Riffing on Cerny & Hayden's lunar loco in OO scale

A lunar locomotive inspired by Cerny & Hayden's Apr '78 MR April Fool's project.

A couple of weeks ago Steve was telling Debra and me about Lego's upcoming release of the moon rocket from Tintin that was featured in the albums Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon. This lead to a fairly wide ranging discussion, and me being me, I started to wonder about the feasibility of building a small, maybe micro-sized, futuristic lunar model railway. And with April coming up this lead me to again think about the article A lunar railroad you can model by Alan Cerny and Bob Hayden that appeared in the April 1978 issue of Model Railroader.

Once a scale was settled on I started to work out dimensions to fit the drive unit,
and look right when an astronaut stood beside it. The loco is unmanned.

After that initial discussion I started to think long and hard about a freelanced little lunar layout that would incorporate, and maybe showcase, Lego's Tintin rocket and the Cerny & Hayden train. To make a very long story short, I eventually settled on a layout that included the rocket, elements of the C&H train, as well as the excavation site in the moon's Tycho crater where the monolith is discovered in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, you read that right: Tintin, C&H, and 2001 in a single layout :-) If I can get the locomotive, train, and track to pass various layout feasibility tests I have in mind, I'll post the layout plan, but until then it's all highly questionable as to whether it will work. Regardless, this gave me a good excuse for trying my hand at making an operating version of the C&H loco as I've wanted to do for 48 years!

These figures are molded in some hideously soft plastic.

The first question that needs to be dealt with is scale. I won't keep you in suspense: I chose OO, 1/76 scale. Why? Well, there are two reasons: one technical, and one artistic.

The technical one is easy (although not completely separable from the artistic one): I have 2 boxes of Airfix OO scale astronauts, and an HO motor bogie from BD Concepts (16.5mm gauge with a 34mm wheelbase).

And then there's the artistic reason, which gets down to questions of size and viewer relatability. 

Let's start with the Tintin rocket. It sure isn't OO scale. The Lego website states it's 49cm tall, and the official Tintin site states that according to Tintin canon the 'prototype' stood 75m tall. So, this puts the Lego model at 1:153 scale, which is in the range of the various N-scales that are used throughout the world: 1:148 to 1:160. If the Lego rocket was in OO this would put the prototype at 34.7m tall, considerably shorter than 75m.

Does this height discrepancy matter? As you know I've posted a lot about Selective Compression over the years (for example, see: Selective Compression [alternate], Selective Compression [alternate #2], Use small to seem large, and Selective Impression) and its application to make big things still seem big on a layout even though rigorous adherence to scale is violated. Recall that I'm still trying to build a TD-Centre replica for an HO-scale micro layout, and if I was rigorous about scale an HO scale model would stand nearly 8 feet tall! So, the answer is, the rocket needs to seem a lot taller than surrounding elements, especially people, even though it is considerably shorter than its 'prototype'. Given that the Lego rocket stands 490mm tall, and the astronaut figures are around 20 to 25mm tall, that relative height requirement is meet. 

Also I should point out that the rocket itself makes it easy to play this game with scales because of its lack of visible size markers like windows and hatches. There is a lower hatch on the fuselage, down near the fins, but when closed it disappears into the red-and-white checker board pattern. 

If I had stuck to N-scale I think the non-rocket elements on the layout, especially the people, would be too small to be relatable to viewers. There'd be a giant rocket and everything else would be teeny-tiny. As well, I don't know how I'd build a C&H train that small.

So, compromise and judicious balancing of layout element sizes is the order of the day.

The BD Concepts motor bogie used to drive the lunar loco

The article states the C&H loco is built to 3/8" scale, which is roughly 9.5mm = 1ft. OO-scale is 4mm = 1 ft, so my model is considerably smaller than theirs, and my model's size is driven by the size of the BD Concepts motor bogie I used: their 34 mm wheelbase unit. They have smaller ones. I used their 28mm unit in the Spumoni Flyer. I only had the 34mm one on hand, so that was that. My choice makes the loco longer than C&H's.

The loco is built up from 3 styrene boxes cut from 0.020" thick scraps:
a rectangular box that covers the drive unit,
a box with trapezoidal ends that sits on top, and
a funny shaped 'nose box' that's stuck on the front.

Ok, you're at 30Squares, and you know I'm interested in the backstories to old model railroading projects, and this one had a strong pull :-) I've wanted to build it for a long time, and looking back, 1978 was a rough year for me, so there's a little bit of nostalgic retrospection going on in me with this project.

I got a little confused when I started searching for Cerny references in the Model Railroader archive because there was mention of an Elmer Cerny and an Alan Cerny. It turns out Elmer was Alan's father. Elmer was an exceptional draftsman, and had a career in the pages of MR as a contributor of highly detailed drawings of locomotives, rail cars, buildings, and other structures.

Two nuts from my cast-offs box were glued in for weight.
The hatch panels are cut from scraps of 0.010" thick styrene.

It appears Elmer's first contribution was a letter to the editor in the December 1952 issue. From what I can tell his first full length piece in MR was an article called Build the Bartlett Building Materials Warehouse in the September 1970 issue. 

State of construction at the end of day 1.

From then on Elmer Cerny was a fairly regular contributor of exquisite mechanical and architectural drawings until the October 1978 issue. MR had very high drawing standards, and Mr. Cerny's work was one of the cornerstones of that tradition. By my count it looks like he contributed 13 articles and/or drawings throughout the 1970s.

The top of the rectangular box is made from 0.040" (about 1mm) thick styrene.
The opening is sized to accept the drive unit mounting clips.
I explained how to attach one of these drive units here.

Mr. Cerny contributed a number articles of a type of what I might call, building profiles. In these articles he'd present photographs of a building that caught his interest, describe it and talk about it, and include fine architectural drawings that would allow a modeller to build an accurate replica. So, in some ways, MR was at times playing the role of an architectural historical archive.

Jumping ahead in the build sequence: here is the drive unit clipped into the opening.
I haven't decided on how I'm going to couple cars together, so no couplers yet.

Alan Cerny, Elmer Cerny's son, was a MR staff member in the Art / Layout department. His first appearance in MR's masthead, under the Art / Layout heading naturally, was in the February 1976 issue. His name continued to be listed there up until its last appearance in the January 1979 issue when it looks like he left the magazine.

State at the end of day #2.
The nose box was also built of 0.020" thick styrene.
The bumper is a piece of 0.060" x 0.060" styrene strip.

His name is listed as a collaborator on a few technical drawings that appeared in MR over the years, but his splashiest bylined contribution during his tenure I think was the lunar model railroad article.

The other side of the shell at the end of day #2
The greeblies came from various kit leftovers:
The antenna, front lights, and camera are from a Moonscope kit.
The lifting hooks are from a Sikorsky Skycrane kit.
The lifting handholds are from some long forgotten airplane kit.

The article seems to have gotten a lot of play. 

It was mentioned in Russ Larson's April editorial. Reading that editorial all these years later makes we wonder if MR okayed this project to capitalize on the excitement created by Star Wars, which was released the previous year, and since they noted that Cerny was "caught up in the current space fantasy craze" maybe he was just the guy for the mission :-)

Rare behind the scene view of 30Squares' scrap and greeble bins
located deep in the bowels of 30Squares' secret construction facility :-)

The Bull Session column in the May '78 issue has a lengthy note in the tradition of those book and magazine articles that were published in that era that had titles like The Making of 2001, The Making of Star Trek, and the Making of Star Wars. This bull session note was their The Making of The Lunar Model Railroad. The author mentions the idea of lunar railroading was kicked off by Bob Hayden on the afternoon of 28 October 1977, which would indeed put it in the midst of the Star Wars craze. 

State at the end of day #3: A horribly bungled paint job that had to be stripped!
I was giddy with joy at being able to spray paint outside on a day with summer-like temps.
It was windy though, and I held the spray can too close for too long to the shell and....
blobby paint resulted.

And there were other things going on in the culture that may have also fuelled interest from MR. The lunar model railroad article notes Stewart Brand's book, Space Colonies, which was published in September 1977, as a reference. Also, Gerard O'Neill's highly influential book, The High Frontier, was first published in January 1977, and in paperback in January 1978. Star Wars itself was released at the end of May 1977. There was a positive space vibe in the air at the time, so maybe MR was looking for a little piece of the action.

State at the end of day #5, the final day of construction.
Day #4 was spent repainting the shell with a brush!
And doing detail painting and decaling.
On day #5 all that was left to do was snap in the drive unit....and voila!

The June and July '77 issues contained a number of positive letters from lunar railroad fans in the Railway Post Office column. One correspondent, a Mr. Thomas G. Levy, noted: "If the lunar train concept and modelwork had been in existence before 1968, it would have undoubtedly been included in the lunar surface footage of the motion picture "2001: A Space Odyssey." It would be an excellent idea to be included in the upcoming movie "Star Wars, Part 2"". Challenge accepted :-)

The paint stripping wasn't perfect and left a rough surface.
I rather liked it and just painted over it.
Maybe it's some sort of thermal coating that's been eroded by moon dust :-)

Another correspondent, Mr. Dan Swearingen, noted that some of the components used looked like those in his old Erector Set, and one proposed shipping container looked like a sardine can. Mr. Donald L. Ward commented that: "...the lunar railroad was excellent! Previous attempts at "April foolery" have been just foolishness, but here is an article filled with creative imagination." Overall the response, well at least those published, was quite positive.

I think that greeble on the right is a starter motor from a car model :-)
I haven't figured out what to do about couplers.
And weathering, that'll be much later if a layout comes to pass.

There's a brief biographical note about Alan Cerny in an article that introduced MR's then current staff in the August '78 issue. It notes he had a longtime interest in model building and art, and that he studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. The article also says he regarded model railroading as "a renaissance hobby in which you can learn about the world and yourself - "about your skills and limitations.""

Looks like the Dodge boys had a hand in this thing.
Ugh, I see areas that still need touch-up.

It appears that Alan Cerny's last 20th century appearance in an MR article was in the March 1983 issue as the winner of a MR layout planning contest. The intro to the article notes "Many MR readers will remember Alan's byline from his imaginative article, "A lunar railroad you can model", in the April 1978 issue." It also notes he was then employed at Signode Corp.

Out for a spin on the Way Out Layout.
It runs well.
I need to post a video.

Well, that's that. Next I'll either try my hand at a couple of lunar freight cars, or try some tests to figure out what the minimum curve radius is this thing can handle and what sort of grades it can climb.

While you're waiting for me to make up my mind, I'll leave you with the Deodato hit from '73:

From the Time Machine's Glove Box: The Library Fleet

A few things came together that got me thinking about this post from 2011 in retroDynamics: I stumbled across a story called Woman Shares 28 Things She's Learned About the General Public While Working at the Library and People Love Her Insights; and there was this story called The Books of College Libraries are Turning Into Wallpaper; I've been thinking a lot about stories and model making, and the one in this post I scavenged in 2014 to be part of the Light Ray Blues novella; back in 2012 there was a build of the McGregor Park Library; not to mention that book selling establishments like E. L. Moore's Uncle Charley's Bookery, the Art Deco Chapters, and the World's Smallest Model of the World's Biggest Bookstore mega build were all projects discussed here at one time or another. Well, that stuff got me thinking. Here it is, The Library Fleet from 2011.

From 17 August 2011: The Library Fleet

Normally I refrain from writing about problems in the world. Most of them I can’t do anything substantial about, and blogged ranting doesn’t do anything either. retroDynamics is meant to be simply a lightweight, positive distraction. However, one relatively minor thing – well, minor in the grand scheme of things - that has a retroDynamics aspect has caught my attention recently: the potential closing of many libraries in Toronto in order to ostensibly save money and reduce taxes. On the one hand, some reassessment of how library services are deployed might indeed be called for because as time goes on demographics and needs change, but on the other hand, the way in which it is being pursued suggests that the cost savings rationale is a cloak for an ideologically based attack on libraries and general access to them. For many reasons, I think public libraries are one hallmark of a decent society, and seeing them under attack is troubling.

The public libraries in Scarborough played a big role in my life when I was growing up. We visited Bendale library, and later Cedarbrae library, about once every one or two weeks, and usually checked out several books on each trip. We also attended short films and puppet shows. One summer Cedarbrae held Saturday evening movie screenings. After dark they’d project an old black-and-white Hollywood movie – usually some sort of B movie from the ‘30s or ‘40s - outside on their back wall. It was free for anyone who wanted to sit on the grass and watch. It wasn’t until much later in life that I appreciated how all that vastly developed my literacy and appreciation of reading, writing, movies and culture in general. And all of it was free of charge. I’m not so sure we’re so strapped for cash these days that we can’t still pop for this sort of thing – maybe we just prioritize things differently today. Given the internet and massive pervasiveness of digital culture, the role of the library in society is no doubt different than it was back then, but I don’t think the need for unfettered access to the diverse cultural works of our society has gone away.

A few years ago when I was getting back into model building I decided I wanted to try and build some large scratch-built spaceships from plastic odds-and-ends – sort of in the tradition of props built for movies and tv in the pre-CGI era. I eventually latched onto the idea of honouring the Scarborough Public Libraries of my youth – which are today part of the Toronto Public Library system – with some good humoured plastic spaceship awesomeness. The results were mixed, but I feel like I want to pursue this idea again, and with some experience under my belt, hopefully the next round will be better.

s.pl. Bendale

My first build was the small s.p.l. Bendale (for Scarborough Public Library Bendale). I submitted it to the Reader’s Gallery on Starship Modeller and was happy that it got accepted. And much to my surprise I received some pleasant – and ego swelling :-) - email in response.

There seems to be a tradition that goes along with spaceship scratchbuilding: writing the vehicle’s back story. I couldn’t pass that up and gave it a go:

By 2081, settlement of the far reaches of the solar system definitely had one adverse affect on Earth civilization: the holdings of the royal and ancient - but unfortunately long disbanded - Scarboro public library were scattered all the way from Mercury to Pluto. Colonists could just not part with their beloved tomes and carried them jealously wherever the whims of fortune took them. So, to right this wrong and reclaim the legacy for a new generation, many long retired library board members, along with sympathetic supporters from the underground rebel book alliance, convened to consider their options. They needed a ship - a fleet of ships actually - to go to those distant places and collect those treasures. And collect them with punishing over-due fees. Professor Emeritus Vincenzo Air reported on a long forgotten chapter in propulsion technology: the curvilinear j-Fforde drive; an interplanetary drive named in honor of the author Jasper Fforde, discoverer of Book World earlier in the century. The basic principle behind the drive was a targeted seeking of the 'spine' in local space that, once found and accessed, allowed a spacecraft to jump to any location in space via 'pages' in a matter of seconds. After an immodest allocation of funds, and a number of years of development, the first prototype book retrieval spacecraft outfitted with a curvlinear j-Fforde drive - the s.p.l. Bendale - was ready for testing. Many hardcore due-date ignorers were on Mars, so the shakedown voyage was to Cydonia for a face-to-face showdown. Prof. Air insisted on being the test pilot, but he was a little too fast on the draw and gunned it so hard that he kinked the main drive unit. When later asked by reporters how fast it would go, he replied, "It's a real page turner". Among the stacks back on Earth, his title of Professor Emeritus, was quickly replaced by Lead-foot - well, at least outside the range of his hearing aid. And what about those fee dodgers? Some tricks of illumination allowed them to avoid facing-the-music on this sortie - but there is always next time!

Ok. Well, I’m not going to give up my day job to become a novelist. Here are a few pictures taken during construction.

The Bendale before painting.

After this one, I wanted to build something much bigger, and inspired by 2001’s Discovery. That one was the s.p.l. Cedarbrae. Starship Modeller wasn’t interested in this build, but I did submit it later to one of their online contests under a different name: Age of Discovery in honour of its movie roots – classic movies and the library seemed to go together in my mind for reasons mentioned earlier. It wasn’t a winner, but it taught me a lot about building a big spaceship.

s.pl. Cedarbrae

I modified a car wheel stand to support the Cedarbrae

The Cedarbrae continued the back story tradition:

Soon after the first successful trans-planetary trial of the s.p.l Bendale the library board decided they needed to continue to develop spaceships for all their present and future needs. To make this happen they created the New Academy for Spaceship Assembly in order to build their fleet and train future generations in the subtle, and not-so-subtle, arts, sciences and technologies of spaceship creation.

The academy was founded on the principles laid down by Calculus, Shelby and Gromit in their ground-breaking book "Principals of Practical Spaceship Assembly". Their key idea was that through the continual practice of actual spaceship building flowed the well-spring of insight required to refine and advance spaceships in all their forms.

Of the few old school training methods still employed at the academy was the construction of display models of the academy's major design projects by apprentices. The time-and-space tempered model of the soon to be built s.p.l Cedarbrae was one of the biggest built to date.

The central section is built around a spine made of 1-1/4 inch ABS pipe. The plastic vitamin and supplement bottles that make up the core modules are drilled at either end with a 1-1/4 inch door drill and then slid over the pipe. Removing the labels from the bottles is a little tricky. The old technique of using a hand-held hair-dryer to gently heat the label and peel it off was applied many times. Any residue from the label's glue can be removed by lightly scrubbing with a critic cleaner and then cleaning up with warm water. The main engine outlet on the back end was an inlet cover from a broken hair-dryer. The forward module that contains the shuttle bay is a plastic protein jar, and the fairing between it and the other modules on the spine is a foot from a discarded computer floor-stand. The semi-spherical flight-deck extension is from a Christmas ornament kit. The airlocks on the lower portion of the flight-deck extension are snap-caps from vitamin bottles.

The two outer j-Fforde Drive propulsion cylinders are the cores from paper rolls used in a large computer plotter. The output ends are fitted with nested PVC pipe joiners.

The library book retrieval craft in the shuttle bay is a Bandai Thunderbird 2. The kit's box says the T-bird's scale is 1/450. At this scale, the s.p.l. Cedarbrae would be 2,175 feet long (about 2/5 of a mile), or roughly 3x the length of 2001's Discovery which was the inspiration for the s.p.l. Cedarbrae.

The shuttle bay, along with its sliding doors, is made from sheet styrene and given some detail from plastic spares sourced from 1/25 scale car and HO-scale building left overs.

The dish antennae on the shuttle bay module are from AMT/Ertl's Moonscope kit. The larger antenna located about halfway down the spine is a two-part affair: the support is from a Braun electric toothbrush, and the dish is the only surviving part from a long gone MPC Pilgrim Explorer.

When it came time to paint, the entire ship was primed with Krylon flat black and then base coated with Krylon silver. A wide range of spray can colors were used to paint the ship in an afternoon long painting spree. After drying for a couple of weeks, watercolors were generously applied for further surface effects. Squares and squiggles were applied to some modules with waterproof black pens of various size. The whole thing was sealed with Testor's Dullcoat.

Lead model reviewer Vincenzo Air wasn't too thrilled with the scruffy outer grime that would soon coat this new giant capable of reaching the outermost boundaries of the orbits of the outer planets; however, that was a small price to pay to retrieve those precious barbecue recipes accidently stuffed in a book of verse and shipped to the highly eccentric Pluto: Planetesimal of Poets and Superannuated Accountants. But that's a whole other story....

The bridge

The shuttle bay

Looking towards the back

Looking towards the bridge

Engine exhausts

One of the modeling goals was to incorporate some sort of shuttle landing bay; hence, the Thunderbird 2. Here are few photos showing the Cedarbrae’s construction phase.

Lots of paints were used on this thing!

Before painting

Painting is half done

The last one I worked on was the s.p.l. Birchmount - well, I actually built the basic structure at the same time as the Cedarbrae, but detailed and painted it well after the Cedarbrae was finished. This one came about after playing around with some plastic junk I had in my scrap pile. Unfortunately, once I had the basic shape all glued together I lost interest in superdetailing it and after some rudimentary detailing, simply spray painted it and called it quits.

s.pl. Birchmount

No back story for this one, but here are few construction photos.

Yeap, those external fuel tanks are shampoo bottles.

The spaceship parts supply prior to a directive from she-who-must-be-obeyed to consolidate

Although I hardly added any detail to this one, I still rather like the shape of the thing. But, by this point I’d lost interest in building spaceships, and no other libraries were suitably ‘honoured’. Although, I have some ideas for future builds, they won’t save the Toronto Library system, only dogged lobbying and a grass roots effort might.