made a better starting point for Ramsey's Garage given those big doors on the front.

Although we seem to have narrowed down when Model Power released the kit, I still wonder if all they did was repackage and market a kit created by some other company, which was a common practice then. Time will tell.

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*Speaking of fire stations, April 1977 is the MR issue with E. L. Moore's infamous Cannonball and Safety Powder Works project. Why infamous? At the end of the project he blew up the model with some gun powder and photographed the conflagration.

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Afternoon update:

Source: Railroad Model Craftsman, May '77

I did a little searching through Railroad Model Craftsman magazines from 1977 to see what I could find. The May '77 issue has a report on new products on display at the 40th annual Hobby Industry of America trade show held earlier in the year. There on page 63 is a photo of Model Power's three new N-scale structures. In the accompanying text RMC had this to say: Model Power now offers N scale versions of several popular HO plastic kits including a 1:160 version of RMC's former office building down by the railroad tracks in Ramsey, N.J.. So, based on this I'd further narrow down the release date to early 1977.

Ramsey's Garage alias the Star Journal Building

Here at 30Squares Labs we continue to experiment with the compound N₂HO^c. For the laymen out there, N₂HO^c refers to structures resulting from converting N scale kits to casualized HO scale models. You may remember the previous project that successfully synthesized the 30Squares HQ (aka the Eldon Building) from Walthers' N scale Backshop kit.

Ok, ok, enough with the nonsense.

Back in March I bought this kit at a local swap meet. Since then its been sitting on the floor near my drafting table. While I was cleaning up after finishing Cal's Lumberyard I opened the box and wandered through the parts.

After a few minutes of handling I had a sense this little building would make an interesting HO scale garage. Well, it would be a casualized HO scale garage since, strictly speaking, this kit had nothing to do with HO scale.

The kit is an N scale version of the HO scale Ramsey Journal Building kit, which is based on E. L. Moore's project of the same name that appeared in the December 1967 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. The HO scale plastic kit of his project was first released by AHM (kit #5819) in the late 1960s. Over the years it was repackaged and re-released by a number of companies. I don't know when the N scale version was released, or if Model Power was the first to release it - I suspect not, but there's some research to be done on the history of this little model.

The kit was likely first released in the mid 70s or early 80s by the look of the parts. Even though the box wasn't sealed it appeared that all the parts were present. 

To build a credible version of the Ramsey Journal Building - or the 'Star Journal Building' as this thing is called, likely to avoid a copyright infringement legal entanglement - you'd have to apply generous amounts of TLC during construction.

The parts are rather crude by today's standards, not to mention their garish colours.

To make matters a bit worse, the walls have serious sink holes near the chimneys that need to be filled and re-scribed. For my garage I cut off the chimneys as they'd be out of scale, but I still had to fill those dimples.

The walls' inside surfaces are clean, but because I was going to open up the building I had to grind off all the mold release pins and assembly numbers.

I'm not going to walk you through a step-by-step build of this project. It's dead simple to make, and no doubt you'll know how to do it by simply studying the photos.

What I am going to do is focus on its design so if you're interested in doing your own N to HO conversions, you'll get a sense of the trade-offs required, and the properties of kits that might be suitable for such modifications.

First off, I should note I have my biases when tackling these sort of projects. I like a building that lets in lots of light, and that affords unobstructed views into and through it. Those were the primary drivers on the modified Cal's Lumberyard project, Cal's Cabbage Co., the McGregor Park Library, the Insectary, and what attracted me to Walthers Backshop kit. I applied that bias to this project. The kit has lots of windows that can let in a lot of light, a façade that can accommodate a big open door, and a flat roof for a big skylight, so it seemed to have the right characteristics for the kind of building I like.

One question that is often raised is, doesn't the size of the bricks give away the game? N scale bricks are far too small on an HO scale model. Yes, that's true, but there appears to be variation in brick sizes across kits, especially old ones.

The photo on the left compares the bricks on our garage to those on the Walthers Backshop kit. Both are allegedly N scale. Given that in HO a standard brick measures about 0.7mm high by 2.3mm long, the Model Power ones on the right of the photo are quite close to true HO, and the Walthers bricks in the centre of the photo are close to true N scale. Those bricks to the far left in the picture are sheet styrene panels I added to close up some openings in the Backshop. To confuse matters, the sticker on the sheet said they were "1:100 scale, HO scale". Well, they are close to 1:87.1, true HO scale. 

Since the bricks on the Backshop are too small for HO I chose not to detail them with mortar and weathering. To me the important feature of the building is its huge windows, and not its brickwork, so I chose not to call out the bricks and spoil the illusion. However, on the garage, given the bricks were about normal size for HO, and the exterior of the building was quite plain without either the clock tower or stock façade, I detailed the brickwork to provide more visual interest. It's all a choice about what you want the model to say.

Here's another comparison: Ramsey's Garage on the right and the Park Square building on the left. Park Square was built using the HO scale Ramsey Journal Building as its shell.

The Park Square's bricks are huge and seem more like blocks than bricks. In other words, the bricks on the HO scale Ramsey Journal Building kit are very oversize for HO scale.

One last comparison: our garage on the right and Moore's Balsa Products on the left, which is just my renamed build of the E. L. Moore designed HO scale AHM Machine Shop kit.

The bricks on the machine shop are much more HO-like than those on the Ramsey Journal Building. 

The message here is, don't be too swayed by the claims to HO or N scale as far as brickwork is concerned. Size it up for yourself.

And then there're windows.

Each window is a bit small for HO, but they're passable. Which is a good thing, because there were two other problems that had to be dealt with.

The first issue was each window had to be cut from the strips they were molded into so I could create individual frames. This isn't a problem for a box stock build because no one can see inside. Once de-stripped, I cut each window down from 8 panes to 4 by removing mullions with an X-acto knife. Ok, well, actually I removed the mullions first, and then removed the frames from the strips. The extra mullions had to go because in the 8 pane window, each pane seemed too small. With just 4 each, the windows seemed more in line with HO scale.

The second problem was the tops of the ground floor windows weren't high enough above grade. This is very apparent when they're compared to the back door I added - the door's a Tichy Train Group item.

What I should have done was add a styrene foundation wall about 18" to 24" tall to boost the structure. Galen recommended that for the Park Square building and it proved to be a significant improvement in the overall design.

Speaking of windows, the largest are part of the skylight.

The kit comes with a rather small skylight, and simply opening up the roof so it would let light inside wasn't going to produce the effect I wanted. I scratchbuilt a larger one from 0.020" thick sheet styrene and some styrene strips. It's that white, triangular structure shown in the photo on the left. Below it is the kit's stock skylight.

Skylights are pretty common on the E. L. Moore plastic kits. On the left is the Park Square build and that's its skylight. It's an HO scale item, but if I was opening up that model for more natural light I'd say it's too small to do much good.

The machine shop - Moore's Balsa Products in this picture - is better skylight-wise. Although If I were to do another I'd replace the kit's roof with a flat one and add some slightly bigger skylights.

The garage's new skylight uses considerably more rooftop real estate, but it still only just peeks above the walls, and it's not too noticeable from the street.

The only other new cosmetic detail was the addition of a pair of trifold doors out front made from slices of 0.020" styrene sheet. They didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped, so let's move on.

On the structural side, I had to add three internal joists made from styrene strips. The walls bowed inward, and since I had discarded the kit's base, I added the joists to get rid of the bow. They did the trick, and although they're merely sketches of actual joists, they make all the right suggestions when viewed from the outside.

Did any of these modifications for light and views work? Well, here's the view inside:

I can see the sign on the back wall of the post office through the garage's backdoor window, and there are some interesting shadows on the garage floor, so I'm happy with these effects, modest as they are.

Since I've been thinking recently about my father's old '49 Mercury I pulled my HO version from storage and used it in the glamour shots. It's an Oxford item.

Hey, if your friends don't hurry up they'll have to walk to school.