First tree

The first tree off the assembly line for the Mt. Lowe layout. Needs a bit of fluffing and trimming here and there, but it's usable. I think I made more armatures than I'll need on this layout, but no doubt I'll have a use for them in the future.

Gaspar by the rails

Gaspar

One morning on one of my daily pre-heatwave hiatus walks down by the VIA Rail mainline out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw the bobcat that for years has been rumoured to be slinking through the fields and forests of Ottawa. But no, on closer inspection it turned out to be a Bengal cat, which is a cross between an Asian leopard cat and a domestic cat.

It's odd to see one on the loose given how much they cost, and this one looks in good shape for a cat living rough.

Named after one of the three wise men?

Over the weekend I was chatting with a neighbour who lives near the tracks and asked him if he'd ever seen the cat. Indeed he had, and the cat has a name: Gaspar (yes, with a G and not a C as was emphasized to me) !

It turns out Gaspar has a long and complex backstory, but suffice it to say some cat loving people are trying to catch him so he doesn't get into trouble in the wild. He's wily though, and so far attempts have been unsuccessful. For various reasons it's suspected he's already got a living arrangement with somebody and doesn't want to get snagged by anyone else.

Stay tuned to this cat channel for more breaking cat updates :-)

Bridging the heat in my subterranean lair

Here we are only 2 days into summer and we're having our first heat wave. It hit 29°C, with a humidex of 38°C today. Tomorrow is supposed to be worse with a predicted high of 35°C. So, the hiatus is parked for awhile while I hole up in the basement.

I've been puttering around, building the Circular Bridge for several weeks now. It's the last of the layout's 3 main structures, and the most challenging. When I last left the story the deck had been built, and some trusses were installed after the valley had been widened.

The bridge is made from styrene strips with thin steel wire for overhead trolley wire and trolley wire support structures. All those nut-and-bolt castings are Meng products glued on to give the structure a look of being constructed instead of glued together. Overall, it's an impression of the Mt. Lowe Circular Bridge, and certainly not an exact replica. And, the overhead wire is complete phoney baloney stuff too.

A primed Godzilla inspects bridge progress.

Well, if the heat lasts I'll move on to completing the overhead wiring installation and start in on trees, bushes, chaparral, and other scenic detailing. Stay cool.

Godzilla gets an orthotic

With the weather as its been so far during my hiatus I've found myself indoors more days than I had expected; puttering around and rummaging through old kits. My old, started-but-never-finished Godzilla kit from Polar Lights I bought nearly 6 years ago in July 2019 has been on my mind lately after seeing those monster kits at BMV earlier in the spring.

He seems to have a taste - or maybe dislike? - for railway cars.

In the summer of 2019 I glued all the parts together and started in on smoothing and building up a hip joint with putty. At the time the amount of work ahead of me on this kit seemed daunting, and combined with not being sure of how to proceed I set the project aside. 

Well, at BMV I had a flashback to seeing Aurora famous monsters kits at the Painted Post Smoke Shop. I took that as a sign to finally finish the plastic beast :-)

Scrap sheet styrene orthotic glued in place and beginnings of reshaping the foot with acrylic paste.

When I left the build it had one big problem: he wouldn't stand on his feet, but leaned back and rested on his tail. I had no plan to use the stand that came with the kit for support, and I couldn't take him apart to put weight in his feet, so I had to do something else. 

After some playing around I found that sliding a plastic shim under the back of his right foot caused him to tilt forward enough to stand on his feet without support from his tail. I was quite happy and went ahead and cobbled together an orthotic from scraps of sheet styrene. Warning: I don't have a medical degree, so don't try this at home without the assistance of a licensed Godzilla medic :-)

With the orthotic installed the patient stands in the correct position for bipedal locomotion.

You can see in the above photo that he stands up quite straight without any reliance on that tail. I base coated him with white acrylic paint as I built up his joints with acrylic modelling paste. This made it easier for me to see the state of filling and figure out which areas needed more building out and shaping.

I toyed with calling the orthotic a 'horseshoe', but that sounds demeaning for a monster of his renown :-)

Up there you can see the orthotic and surrounding foot pad are almost completely shaped. I didn't spend time making the foot pad look real as my concern was getting the beast to stand. I wasn't going to be staring at the bottom of his feet, well, hopefully not :-)

The undignified scene after painting the feet.

Once I was happy with all the shaping and filling I had done on the body I applied a coat of black acrylic paint. The green acrylics were painted on top of that layer.

Coming to a theatre near you: Godzilla vs Minion.

After several sessions in the paint shop Godzilla was set free to roam around the backyard at his leisure.

After some romping I checked his orthotic. All was well. He can stand tall and proud once again after a stay at the Godzilla Orthotic Clinic.

Hiding from the smoke

I returned to the basement to find a Godzilla infestation!

I'm on a brief hiatus from my brief hiatus now that the smoke from the western wildfires has blown into town. Yesterday the air quality index here hit 10+ on a scale where 1 is good and 10 is very bad, so I'm hiding in the house for awhile. Well, more specifically, the basement.

I've installed trolley wire supports all along the Mt. Lowe track, and I'm in the process of figuring out how to install the overhead wire. Also, I'm finally painting my Polar Lights Godzilla (who is apparently in N-scale!) that I started 6 summers ago. He's almost done. While working on his teeth I noted he has surprisingly good dental work for somebody who has breathed nuclear fire and munched on railway cars as snack food for the past 70 odd years :-)

I'll have more detailed notes and updates later when all the hiatuses have passed. Until then I'll leave you with Oscar Peterson.