Mountain Widening 101

The valley after widening and before painting.

After making the bridge deck and staring at the gap it'll span I realized I should widen the valley floor so the bridge's vertical supports wouldn't be unnecessarily narrow, and so I'd have a better scene in this part of the layout. Also, it turned out that after studying some photos of the area the real circular bridge spanned some widening would make the area a little more prototypical. 

The circular bridge valley before widening and before removal of the foam deck.

Here's what this end of the layout looked like before widening and removal of the temporary foam board bridge deck to make way for the plastic model. 

Foam extensions were hot glued to the layout.

The valley extension was built up from foam scraps stuck together and to the layout with hot glue. I used the same construction methods as I did with the Quetzalcoatlus Corridor. 

Now, any micro-layout sticklers out there might be waving around the micro-layout rule book and asking if this is a micro-layout anymore? Ok, well, as you know the trefoil base that actually 'touches the ground' was designed to have an area of 4 square feet, the maximum for a micro, but as you also know I backed off a little on the equation for area so it had round numbers, so it under calculates area a little, meaning the trefoil is a bit under 4. Ok, but, does the extra 'air area' that the Q. Corridor and Valley Extension take up make the layout now exceed 4 square feet? I don't know .... and don't particularly care :-) Frankly, I like that these extensions just stick out. They add visual interest and improve the scenes in ways I hadn't thought of when I started the layout. I wouldn't want to not add what I think is goodness to the layout just to conform to some rule book. 

Strip this layout of its micro designation if you must, but not the fun :-)

A later stage of CelluClay application.

Once the foam was given a preliminary shape with the saw and rasp I began applying CelluClay to form the terrain. There were several rounds of CelluClay application to build up the shape I wanted. Given the long drying times and somewhat more humid air at this time of year this job took around a week or so to complete.

I haven't yet painted the valley extension. Instead I feel the need to make some vertical bridge supports and add their concrete bases to the valley floor. 

First though I need to rid my head of an earworm. All this work with fake rock for some unknown reason got me thinking again of this old song from my youth that I spent endless hours trying to figure out. Hmmm, life is a rock, but the CelluClay rolled me? Here, let me play it again.....

AI desires tramcars

I was going to post a few more photos of TTC streetcars going about their business. As I was building up the post in my head I wondered if 'desire' was actually the term for a group of streetcars - you know, like 'a murder of crows' means a group of crows - or if it was just something Robert Jowitt cooked up for his 1969 book, A Desire of Tramcars, a copy of which I finally bought a few months ago.

Like any other resident of the 21st century who wants to know something I asked Google if desire was the term for a group of  streetcars, and also typed in the book's title as the source of my question. Much to my surprise it came back with one of those AI summaries of Jowitt's book.

A few days ago in a long, late night discussion about the ins-and-outs of today's AI at a Toronto bar I tried to argue that AI seems to me to fabricate a lot, but presents it with great authority as if it were irrefutably true. I guess I had too much to drink to make a forceful case because I didn't make much headway with my argument, but I present the above unsolicited AI Overview as a sober example.

I present it because it's dead wrong.

The table of contents on the left gives you a list of the themes

Ok, well, yes some of the points it mentions are touched on, but what book on streetcars (or trams or trollies or whatever you want to call them) doesn't. What this particular book is, is a collection of the author's photographs of trams in operation in the UK and Europe, shot from 1958 to 1968, and arranged thematically instead of technologically or chronologically, which are more-or-less the standard organizations for these sorts of books. It's a book about the love of streetcars, not of their instrumentality.

I rather like Jowitt's book and often find myself leafing through it. If it does make arguments as suggested by the AI Overview, it does it romantically rather than analytically through it's use of photographs and themes instead of statistics and engineering. 

Although, Jowitt isn't adverse to explicitly making a point with words:

"Fools, fools are these little men who think they can live by motor-car alone. Fools are the Socialists who want to scrap what they think are stodgy old-school Conservative trams, at the same time protesting in towns where the Conservatives are mistakenly engaged on 'taking away the people's trams'. It is not the tram which is an anachronism, it is the men who scrap it thinking they are being progressive and modernistic. It is not the tram which causes congestion, it is the army of replacing cars and buses fighting in disorder through a fog of exhaust."

I suspect the AI can only deal with the words in the book in a particular manner and can't understand how the words, photographs (which are the main feature), and organization together make the author's case, if the 'case' is what you're reading this book for. It's a case that a human is making to other humans, and is unfathomable to the AI's software. The AI Overview makes the book sound like some sort of dry, required reading for MBA course work (although the student would likely just 'read' the AI Overview and consider it done), and not the pleasant and enjoyable book that works on several levels.

Deck for the Circular Bridge

The finished bridge deck

With the Station at Poppyfield Flats and the Observation Shelter at Inspiration Point finished the only structure left to tackle was the Circular Bridge, er, well, in this case, the Circular Arc Bridge. Of the three, I consider this one the most challenging to build.

Styrene strips were cut and laid out over the plan

I should say that this bridge is mostly freelanced although it is inspired by the Circular Bridge on the Mt. Lowe railway. Those familiar with real bridge engineering may want to avert your eyes.

When I laid out the track above the valley where the circular bridge resides I was primarily concerned with making sure the curve wasn't too tight and the grade wasn't too steep for the trolley. Getting those things right was done by trial-and-error. I didn't have plans I built to.

The plan came later. I took a piece of tracing paper, laid it over the rails, and then using a soft pencil traced the curve of the rails and marked the span of the ties. I then did a little guesstimating on how wide the bridge's deck should be and finished by penciling in those guesses - which I didn't get right and had to correct later as I'll show further down.

The plan was placed over a scrap of foam board so the deck pieces could be pinned down during construction.

The deck is built up from pieces of 0.080" x 0.188" styrene strip that I had bought late last year for this project. Yeah, four months or so between stock purchase and use :-)

I guess in retrospect there's nothing all that difficult about this project. It's essentially  just cutting the pieces according to the plan, applying glue to them, and then sticking the pieces in place and holding them firm with pins while the joints set up. I spent some pleasant afternoons gluing pieces and listening to episodes of 'Round Midnight.

The thin inside stringer pieces are cut from 0.060" x 0.188" styrene strip.

Here's the finished deck. The styrene glue doesn't stick to the tracing paper, so the deck peels easily away once the pins are removed. Some sanding on both sides was required to smooth out the surfaces. Later I painted the deck with some acrylic flat white paint.

As a first test I laid the deck over the track.

And then I cut out the track's temporary foam board support over the valley and slid in the new deck. The fit was good, but it confirmed my suspicion that the deck needed to be widened a little to give the impression that the ties and rails were actually being supported by the deck's stringers. After some inspection I decided to add another layer of pieces to the inside of the outer stringer and to the outside of the inner stringer. Got that ? :-)

So, literally, back to the drawing board.

The inner and outer stringers are thicker, and a second inner stringer has been added.

Skipping the cutting and gluing part and jumping to the result, up there is the enhanced bridge deck. You can see both the outer and inner stringers are thicker, and a second interior stringer has been added to retain a symmetrical look to the thing.

Here's the deck slipped into place to test the look. To me the ties now look as if they are supported. At this point I've also begun to paint the ties on the bridge track white. This is artistic license on my part. I wanted to eliminate the strong contrast between the ties and the rest of the bridge's structure so the track doesn't visually stick out as much and call too much attention to itself. As well, I wanted the bridge to look like a single, unified structure.

Next I'm going to do some terrain modification in the valley so there's room for the bridge's vertical supports, and to frame the scene a little better. 

Miniature Scottish buildings from a wee shed

The folk art miniature building tradition is alive and well in Scotland. A must watch video.

Glenn Gould, "I’m a bit of a railway buff I guess.”

Although pre-VIA Rail trains feature throughout this show, serious train talk and Gould's admission begins around the 4:55 mark. Both the talk and visuals are impressive. One comment of Gould's at around the 6:30 mark I found particularly interesting was in his introduction to the surveyor W. "Wally" V. Maclean:

"In the course of a day long conversation when we first met he [JDL: Wally] tried to explain to me the metaphorical significance, as he saw it, of his profession. He sort of parlayed surveying into a literary tool in the same way that Jorge Luis Borges manipulates mirrors and Franz Kafka badgers beetles and as he did so I realized that his relation to this craft, which has as its subject the land, enabled him to read the signs of the land, and enabled him to find within the particular a suggestion of the infinite, and vice versa I suppose.”

The other parts of the show can be found at these links:

    Part 2

    Part 3

    Part 4

The non-artificial (aka real) learning and pleasure in placing the observation shelter

Observation shelter installed at Inspiration Point.

In my reading I’ve come across a few places online that, for a variety of reasons, advocate reading in a more traditional way - on the printed page and far from the internet - as a way to try to preserve and develop important aspects of one’s humanity. I agree with them, but I’d add that finding and developing an offline interest that engages not just the mind, but the body and soul as well is equally as important. And if it also incorporates reading, then all the better.

Work started by installing a styrene piece for a foundation and levelling it with clay blobs.

‘Interest’ isn’t a good word for the kind of activity I have in mind. Neither are words like ‘hobby’, ‘pastime’, or ‘leisure pursuit’. ‘Work’ comes closest, but it’s loaded with other meanings that are far from what I’m thinking about. ‘Calling’ is getting closer, but it also has its own baggage. I need to look into terminology some more.

Foam pieces were hot glued in place to make 'rock' steps up to the shelter.

For me model making comes close to fulfilling this role. As an ‘interest’ for me it’s not just about making things and learning to make things, but also includes reading (lots of it offline :-) ), writing, investigating, walking, wondering, travelling, observing, and photographing. Sometimes video enters the mix, but I have no affinity with it. Model railroading and train watching involve things that move, so video seems a natural fit to capture that aspect, but the shadow cast over amateur video production by the world of tv shows, influencers, media stars, and so on I find off putting. I watch and enjoy several ‘channels’, but communicating my thoughts through video isn't something that resonates with me.

CelluClay was used to reshape the top of Inspiration Point and blend in the shelter's foundation and steps.

Lurking in the background is AI, attempting to completely devour all the surface phenomena associated with reading, writing, photography, and even video. I think of AI as ‘Alien Intelligence’. Not alien in the sense of little green men from outer space, but alien in the sense of foreign to the human experience. Those LLMs powering AI are simply brute force algorithms to simulate certain outputs of our minds. They appear to do it exceedingly well, but ultimately it’s all just puppetry, and crude puppetry at that. At least a real puppet has the advantage of being an actual extension of a human being allowing humans to create and communicate in ways that enhance aspects of the body, mind, and soul. Without body and soul, and the deep ways they and mind interact to inform each other, prevent what we charitably call AI from ever truly being an artificial version of human intelligence. And what of AI’s mind? What little there is, it’s not created by us, for our purposes, so even that is highly suspect.

Several applications of CelluClay were required to mould in everything to my liking.

Placing the observation shelter was an iterative process. Effort-wise, it was only a few hours work. Elapsed time-wise though it took 2 or 3 weeks. There was lots of time spent looking, trying things out, adjusting, fiddling, more looking, mixing papier-mâché, consulting books, applying paint, re-applying paint, gluing on ground cover, more looking, more fiddling, and so on. All of this was real learning, real doing, and real pleasure. My terrain may not be great, but it is real, and from the real experiences I gained creating it, real learning can continue due to the continual feedback to body, mind, and soul engaged in the process.

Ok, let's climb down from the high country. I need some real coffee.