A model railroader goes to a plastic scale model show

My 'Moon Mail Madness' diorama. (No, that tattooed leg isn't mine) 

I went to the scale model show held at the Holland Armoury on Sunday. Ok, well, I did more than go, I entered a diorama too. The first time I've entered one of these events since 1975 at age 15.

When I heard about the show back in June I immediately had an idea for a diorama after reading the requirements on the show's flyer. I had some vehicles I had kitbashed back in 2005 or so that had never been entered into a show before, and now I had some impetus to build the diorama I long thought they belonged on. The small layouts I've built over the last few years have improved my diorama modelling skills, so it seemed like the right time to give this project a go.

The blue car on the left is a 'Martian Rover' I kitbashed from an AMT/ERTL Dodge Deora Show Car kit.

The box was shortened by 1", and the roof forward of the back window frame was cut off. The wheels and tires are from an AMT/ERTL Moonscope kit. I was kind of obsessed with the Moonscope kit back then and its parts showed up in a lot of my builds. However, I did build one up and mildly accessorized it:

The trailer is from an AMT/ERTL Fireball 500 kit. And yes, the wheels and tires are from another Moonscope kit.

The postal vehicle on the trailer is a very old MPC Ultravan kit that has been accessorized - yes, you guessed it, accessorized with some Moonscope parts :-)

The mailbox is a new build. It's made from scrap pieces of sheet styrene. The prototype is the mailbox at the end of my street. The door handle needed to be big so a gloved astronaut could grab it. Keeping in line with the show's theme of 100 Years of Mopar the handle is from a '69 Dodge Charger!

I'll do a separate post on building the base, but for now I'll note that it's built up from Cell-U-Clay.

Your loyal scribe shows off his handy work.

A bit of paint, a bit of glue, and a postcard from someone's mum and everything is ready to go.

So, off I went. 

You know I had great expectations for the dioramas that I might encounter. I waffled for a long time about taking mine as in the grand scheme of things I didn't spend a lot of time on it even though it was a fun little project.

This is the passage in the show's promotional flyer that sent my thoughts racing:

"*Models may have bases. As soon as ANY objects are added to the bases other than the model, it will be classed as a "diorama" *Dioramas cannot exceed 2' x 2' (51cm x 51cm)"

Seems an innocuous statement, but it got me thinking two things: first, I thought show dioramas must be becoming such large, complex pieces that practical limits had to be placed on entrants (which got me thinking my little diorama would be massively overshadowed), and, second, when 2' x 2' was noted I immediately started to think they should have a category for micro-layouts. You may recall 2' x 2' was the footprint for the Loonar Module micro-layout. Look, in essence all a micro-layout is, is a diorama with an element capable of motion. Why are there segregated shows for plastic models, especially ones that are components of large dioramas, and shows for model trains? It's likely just a historical relic whose root has something to do with how the hobby business was and still is structured. I think there'd be some interesting opportunities for idea sharing if big dioramas with plastic models and micro-layouts could share a show. Let's not forget micros, and many smaller sized, portable layouts can be in larger scales like 1/64, 1/48, 1/35, 1/32, 1/24, and 1/22.5, which correspond with several plastic model scales. Not too mention that a few micros have featured automobiles, military themes, and airplanes as well as trains. 

There were only 3 dioramas featuring automobiles - at least when I was there*

Who won you might ask? It wasn't me and I don't know who did. *I had to leave early due to a comedy of errors I caused that was ignited by lost keys :-( It ended with the keys found and a bout of leaf raking. I'll say no more.

Main diorama table at red arrow. Impressive work that I unfortunately didn't capture.

There was lots of impressive work on display and I was very glad to have attended to see it all. The one project that made the biggest impression was this one (unfortunately I don't know who to credit this build to, but if you're out there, you did a great job!):

I entered one of these kits in the 1975 model show.

Why? You remember that 1975 model show I mentioned entering, well, it was one of these kits that I built and entered. I didn't paint it up like this (I didn't have the skill), or build it anywhere near as good, but I'd recognize it anywhere.

Ah, memories.

Rampages Big and Small

Back: 1/24 Dodge Rampage | Front: 1/64 Dodge Rampage

I thought I'd take a little break from mountain building and work on cars. The layout will have a parking lot / depot scene where people can leave their cars and change to the trolley to get to Inspiration Point. I have some specific cars in mind for the scene and was lucky over the last few months to buy what I wanted online. A couple have arrived and another is on its way.

Left: Hot Wheels Rampage straight from the package | Right: Modified

I wanted either a 1980s Plymouth Turismo or a Rampage for this scene. I couldn't find a Turismo, or its cousin the Charger, but I did find a Hot Wheels Rampage. I bought two since they were inexpensive. In the above photo you can see what it looks like straight out of its packaging. 

Transforming the toy wasn't complicated: the rivets were drilled out and it was taken apart, the paint was stripped off, the 4-wheeler was cut off, and a new bed was made from styrene and installed. It was then repainted and epoxied back together. 

Scale-wise it isn't too bad. It looks ok next to the 6' tall, 1/64 scale figure. It might be a little on the small side, but it visually fits in, which is the goal. To the left in the above photo is a Hot Wheels '71 Porsche 911 that has also undergone a repainting. Well, I'll set custom cars aside for awhile and get back to custom mountains :-)

Town & Country Charger...via the E. L. Moore School of Design?

Last fall I bought a stack of old Car Model magazines. It was the Sept '72 issue that got me started as a serious model maker, so I have a sentimental attachment to the magazine.

I was re-reading a few from the stack last night and came across this story in the June '70 issue by R. Keith Blackmon on how to add exterior wood paneling to a 1/24 scale car. He chose a Dodge Charger for the treatment!

The car looks quite handsome and gives me some ideas. But, the big question is: since it used 1/32" thick balsa for the edge trim, was this E. L. Moore inspired? :-)

Wood & Steel

James Wood and 1932 Chevrolet Series BA Confederate

I've seen a few automobiles in my photo journey. There was this Model T speeding down an unknown Toronto street and this Mercury parked in Waupoos and there was this one pulling up to a rural home. And there are many more I haven't posted, but I thought I'd post one last picture to wrap things up. That's my grandfather and namesake, James Wood, beside what I think is a 1932 Chevrolet Series BA Confederate. He was a chauffeur so I don't know if that's his own car, or one he drove for a living. I suspect it was one he drove for a living as I'd be surprised if he could afford it. 

I'm pretty confident that these photos were indeed taken in 1939 as up until 1973 plates were issued annually. 1973 saw the inauguration of annual validation stickers. If I'm wrong about the license plates, all I can then say is the photo was taken between 1939 and the end of the good weather in Toronto in 1947, as he died in early January 1948.

The letter 'A' in the plate I believe indicates the plate was issued in Toronto. If I ever come across a scan of the Ontario 1939 license plate registry I should be able to identify who owned that car.

A photo in the spirit of an E. L. Moore reference scene

The above is another photo from my archeological dig through family records. Having E. L. Moore's works and style permanently imprinted on my brain I immediately thought upon seeing this image, "this could have been a classic ELM model and scene." Let me assure you this picture has nothing to do with Mr. Moore, it's just my addled brain at work.

I don't know when or where it was shot, or by who. My best guess is it was taken sometime in the 1920s, probably in New York state. Which of my long gone relatives took it is lost to time.

Here's an enlargement of the car:

My guess is that it's a Model T Ford. The license plate is fascinating. Was it really the 837th automobile licensed in the state? If so, it's hard to imagine a time when there were so few cars on the road.

Here's an enlargement of the house:

A gaggle of geese, wagon wheels, and a little bridge over a creek. Maybe one of Ma Spumoni's relatives lived here :-)

Going for a ride 100 years ago in Toronto

I clipped this image from the larger one shown at the bottom of this post. The picture is from my cousin's collection of family photos. I'm trying to figure out what street this is, and if that house still exists. All I know is it's in Toronto.

The action in the top picture is palpable. On the left some boys are joy riding a bicycle; on the right a Model T is swerving to avoid them; deep on the right a horse drawn wagon is lumbering down the avenue.  

Date? Well, Wikipedia tells me the Model T had a 5-sided hood between 1909 and 1916, and that's clearly a 5-sided hood job in the photo. Assuming Torontonians of old were like Torontonians of today and loved to show off their new possessions :-) I'll say the photo dates from somewhere between 1909 and 1917, but that's just a wild guess. 

If I learn more about where this was shot I'll let you know. If you know where this location is, please let me know.

Waupoos General Store Then and Now

Top: then, maybe late '40s or early '50s; Bottom: now, Sept 2023

Longtime readers may recall I posted the top picture and an associated story back in January 2021. That's the general store in Waupoos, Ontario in the late 1940s or, more likely, the early 1950s. The photo was shot by my father, and that's his car, which I think he told me was a '49 Mercury. If so, he had better taste in cars than I've ever had. 

This summer we drove out to Waupoos in Prince Edward County. The old store still stands. That's it in the bottom photo. It's no longer a general store but Stella's Eatery. Unfortunately it was closed when we drove by. That's not our car in the photo, and it's certainly not a '49 Mercury.

The lost electric broughams of The Lost World

Edward Malone and Tarp Henry arrive at the Zoological Institute's Hall at around 8:30pm to hear what the infamous Professor Challenger has to say. Malone makes an interesting observation to this 21st century reader's ears:

When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than we had expected. A line of electric broughams discharged their little cargos of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humbler pedestrians, who crowded through the arched doorway, showed that the audience would be popular as well as scientific.

I was curious to find out what 'electric broughams' were. It turns out they were electric automobiles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I realize The Lost World is fiction from 1912, but I found it interesting that the only automobiles mentioned were electric examples, and not just one as a curiosity, but an entire line of them.

Buckminster Fuller and the Honda Civic

I was going through some files and came across these pages I had torn out of an old issue of Scientific American. The pages don't tell me which issue, but they appear to be from 1978. I wouldn't mind owning some sort of modernized, electro-ized, retro-themed Civic hatchback ... or a geodesic dome :-)

A rare sunny day

Took the Jimmy off the shelf for a beauty shot

An afternoon of reading and taking photographs in the backyard. This past winter has been the darkest in the last 83 years, so I'm taking maximum advantage of every sunny day. And so are the purple flowers that are popping up in the lawn.

Finally finished the AMT GMC Jimmy kit

Back in September I decided to take the Jimmy off the shelf and finish it. Long time readers may recall building up the chassis was giving me fits, and I shelved the project before it could cause long term psychological damage :-)

Why the change of heart? In late August and early September last year I was getting all sentimental as the first magazine I bought dealing with plastic model construction was the September '72 issue of Car Model. It had been 50 years since getting into model building. The young me was enthralled by the cover story: how to build the 'Desert Dodge' from MPC's Baja-Brute, a kit of a Dodge Adventurer SE pickup. 

I was lucky to find the kit used in the story for sale in the toy department at a local Simpsons store. I saved up my allowance, bought one, and did the best I could to build that truck. Well, I didn't come close to reproducing the model in the magazine, but had great fun trying.

So, last September I started thinking, I could get the Jimmy off the shelf and build it up to resemble the Desert Dodge. Remembering how frustrating this kit was I gave up on that idea before it got too far and decided instead to use the Jimmy to practice my painting skills. It had lots of molded on trim and it seemed like that would be fun to paint. I had already sprayed the body during my first attempt at the kit, so after close to 2 years on the shelf, it was cured enough for detail painting :-)

Painting was indeed pleasant, and it was satisfying to see the model come to life with each new item painted, but a few steps before finishing the model I shelved it again to devote myself to the ELM book. I didn't want anything potentially distracting me from making progress on the manuscript.

Ok, this time the shelf was metaphorical. The model was actually pushed to a corner of my workbench and ignored. A few days ago I noticed it had acquired a few stray paint flecks and a lot of dust. There were only a few steps left, so I cleaned up the model and finished it.

I had hopes of adding more interior detail and a bit of light weathering, but I thought too much time had passed and just glued on and painted up the pieces left - and some pieces I had lost during the long period of neglect, like the rearview mirror.

Overall, although the painting part was fun, I found this a tough kit to build because it seemed there were many part fit issues and often the parts weren't too well molded, which I assume was because the mold was quite old by now as this a repop of an old kit.

From Scalextric to E. L. Moore

The E. L. Moore eBook is in the final stages of development - ok, well, the manuscript is almost done, and I'm revising it like crazy.

Early on in the book I talk about how I 'discovered' E. L. Moore by way of a youthful slot car obsession. A friend and I played with Eldon cars and Scalextric track in the summer of '73, and I went all out making buildings for our layout. In my search for building models I stumbled across the work of E. L. Moore, and the rest is history :-) 

A couple of weeks ago I started to wonder if a small Scalextric course for 1/32 scale cars could be built these days. By "small" I had in mind something around 2m x 1m that could be built on a thick foam base.  

PaperClip 7 using Scalextric Classic track

I looked around for a planning tool and came across RailModeller Express for the Mac. It has templates for Scalextic track, and only cost 99¢ at Apple's App Store for a version that can handle up to 50 pieces of track, which seemed like plenty for the little layout I had in mind.

I'd been doodling a paperclip shaped layout so that's what I tried to build. 

It turns out there are two types of Scalextric track: Classic and Sport.

Classic was discontinued years ago, but I remember it from childhood, so I tried something with it first. I was able to fit a layout in 2m x 1m without too much effort.

PaperClip7 using Scalextric Sport track

Sport is the current offering, and can be used for digital or analog layouts, whereas Classic was apparently only good for analog. Any layout I'd build would be analog.

A problem I found is Sport doesn’t offer a crossover on a straight section of track, only on an R2 curve! For reasons of geometry this forces all curves in the paperclip to be R2 and makes for a bulkier layout. Lengthwise the course just squeezes into 2m, but widthwise it's a good 20cm or so too wide.

I used 4 crossovers in the Sport version instead of just 2 to try and make the race as fair and equal as possible, but I wonder if it is too difficult. Clearly I need to keep experimenting with this tool.

Yes, RailModeller Express does allow you to design railroad track plans too as its name suggests! The full version of RailModeller doesn't have the 50 piece limit, so you can dream up a huge empire. It's a great tool if the Scalextric part is anything to go by and I'm looking forward to trying model railroad track planning with it.

1983 Plymouth Turismo: A kitbash?

Our discussion on the 'correct' definition of kitbashing continues. I put forward for your consideration my 1983 Plymouth Turismo, a model of which I built from these two kits:

I don't know if this is a classic kitbash as the two kits used are simply variations on a single car sold by Chrysler. Regardless, I needed parts from both for this project.

This is another model I built sometime around 2005 or 2006 or so. I do recall I built it soon after the Custom Dodge Rampage.

This is the only construction photo I took during the project. The right image in the composite photo is from the car's brochure. Mine had a grey interior, hence my colour choices. The bowling ball carrying case and the hockey stick in the trunk are items from my scrap box. The retracted tonneau cover was scratchbuilt from some styrene.

Whatever Guest of the Crown stamped out that licence plate didn't get the letters and numbers lined up quite right and ...

... decided to go-for-broke on the plate's sibling. I like the fidelity to the prototype I achieved: the left taillight is cracked just like the real thing after a few years on the road.

Is this a kitbash? A kit-mingle? A kit-lance? I'd go with kit-mingle as the goal was to create as accurate a model of a prototype as I could manage, and that meant carefully combining 2 kits to achieve the 1 I wanted.

A wild advertising flyer inserted in the MPC Dodge Omni 024 donor kit

1978 El Camino Estrella

I was chatting with Steve about Lego's new Mountain View Observatory and it got me thinking again about the Mt. Lowe Observatory and the very fictional El Camino Estrella. Although I used the Estrella's background story in the Streetcar Noir series, I haven't posted a collection of pictures of it here.

I worked on this project just before getting going on the Custom Dodge Rampage build*. You can see some of the Rampage parts on the workbench as I was test fitting parts for that project during final construction of the El Camino. So, maybe it was built in 2005 or 2006 - I should keep better records.

The base kit is Revell's '78 Chevy El Camino Lowrider 2 'N 1. Many additional parts came from my scrapbox, but I can't remember which ones - again, I should keep better records.

Although, I can say the telescope's body is scratchbuilt from styrene tubes. Also, I think the telescope's support yoke came from an AMT Moonscope kit, and the eyepiece was - believe it or not - a gnarly 1/24 scale carburetor I found in my scrapbox that seemed to look the part.

I don't know why I bothered, but I did a little underside detailing and weathering. It might be authentic and it might not, but it does look dusty under there.

Well, that's that. I'll close the tailgate and be on my way.

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*Being nerds, Vince and I are discussing the definition of kitbash as opposed to its alternatives like kit-mingle and kit-lance. This is kind of a how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussion because even though the popular, mainstream definition of kitbash is firmly entrenched, it's still an interesting theoretical diversion. Ok, cutting to the chase, I think the Rampage project falls into the more formal definition of kitbash as several kits were used to produce a single model. The Estrella is not really a kitbash, but a light customization - more a mingle than a bash? Well, the discussion continues. Maybe I need to consult the non-existent pages of the non-existent Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms.

Backing away from the wall

It's been decades since I've felt like throwing a kit against a wall and walking away, but I felt it just the other day with the AMT GMC Jimmy project. As therapy goes, that's not the best result - maybe I should have tried Primal Scream :-) I guess the kit isn't so bad, it just seems like it's been a lot of niggling little things that came to a head when the wheels refused to slide on the metal axles because either the axle diameter was too big or the holes in the wheels were too small. After calming down I drilled out the wheels and pushed in the axles as far as they'd go, but they still didn't go in all the way. I left it at that.

I spray painted the body last week, and although it went on nice and even, after drying it appears that some body panels dried flat and others glossy. I don't know why. I'm thinking this thing is going to be parked for awhile and I'm going to return to the HQ conversion.

Crazy about a Mercury

A variation on this photo along with some musical commentary by Alan Jackson.