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| MR's lunar railway in the Apr '78 issue |
Earlier this week I stumbled across an article in Business Insider about DARPA contracting Northrup Grumman to come up with a design for a lunar railway.
It's getting close to April Fool's Day and I wondered if the story was an elaborate joke. It turns out, no, it's real all right*. I don't fault myself with thinking this could be a joke because back in the April '78 issue of Model Railroader they published a story by Alan Cerny and Bob Hayden on how to build a model railway set on the moon. It was complete with model photos, extensive line drawings, and a track plan, It was also an elaborate April Fool's joke. I should have known because traditionally in the April issue model railroad magazines often included one tongue-in-cheek story. This was one for 1978, but I was duped and took it seriously. Maybe the good people at Northrup Grumman should jump in a time machine and have a look :-)
Speaking of having a look, take a look at this April Fool's lunar railway mockumentary. Pay special attention at the 9 minute mark.
I once started to build a lunar RR of my own. I was set to build it using N scale rail, a Bachmann Plymouth switcher (as a mechanism) and a fishing bobber as the satellite dish. I was going to base the trackplan not on the MR design but a smallish O scale layout in MR published about the same time. I was going to simplify that as a circle that went in and out of a mine with a dummy track coming from underneath it, justifying a bridge. I had the basic foundation built in about 1' square. I had a magazine cutout of the earth to paste onto a black posterboard backdrop. I had the track with a couple of turnouts and some feedstore sand. And that's where it stopped. I was looking forward to adding the suggested "Silent Running" robots. I think I got derailed by needing a launchpad and the lunar RR engine body for the Bachmann switcher. After that, it fizzled. I may still have the bobber.
ReplyDeleteThe layout sounds interesting. At 1 sq ft it would be solidly in today's micro-layout category.
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