Travel brochure

Two docks for two airplanes

 A first sketch of the dock scene.
Dock outlines are in brown, track roadbed is black, outer bound of the lake is blue.

I've started to work out some ideas for the scenery now that I think the track plan is more-or-less worked out.

I've started with the dock area as this will be the most prominent feature. Both the standard and narrow gauge tracks run out past the lake's shoreline onto a spit that has been created by dumping rock onto the lakebed and civil engineering it to support railway track. The split is sandwiched by two docks, each dimensioned to accommodate one de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter without interfering with the railway track.

I'm not sure how large the bays on either side of the docks should be. They shouldn't be too big for layout handling reasons, but not so small that they seem vestigial. Also I have an idea for a temporary scene for the right-hand bay that would feature a Canadair CL-215 water bomber floating in the water, but given the size of that aircraft that may be one airplane too far :-)

Next, some vertical mocking up.

Mystery trolley by 'J G Models'

Left: J G MODELS trolley | Right: My kitbashed Jigger

John, Garrett, and I visited the Ottawa Valley Associated Railroaders swap meet this morning. It was excellent and we all found some treasures. John knows I have an interest in unusual trolleys and bought me that one on the left in the photo above. It reminds me of the 'Jigger' I kitbashed from a Tyco trolley for the Centennial Experimental Farm layout.

It appears to be cast from white metal, is clearly narrow gauge (maybe HOe?), and the trucks are also cast items that are static. You can see 'J G MODELS' is stamped on the bottom. I can't find much of anything on the internet about this other than J G Models was a model train manufacturer in New Zealand, although I can't be sure of that. I need to do some research about this intriguing item. I may motorize this unit with a Kato N-gauge drive for use on the CEF layout. Thanks John!

Yes: Rough sketch in track of the Inglenook Lake track plan.

A second attempt was made with Gemini to see what sort of rendered track plan it could create for Inglenook Lake. I supplied Vince with the above cleaned up track plan along with some reference images and notes for a prompt, which in turn he offered up to Gemini.

No: Gemini's second attempt at a rendered image of Inglenook Lake

From that information the above image was created by Gemini. The only thing better on this attempt is the track plan is much improved. The rest is not close to what I have in mind. I guess I shouldn't be surprised because Gemini can only generate images in accordance with what it has been trained with. Vince told me it took a lot of work to get the image to this point, and I appreciate him sticking with it so we could see what Gemini could do; however, I don't think I'll continue on with this Gemini investigation.

I only post Gemini's images here so they can be compared to what I have in mind for this layout, how I want it to look, and what I want it to say. Gemini can't tap into my mind, experiences, thoughts, or aesthetic preferences, so I shouldn't expect it to approximate a layout I might want to create. I'll leave it at that. Stay tuned.

A model railroader goes to a plastic scale model show, again!

Godzilla assumes his position of honour at the Fantasy Figures table.

Last Sunday, John, Garrett, and I went to the annual scale model showcase held each year at this time at the Holland Armoury. We went last year and had a great time.

Godzilla patiently awaits transportation to the show.

Last year I took a serious entry with me, but this year I couldn't think of a diorama to build so I thought I should just be lighthearted about it and took my build of Polar Light's Godzilla I completed in 2025.

Godzilla towers above the other entrants proving he is indeed King of the Monsters!

These isn't any formal judging at this show. All judging is done by those who enter a model. If you enter, you get a ballot and can cast votes for models in the various categories you think are worthy. Last year John and I found wandering the floor doing our little bit of judging enhanced the viewing experience. It gave us a framework for talking about aspects of models we liked or didn't care for. It made us more engaged with the show. So, for this year I decided to enter Godzilla so we could once again judge and be a bit more engaged with the model work on display. It worked. 

An excellent armour model on an elevated display
(I apologize for not identifying the builders in my photos as all entries were displayed anonymously for judging purposes)

All the model work was outstanding. My only concern is that models are not displayed in a manner that does justice to the excellent work of their makers. 

The display tables are standard commodity, transportable dining tables. They are too low for show purposes, and the models are too crammed together on them to allow for proper viewing. I understand why these tables are chosen as they're readily available, convenient, and no additional costs are incurred by using them. 

Another excellent armour model on an elevated base.

But, I do like how a few builders made use of elevated bases to try and alleviate this problem a little.

1949 Bombardier C18

There was one piece of railway related equipment on the display: a beautiful scratchbuilt 1949 Bombardier C18 Maintenance of Way vehicle in 1/25 scale shown in the above photo.

A good time was had by all. As a bonus I found a Hobbycraft DHC-3 Otter kit I've been looking for and a few old magazines. We'll be sure to be back next year.

Update: 10:10 am

Check out the following video to get an overview of the show and all the models (Godzilla makes an appearance around the 6:42 mark):

Gemini gives its two cents

An image of the Inglenook Lake layout created by Gemini

Vince and I got to talking and he told me about a friend of his who asked Gemini to create a rendered image of a track plan he had in mind. So, as a challenge I asked Vince to ask Gemini to create an completed image of the most recent iteration of the Inglenook Lake track plan. The image above is what Gemini produced. Ok, it has many, many problems, but I am intrigued by it. First I like how the track is elevated a lot higher above the lake than I had in mind. That would further help hide the discrepancy between the HO scale trains and the 1/72 scale float planes, and I like how the fire watch tower is positioned so the train at the back appears to run under it ( it reminds me of the Bell Labs Manhattan Building). I'm not sure if that's possible, but it's an interesting idea. I rarely take anything Gemini produces as the absolute truth, but at times it can be an interesting source of ideas. Admitting this would get me banned and denounced from many places, but, well, that's what I think.

Enter the Growlery: Dead Tree Edition

Post-derecho remains of a pine tree with a 23" diameter trunk as seen in 2026.
The internet tells me this tree could have been up to 115 years old!
That age is sobering.

'Sit down, my dear,' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'This you must know, is the Growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.'

'You must be here very seldom, sir,' said I.

'O, you don't know me!' he returned. 'When I am deceived or disappointed in - the wind, and it's Easterly, I take refuge here. The Growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!'

John Jarndyce explains the need for his Growlery in Bleak House to Esther Summerson (the 'said I' in the above); from Chapter VIII, Covering a Multitude of Sins in Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

Top piece of said pine tree that bounced off the roof my vehicle

On the May Victoria Day weekend in 2022 one of the most powerful storms in Canadian history swept through Ontario and Quebec, extending 1,000 km from Windsor in the west all the way to Quebec City in the east.

We were in a cabin in the bush when the storm blew through. We survived alright, but our vehicle didn't: the top 2 or 3m or so of a mature pine tree that was maybe 18 to 24 metres tall snapped off in the fury and bounced off the roof of our vehicle. Luckily only the top-most part of that log hit our vehicle, but that was enough to put a significant V-shaped dent in the roof, wreck the sun-roof, smash the windshield, and crush all the roof mounted electronics. I'll say this for Honda's CRV, it can take a punch as it was still drivable. Total repair bill: $10K. Luckily again, insurance covered it. 

Ignominiously being towed home as seen by me from the back window of the tow truck.
It was drivable, but the windshield was completely shattered and the cops said it would likely blow out at speed.
No, it didn't blow out while being towed, but why risk it? The interior was already covered in glass shards. 

Back in the fall of 2021 I had started to take a serious interest in trees and how to model them. Strangely, experiencing this event, and seeing all the smashed and destroyed trees, deepened my fascination with them. There was something about seeing how all these seemingly solid, eternal things, could all be destroyed in a matter of seconds struck a chord. Yes, yes, I have a couple of chainsaws, I've cut down trees and cleared brush, I've seen logging, but this was different: it was wild, violent, and pitiless.

Well, then spring turned into summer as it usually does :-)

I did a lot of sitting around that summer of 2022 because I had injured my left shoulder and it was taking a long time to heal. On the day in late July when the summer issue of Voie Libre arrived I was sitting under a tree in the backyard so I decided to read the issue as soon as the mailman dropped it off in the afternoon. This line in the editorial got me chuckling: "Issue 110 of Voie Libre is designed to be enjoyed sitting in a shady corner, with a few friends and a glass of cool wine. Just like a proper summer issue should be, packed with ideas for projects, or simply dreaming of projects, in case action is postponed until autumn." 

That's exactly what I was doing: drinking some cool red wine under the shade of a tree and thinking about layout projects now and then. 

And I got to thinking about how I hadn't seen a Canadian themed layout by a Canadian in that magazine even though I'd seen some excellent Canadian inspired ones by non-Canadians. They were a little on the stereotypical side in my view as there was something about them didn't properly say 'Canada' to me. That's when I decided as a bit of a lark to take some photos of the Loonar Module and send them off to the editor. One thing lead to another, and I was very happy to see the Loonar Module appear in the Spring 2023 issue of Voie Libre, and later in the Nov'23 issue of The Interchange, the OVAR's newsletter.

The very first construction photo of the Loonar Module from October 2021.
Positioning the island and track plan on 2' x 2' foam sheets.
At the time I didn't know this was classified as a micro-layout, albeit a large one.

The Loonar Module doesn't completely reflect the entirety of Canada either. No layout can as they are all reflections of how the builder sees and experiences the specifics of their piece of the country and translates that into a layout. The Loonar Module's terrain is based on that found in some of my favourite haunts in Hastings County, Ontario, which are dominated by tall trees, extensive wild forests, rocks, rocks, and more rocks, and lakes. Oh, and loons of course :-) The whole story about a narrow gauge experimental test railway run by the Ontario Department of Lands & Forests is completely fictional, but with lots of inspiration from the real government department. 

Final configuration of the Lost Ocean Line (dimensions in cms).
I must admit this was a favourite which the Way Out Layout has not yet surpassed even though it was meant to.

I consider The Loonar Module my first truly personal expression in layout form. The old Lost Ocean Line, and its descendant, the Way Out Layout, incorporated personal elements too, but they had a lot of outside stuff on them as well that steered the layouts towards being statements of style and whimsy. 

One of the first planning photos of the Centennial Experimental Farm layout from September 2022

Work on the Centennial Experimental Farm layout started in the fall of 2022 as my shoulder started to feel better. The layout is an homage to Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm, a place I would frequently visit on my bicycle, and incorporates many of the features I like about it. It turns out the farm did have a trolley line, so unlike the Loonar Module the rail aspect isn't completely fictional. I also consider this layout a personal statement. The Centennial Experimental Farm appeared in the January 2025 issue of Continental Modeller. 

Early design work on the Havelock Yard layout in July 2023

The Havelock Yard layout came about because early in July 2023 I became obsessed with building some sort of nostalgic tribute to the real Havelock yard that I've visited since the 1970s. The track plan is an inglenook with some display tracks added so I could show off a few models of freight cars I've seen there over the years. The layout is operable, but I haven't finished the scenery. Ok, strictly speaking, I haven't really started on the scenery. There's something too personal about this layout that gets triggered whenever I make a start on scenery that causes me to stop. Maybe one day I'll figure out what that is. So even though this layout is also a personal statement, it has some sort of negative charge associated with it.

After 4 days of part time work I had the infrastructure for the 3 pieces for my entry to
Le Grand Defi finished! A record of sorts for me.

I started my entry for LR Presse's 'Le Grand Defi' in late February 2024. Although it was for a challenge, I instantly had an idea for an entry based on VIA's Sudbury to White River line, complete with RDC. I considered this a personal response to the challenge, and not some stereotyped concoction for contest purposes. I was quite energized as I built this thing and finished in record time for me, completing all three pieces by late April 2024. I still have this extended diorama as I don't have the heart to cannibalize it for parts.

Starting to play around with objects to size the Mt. Lowe trolley.
Track planning came later when the trolley was finished.

I was on some sort of high at the end of April 2024 and immediately began work on the Mount Lowe Layout, which was a layout I've had in mind building since 2013 or so and now I finally had an idea on how to proceed. However, unlike the other personal layouts I didn't start with a track plan, but with building a vehicle inspired by Thaddeus Lowe's personal trolley. I needed it to help figure out the curve radii and grades on the layout. 

Ok, this layout isn't set in Ontario, but in a fictionalized version of California's San Gabriel Mountains. All I can say is I've hiked parts of the Mt. Lowe trail twice, have studied the railway for a long time, and have been charmed by it for a number of reasons. So, I'll claim a personal connection and this layout as a personal expression. If the world wasn't in the state it's in right now, I would return to finish hiking and exploring all the sections of the trail I haven't yet seen. The Mt. Lowe layout appeared in the Summer 2026 issue of Voie Libre.

Photos from the early planning days on:
Top: Community Garden | Middle: Tintin 2001 | Bottom: Inglenook Lake

Which brings me to today, almost exactly five years after beginning the Loonar Module in September 2021, which started me on the path I'm on now. Right now I have 3 little layouts on the go. I think the Community Garden layout will proceed and get finished. It'll be my first true micro-layout, and not one that pushes the outer size boundaries as have my others. It's both a personal statement on a place I quite like, and has a number of technical and modelling challenges I'm quite interested in working on. The Tintin 2001 layout might be stalled for awhile as I think about how to panel the monolith pit. Inglenook Lake will likely proceed as I think it's going to be a deeply personal layout, possibly with a more serious feeling to it than either the Loonar Module, the Centennial Experimental Farm, or Mount Lowe.

Yet another sketch for an MCM-7 Taronna (aka Toronto) layout.

The 500-lb gorilla lurking in the background is Taronna, my homage to the places and streetcars of Toronto that has yet to take off even though I've built many buildings for it, doodled many sketches, and acquired many streetcars. The Lost Ocean Line had some Toronto pieces incorporated; the ill-fated Alta Vista TC (for Transportation Commission) was a serious attempt at a Toronto layout, but it had so many design problems it was completely unworkable, and most importantly, was boring; and Taronna, the MCM-7 version of Toronto, is still just lines on paper. This layout continues to be parked. I have a Rapido TTC CLRV on pre-order to complete the streetcar fleet for this thing, so when it arrives in the far flung future I hope my thoughts will have settled on a way to proceed with the layout.

I think there are a few reasons why some layouts get finished and others stall out: 

Too much nostalgia is a killer. The Havelock Yard, Alta Vista TC, and even the yet to be started Taronna are soaked in personal nostalgia. Clearly, it doesn't sit well with me. I need to think more about Taronna if I'm going to actually build something that reflects whatever is going on in my brain about this layout.

No room for improvisation. I think at some level I perceived a lack of possibilities for improvisation in the Alta Vista TC and Havelock Yard that helped to kill the first and stall out the second. I explicitly consigned the Lost Ocean Line to the junk yard precisely for such a lack. I feel the improvisational lack creeping into Tintin 2001 too, and it certainly was a factor in stopping work on the N-scale homage layout to E. L. Moore's Elizabeth Valley RR. Well, that one was also stalled by the complicated wiring work involved. I'm not a fan of wiring and electrical work. I sometimes wonder if Mr. Moore had someone wire his layout for him because he noted in his writings a distaste for it, and the EVRR is relatively complicated wiring wise.

Trees. This one sounds strange even to me. It seems like if a layout has plenty of trees, interesting ones, not dull store bought ones, then it has a high chance of not stalling out during construction. Well, no stall outs so far.  As evidence I present the tree dense Loonar Module, the Centennial Experimental Farm, and Mt. Lowe. Look, both the soon to be tree dense Community Garden and Inglenook Lake layouts are on my construction tables while the tree barren Havelock Yard, Tintin 2001, and the EVRR, are off to the side in the workshop. Maybe this is a sign? I'm already thinking of trees and tree placement on Inglenook Lake based on my derecho and post-derecho observations of trees in Hastings County, and I haven't even finalized the track plan yet! 

Story. When it comes to story I think mine have to have one to be successful. Looking back on the story side of things I think I'm sort of a Johnny One Note in this regard. I have this one 'master story' in my head, and I all I do is write additions to it and variations on it. Every successful layout, even including the Lost Ocean Line and the Way Out Layout, are bits of that story. Well, except maybe Mt. Lowe, which is an outlier I need to think about more. Stalled layouts either have no story, don't derive from the 'master story', or are dominated by nostalgia. I'm starting to agree with Johannes Hofer that nostalgia is a deadly disease! 

More sketches for Taronna

I'm still trying to fully understand what that 'master story', that conglomeration of veiled personal statements in fictional form, is all about, but here are my thoughts so far. 

To get the best sense of where my mind is at regarding a ‘master story’ is to read the novellas I wrote and posted in instalments here at this blog. 

The first one was called Light Ray Blues. The inaugural instalment was posted on 6 September 2012 and can be found here. The last instalment was published on 13 August 2013. Most of the story was composed in my head on lunchtime walks away from the office. Strangely, this novella was the most popular series of posts at the blog until I started in on the long running E. L. Moore series.

The second novella was unimaginatively called Light Ray Blues, Series 2, and the first instalment was published on 6 June 2015. It can be found here. The series wrapped up on 30 October 2016 with instalment #20.

The third novella was called Abandonment and kicked off on 27 March 2020 after a long hiatus. This was a short series, and the 10th and final part was posted on 17 July 2022. Yes, over 2 years later! I was losing interest. At the end of the 10th post I include a post-script on abandonment in general and abandoning the series.

I tried to revive the series with a new novella called Tales of The Midnight Hobby Shop. The first instalment appeared on 2 September 2024. This series only ran for 3 instalments, but unlike the others it was left in an unfinished state. I left everything hanging in the 5 October 2024 episode. 

There were a few stand alone, single post stories too. One was written as an ersatz episode of The Twilight Zone where Ed Bryce visits E. L. Moore, another has Frank Madwood confronting three spirits in a Christmas Carol homage, and a third is a transcript from Madwood’s call-in radio show where he discusses the differences between model railroads and layouts with Professor Mary Ellesmere of the University of New Toronto’s Centre for Rail Guided Transportation.

I refer to all four novellas and stories in the series as Streetcar Noir, reflecting the dominance of streetcars in the series, and that they’re written in my attempt at a somewhat tongue-in-cheek hard-boiled noir style.

I wrote a little guide to the characters, places, and technology that appear in Streetcar Noir in the so-called ‘Understory’ that you can find at the bottom of the second instalment to Abandonment. 

I’m thinking the series ran out of steam with Abandonment and Tales of The Midnight Hobby Shop because of the pandemic, and that I was spending more and more time on layout dreaming, layout construction, and making things for those layouts. Maybe the ‘master story’ had formed enough in my mind by then that I could set it aside awhile and pursue it in model form.

Taronna thoughts continue to develop

The world those novellas take place in is a Canada in a parallel universe. Most of action takes place in a city called New Toronto, some of its outskirts, and nearby wilderness areas; however, the stories do move at times to Ottawa and British Columbia.

In this version of Canada electric powered rail guided transportation systems dominate the transportation landscape: electric streetcars, trams, trains, personal railcraft, along with some non-rail automobiles and trucks. There’s something called the Inter-Track system, which is vast network of many rail gauges and weights for all sorts of rail vehicles that runs through all cities, towns, villages, and wilderness areas. Ed Bryce has inherited a little trolley shed on a spur of one chunk of the Inter-Track System that runs through a forest area a few hundred kilometres from New Toronto. Telecommunications technologies aren’t that developed in this alternate world. A rudimentary internet-like system can be accessed through kiosks located near some public telephones.

The setting and tales are highly anachronistic. I mix technologies and styles from various eras according to my own likes and dislikes. There are handheld sources of cold fusion power, advanced electric-powered vehicles, and so on, rubbing shoulders with telephone booths and lunch counters and other accoutrements of our own world and its pre-internet predecessors. I freely take this approach with my layouts too. In my mind lots of eras exist in parallel so I have no problem expressing that. Maybe I believe that all time exists at once and its directedness is an illusion created by our physical being, but I’m probably wrong, but it sure often seems that way.

There aren’t any geopolitics directly discussed in the stories, but New Toronto is so-called because in its universe a big chunk of Toronto was destroyed in a brief continent-wide war and was rebuilt in the aftermath. Hints at what happened appear in some instalments. For example, in the first series Ed Bryce recalls how as part of an energy deal China built a cross-Canada mag-lev system. In the 3rd part of Light Ray Blues, Series 2, Frank Madwood explains how being injured in the war lead to his career in scale modelling, and the founding of his company, Model Investigations.

The characteristics of this long series of stories and the features of the layouts that didn’t stall out seem to be cut from the same cloth. Even the Mt. Lowe layout sort of fits given its highly anachronistic style, with its continuation of the railway into something approximating our era, much like the Loonar Module and Experimental Farm do. Story fragments pop up in construction posts from time-to-time, and upon re-reading some of them, they could easily form the basis of new novella instalments in the world of Streetcar Noir. Here’s a few: one, two, three, four.  On the other hand, the stalled layouts seem to all fall outside the concepts established in Streetcar Noir. Maybe one reason the successful layouts are successful is because they follow a prototype: the world of the ‘master story’, the Streetcar Noir story?

Hmm. This lengthy investigation may point to ways to pull the stalled layouts out of limbo. I’ll let you know. Thanks for hanging in until the end. I had no idea where contemplation of a tree stump would take me :-)

I returned to the scene this year to slice off the top of the stump for a layout base.
My chainsaw proved to be no match for the mighty stump :-(
(Also, the terrain was a bit too challenging for me chain saw wielding-wise.)

Dock access track re-swooped

After studying the last iteration of the track plan I realized if the standard gauge dock access track swooped off to the left instead of the right I'd get a far less severe curve that would be easier for all cars and locos to negotiate. I was so fixated on having a very small radius curve turning to the right I was blinded to this other more workable solution. I've tested running locos and freight cars over all this track and everything seems to run smoothly. I need to sit with this iteration a bit before I settle on it.

Unswooping the dock access track

I spent sometime working out the curve that will take the standard gauge rolling stock down to the dock from the mainline. I used the RDC-M as the test article as it's the most sensitive to tight track radii and will be the featured vehicle on this layout. Some previous testing indicated it could negotiate an 8" radius curve, but I couldn't replicate that with this configuration and had to reform the dock access track to slightly more than a 9" radius. The RDC-M goes around this track just fine now, but, as you can see, the dock track no longer has that interesting diagonal swoop. Design work continues.

Railroad Bread !

I was able to drop by the Havelock yard twice this week. Although there wasn't much to write about in the yard, across the street this morning was a fresh batch of Railroad Bread at the Wildflower Bakery & Cafe.

If sourdough bread isn't your thing, don't worry, there are several other types available.

They do have parking out front, but right now the road is in the final stages of being repaved. 

Although they have many types of fresh bread available everyday, Railroad Bread is only available on Saturday, so plan appropriately :-)

So, if you're doing some train spotting in Havelock early on a Saturday morning, don't forget to get yourself a loaf of lovely Railroad Bread.

Railroad Bread toasted with homemade Black Currant jam courtesy of our friend John.

It's especially good toasted! That's one thing I learned from watching too much MuchMusic:

Waterbombing with a Dash-8 at the Gatineau Airshow

The first of 2 drops of 5,000 litres of water with the Conair Dash-8 400-AT at the Gatineau Airshow.

Yesterday Steve and I made what is becoming an annual pilgrimage to the Gatineau Airshow in Quebec. This was one of the last shows for the Snowbirds (the very last event in the Ottawa-Gatineau area), and when they resume show operations in 2030 or so they'll be flying the new Sisken II turboprops and their Tutor jets will be only a memory. The Snowbirds have flown the Tutors for something like 55 years, so this was an historic event and the place was jam-packed!

The Conair Dash-8 400-AT parked after the show. It has a 10,000 litre tank

The show featured much more than the Snowbirds. One plane that caught my interest was the Conair Dash-8 400-AT, which is basically a De Havilland Dash-8 that Conair converted to an air tanker that can do things like fight wild fires. According to their website they've converted 20+ Dash-8s to this role, and the first one flew in 2020. At the show they put on a demonstration of what it looks like when 5,000 litres of water is dropped from this airplane.

The second of two drops of 5,000 litres of water.

It's quite an impressive sight. I didn't know that a Dash-8 passenger plane could be converted to do this sort of thing. 

I love the tail art on this airCreebec Dash-8.

I'm used to seeing Dash-8s used as passenger planes, like the Dash-8 100 operated by airCreebec in the above photo. Apparently it's quite a versatile machine.

On the way out I saw this enticing ad to "Become a Bush Pilot". If I had to do it all over again, maybe I'd take them up on their offer, and hope some passersby did. Until next year!

Walls Up at the Repair Shop

I finally got around to finishing the inserts for the large end openings and 'glassing' the windows with clear plastic.

I used thin strips of 3M Transfer Tape to attach all the second storey windows to the frames, and the frames of the street level doors to the clear plastic windows. This went well, but some of exposed tape edges have attracted dust and grit that I'll need to carefully scrape out. All the other windows were attached to their frames with Weld Bond glue.

As I've said many times before: the digital camera is a harsh mistress and I see many areas that need touch-up before the building takes up residence on the Way Out Layout.

I've made the end door inserts so the entrance doors line up with each other, implying that the inserts are mirror images of each other. So, it's possible to walk straight through the building.

Up there is the base supplied with the kit. As you can see, a pair of plastic rails run right through the building, and they are HO gauge. I checked :-) But, they're plastic, so can't be powered. They just contribute to the odd overall design of this structure. I've done some cursory investigating into the origin story and possible prototype for this model, but have found nothing yet. I'm sure there's something out there.

Anyway, I replaced the base with a suitably dimensioned and painted piece of 0.060" styrene sheet. 

Next up is constructing a removable roof from the kit's roof and adding lighting. 

I'm still not sure what business will live here, or what will be inside. Interiors are a weak point with me as I have many buildings with clean, serviceable, well lit interiors, but are empty. Clearly some soul searching is required. Maybe AWB can help me out: