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:

Inglenook Lake: Toying with fire

Designing Inglenook Lake has really captured my imagination. I identified a few issues with the layout in the previous post, and I've started to wrestle with them. 

Over on the right in the above photo I've made two updates. The rightmost track piece has been replaced with a 12" straight so it'll fit the loco I plan to use on the layout and a 40' box car with a little wiggle room. This change will allow the Inglenook switching game to be played. The second was to replace the Atlas switch with one from the Peco Setrack range. The straight portion of the Peco switch is around 6cm shorter than the Atlas, so I can recover some length on the long straight section at the back to try and get the total length of this layout into 4'. I may replace the switch on the left side with a Peco too to get another 6cm back.

Speaking of the left side, I've added a 9" straight to the switch so the proverbial 40' boxcar can be parked there. 

A fire lookout tower mockup built from Peter-Austin girders.

I've been thinking about what sort of buildings might be located on the layout. After some diddling around I think I've settled on a forest fire lookout tower that also performs some air traffic control functions.

Prototype inspiration: 30m tall Tower Hill Lookout in Parry Sound, Ontario.
Image Source: Curiocity.
Built in the late 1920s as a fire observation tower.

After surfing the internet a bit it seemed the old lookout tower in Parry Sound had the right look: tall, solid looking with its square cross section, but still looking scary with its spindly framework. 

I sized the tower to 'tower' over the airplanes so they aren't the largest objects on the layout.

Well, of course, after looking at the Parry Sound tower, the Peter-Austin construction toy came to mind, so I decided to pull it out and build a mock-up.

As I built it I started to think that even though it's a toy, suitably painted, and with some selected details added, it would make a nice homage to the Peter-Austin construction sets. Some might consider that defacing a classic toy, and others might see it as a crude addition to a layout, but to me it seems right to include this Peter-Austin reference. Also, I think it's interesting to use a play set that was once meant to build bridges and roads to now use it to fight forest fires. A new role for an old toy! Everything old is new again :-)

Toronto, Canada 1935 in Colour

An astonishing video of streetcars in Toronto in 1935. My father would have been 9 at the time.

Tree armature done

Left: Finished armature | Right: Leftover tree from Centennial Experimental Farm Layout.

I recently completed the armature for the first community garden tree. I had planned to model two rather large trees that are in the garden, but after test placing the finished armature of the first one I thought two such large trees would create too much shade on the plots, so I'm just going to model one, which is my favourite of the two. That second completed tree shading the picnic table is one I had leftover from the Centennial Experimental Farm layout. Right now the layout looks a little lopsided with two trees on one end and nothing on the other. I think balance will be restored when I add the little structure that will cover the loco at its charging station along with some tall shrubs. Stay tuned!

Inglenook Lake: Planning piece by piece

Large white arc on right is an 8" radius curve: minimum for the RDC-M.
Small white arc on left is a 3" radius cure: minimum for my HO-9 locos.

I rummaged through my track spares and salvage box looking for pieces to sketch out the Inglenook Lake track plan with track. It turned out I had no more right-hand switches, but I did have suitable left-hand ones, so I changed the handedness of the plan. It also turned out the dual gauge crossing John made for me was a 30 degree one, not a 90 as I thought. So with these two changes I went ahead and made a mockup taking into account these new twists.

Overall I thought the layout became more interesting with these somewhat random changes. I liked how the non-90 degree crossing forced a diagonal into the design and gave it some life. However, the approach to the switch on the right needs to be longer as it must accommodate a loco and a coupled car for the Inglenook game to be playable. Also, the narrow gauge curve to the siding on the left doesn't need to be so tight and could be more sweeping, to give the plan a more flowing look and create a little more space for a building or trees. 

I'm going to put the coffee on and then head down to the workshop to pick some new track pieces for the mockup. I'll leave you with AWB to set the mood:

Up 'round Inglenook Lake, Ontario

Narrow gauge track is marked with a circled N
A man-made causeway supports the track between the docks.

In between Twin Otter construction tasks my mind drifted to possible plans for a layout where trains pick up and drop off people and cargo to floatplanes in a remote wilderness area of Ontario.

The RDC-M would be small enough to provide direct rail-to-plane service!

The standard gauge track would have a plan similar to the classic Inglenook to provide some play value (if you were wondering, there is no town called Inglenook in Ontario, or lake named Inglenook Lake). Inclusion of a parallel narrow gauge line was inspired by the old Huntsville and Lake of Bays Transportation Company. On this layout the narrow gauge line takes passengers and goods back and forth to resorts and lodges in the forest.

The build table is also a handy sketch pad :-)

Will this layout ever see the light of day? Who knows. It's fun to think about though.

How my workshop turned into an aircraft factory

 or How a Walk Down Memory Lane Became an Obsession ....

.... and a source of new ideas.

Back in May my mind started to drift back to the summer of '72 when I was 12 and obsessed with buying and building FROG brand model airplane kits from the Painted Post Smoke Shop. I recall building an Intruder, Bronco, Mohawk, and maybe a Vampire, but that one might have been an Airfix kit.

Anyway, I looked around for those kits online and didn't find any, but I did find a Sabre jet from a seller in Saskatoon that looked simple and interesting, so I bought it.

Looks fast and deadly.

It appeared to be safely cocooned in its original shrink wrapping, but maybe the wool was being pulled over my eyes.

After stripping off the wrapping and getting a strong whiff of 1972 that caused flashbacks, I opened the box and all the parts still seemed sealed in their original plastic bag.

The decals, instructions, and even a note on how to request missing parts (!) were still in there, although the decals were well past their best before date.

The instructions included some handy 60s or 70s vintage model making tips.

After opening the box and breathing in all that 70s goodness I then promptly put the kit aside while I worked on the Tintin 2001 launch + control building shell!

The Sabre jet and Repair Shop wait patiently for work to stop on the lunar launch + control building.

I picked up the Sabre jet kit again during a lull in the Tintin 2001 launch + control building work and spent some spare time assembling it. I didn't do anything fancy, sophisticated, or prototypical. I just built it box-stock with a neutral gray finish as if it were some factory test model, which I guess it was :-)

Parked high atop the Canadian Press complex !

I'm not going to explain how I built it as it was just a nostalgia project, and expert model airplane builders would be horrified. 

Ready for take off from a wooden landing strip in the backyard :-)

But, it was fun to just build it. So much fun that I looked for simple 1/72 scale model airplane kits at hobby stores and online sellers in hope of replicating that fun with some other project.

One of the ultimately 3 (!) Revell Twin Otter kits I bought.

When I visit my local hobby shop I like to wander through the entire store, not just the model railway section, to see what's what. On the airplane kit shelves I saw that Revell Twin Otter kit. For some reason it struck my fancy and I bought it. I didn't read any internet reviews, or watch YouTube videos, I just went with my gut :-)

I cut out the cockpit doors so I could make a dockside scene with open doors.

Rummaging around in the box I found out it could be built with either wheels, snow skis, or floats. I thought: yeah, floats! That word 'floats' triggered all sorts of thoughts about wilderness model railway layouts French, fictional, micro and MCM-7, float planes, forest fires, railway-based forest fire fighting equipment like CN's Poseidon train, and water bombers*. Carried away on waves of new ideas I merrily dove into building a Twin Otter float plane.

The box art leaves no doubt about what this airplane was meant to do.

I worked on the Twin Otter and kept searching for FROG kits I had built way back when. I found an online seller in Lindsay, Ontario, who had both a FROG Bronco and a Pioneer2 brand Beech C-45 Expeditor (I'll get to that one), so out came my credit card again.

Primer drying on the Bronco.
All the weapons attachments have been stripped off for conversion to a float plane.

As I looked over the Bronco's parts and started in on the build I thought that with the high wing and high engines it could be converted into a float plane. It turns out the manufacturer had this idea too and built a prototype, or maybe just a mockup, that never flew. I thought, ok, and now I'm in the process of building a bronco on floats, with those floats kitbashed from a pair included in a Revell Twin Otter kit. An extra bonus to my overall thinking is that the Bronco is used by Cal Fire in California as a command and control aircraft; not on floats, but in a fire fighting role.

Wings are drying on the second Twin Otter

So right now I have several airplane projects on the go as I'm just doing whatever feels like fun to do. I bought a second Twin Otter kit because I thought just having one example on a layout / diorama would be odd. I'm currently getting ready to add its floats. I've also got two Beechcraft Expeditor C-45s waiting for me to get started on them. 

An old RCAF Beechcraft Expeditor readies for takeoff at the 2025 Gatineau airshow.

I saw an old RCAF Expeditor at the Gatineau airshow last year and was immediately entranced. It turns out after WWII many of these airplanes became bush planes and had floats installed.

As well as the Pioneer2 version of the C-45 I bought a Hobby Craft one from that seller in Saskatoon. One or both will be equipped with floats.

So, right now I'm just following a passion and enjoying the ride. Whether the destination is a layout, diorama, or nothing I'm not too concerned about that right now. 

Well, I'm near the end of this ramble and need to turn off the workshop lights for the evening. With all this talk of Saskatoon there's always one thing that comes to mind, so I'll leave you with this video favourite I've posted once before**:

Digressions:

* What about scale mismatches you might be asking? Yeah, the airplanes are in 1/72 and the railway stuff would be in 1/87. It might not sound like a big difference, but it is. I give scale serious thought as you know, and I plan to talk more about it in future posts if a layout starts to emerge from all this noodling.

**Yes, I did see The Guess Who this summer in Ottawa. And yes, age is catching up with Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman, but they can still play with a vengeance and put on a great show. LeBreton Flats was packed cheek-to-jowl with fans old and young. The Sheepdogs opened for them, so it was a fantastic event for Ottawa's 200th anniversary celebrations.