First round of painting

It took a few days of part time work, but I finished painting the first layer of colour on the farm's internal road with Revell Aquacolor Stone Grey. The grounds the road surrounds were given a rough wash of raw umber.

That line down the centre of the farm's grounds is an internal walking path. It's made from fine sand white glued to the foam. 

Those white rectangles on either side of the inner loop are to be passenger waiting areas for streetcars. They're cut from 0.060" styrene sheet. That white strip over by the farm boundary with the main road is a sidewalk. It's also made from 0.060" styrene. This paint work is a little tedious, but after every session I'm glad to see more and more of the farm coming to life.

A thick slab of Kato Unitram track

I've been spending most of my modelling time working on the E. L. Moore book. When I've needed a mental break, actual model making didn't appeal, but futzing with layout building did.

I sort of scared myself when I saw the last time I posted on this little layout was December third, and here we are in the second half of January. All I can say is that working on the book is sucking back a lot of time, but in between figuring out where to put commas, and usually failing, I have been breathing in styrofoam dust - hmm, which might account for the comma problem.

The next layout job I had to do was drill some holes to snake the wiring through the slab. There were two pairs of holes to drill: one pair for the power leads for each track, and a second pair for the switch machine toggle switches on the inner loop. 

I used a 1" diameter bit held in a brace for this task. I think that brace is quite ancient as I believe it came across to Canada with my grandfather. It's a fine piece of English engineering and I greatly enjoy using it whenever I can, even on a piddly little task like boring holes in foam. 

Ok, there are the four holes, bored all the way through to the bottom of the slab. 

The next thing was to bore four holes in the slab's sides to intersect with those I drilled down from the top. The power feeds are going to pop out the sides for connecting to a power pack, and the switch machine wires are going to connect with side mounted toggle switches.

I used the same 1" diameter bit to bore out these holes.

At this point all the holes are bored out, and I've flipped over the track to test that I can snake the wiring through the holes and run some cars to make sure the track is still functioning. 

At this point the slab's sides are still quite rough. Smoothing them a bit before the track was attached was the next job.

This meant using another ancient tool: my grandfather's wood rasp. It's the same vintage as the brace, and this is a rather trivial job for it. So, with rasp and sanding block I smoothed down the foam sides and got it to more-or-less conform with the track's perimeter. Over there you can see the result. Later, when the track was stuck down, I came back and did some more smoothing to finish it off.

So, I flipped the track upside down again and did the final preparation for sticking it in place.

First was to glue scraps of styrene over the holes that run down the centre of the track for the overhead wiring poles. Since this is an HO-9 layout, those holes won't be used for anything. They'll be filled with putty, and the styrene helps prevent putty from squirting out the bottom.

The next thing was to change the setting on the two switches that are on the street end from their factory setting of 'power routing' to 'non power routing'. I did this to prevent any odd power problems originating from that end of the layout if a visitor absentmindedly started fiddling with the switches, and to allow for layout expansion - a rather unlikely development I admit. Well, if you were going to add a stub loop like this one on a large layout, you'd need to have these switches on non power routing to prevent disruption of movements in the loop. Anyway, if you're going to make such a change, follow the instructions on the card that comes with the switch.

I then used a black Sharpie pen to outline the track on the foam. This was to give me a guide for placing the transfer tape that was used to stick down the track.

Ah, transfer tape, it's a miracle tape as far as I'm concerned. 

To hold the track in place I stuck down transfer tape along the inner and outer edges of the track plan. In the photo its been placed, and all that needs to be done is to peel off the paper backing from the exposed side and place the track on top. This is easier said than done. Flipping the track on the tape and getting it aligned is a tricky maneuver. Sorry, I have no photos or videos of the action, as my hands were occupied getting the track in place.

In the end though I did get the track properly positioned and stuck down.

At this point there was some more work with the rasp and sanding block to finish the slab side smoothing to get a nice edge with the track sides. 

Also, some thin foam - some leftover packing from a desk that was delivered over the Christmas holidays - was stuck down between the tracks to level off the surface. Transfer tape was also used to hold that in place.

Here's what the curved end looks like after rasping and sanding. It's not too bad. Although, here's a tip: don't wear a woolly sweater while smoothing no matter how cold the basement is :-)

There was one more thing to do before painting the slab's sides black. I added a trim strip of 0.020" styrene to cover the gaps between the track and foam. It was attached with transfer tape, and the strip's upper edge was glued to the track's edge with styrene glue. 

Once the glue was dry I primed the sides with gesso, and then painted on two coats of black acrylic paint. 

I'm quite happy with how this is turning out, but I think it's time to get back to the book.

A thick foam base

Test fitting the track

I should mention right off the top that this project is idiosyncratic and doesn't represent a technique I'd recommend anyone try. It's just an idea I've been thinking about for awhile, and I've wanted to give it a go. It might work out ok, it might not. So far, so go though.

Bottom layer temporarily taped to layout table

I don't like working with wood as a layout base and have used foam on both the Loonar Module and LOL II with good results so far. The basic idea is to take sheets of foam used for home insulation and glue them together in layers to make a slab for a layout base. They're lightweight and easy to build on, although I think my designs still lack something in ruggedness, and installing wiring is a bit of a rigmarole. 

Weights are applied while the glue dries

Why so thick? A couple of reasons: one structural, one aesthetic . 

First, to give the base a proper level of stiffness. I think a single layer is too weak, but several glued together seems quite sufficient. The layers are bonded with both transfer tape and Lepage's wood glue. This has worked quite well, and even some questionable testing has suggested it would be strong. I'm thinking that using two adhesives is a bit of overkill and just wood glue should be sufficient.

Second, I think the bases of free standing, island-like little layouts benefit from being thick to visually balance the models on top. The old Alta Vista TC modular layout used thin birch panels for bases. Strength-wise, they worked just fine, but they always looked too thin to me. Good grief, they were used to support a downtown with skyscrapers and were only an inch or so thick :-) It just didn't look right. Now, the LOL had a fairly thick base, but it was made from wood and was quite heavy once the layout was done - moving it upstairs to the living room for showing off was a major pain. It wasn't until I was installing tall, full prototypical height trees on the Loonar Module that I began to realize that a thick base prevented the layout from looking top heavy and insubstantial with respect to the items being placed on top. It doesn't look too bad now that it's done, but given that I've been looking at it for a few weeks I think it could be 2" to 3" thicker to visually balance those 70' to 80' trees.

Slab before rounding one end

On this layout there'll be deciduous trees ranging from say 35' to 40' upwards to 80' tall on top, so in HO scale let's say they'll be about 6" to 12" tall in round numbers (assuming no landscape elevations). I made the base 6.5" thick, which is 3.5" thicker than the Loonar Module's base to visually balance that tree height. 

Slab with rough cut circular end

I've been working on the base during breaks from working on the ELM book. I couldn't stand to do any fiddly model work as I was trying to get away from equally fiddly computer work, so cutting and gluing big foam slabs seemed like just the ticket for a mental change of pace.

Showing the recess for hiding wiring

The slab's sides need further smoothing and squaring-up. I'll do that once the track is attached and I'm ready to install the fascia. 

No doubt someone has gone down this road before, and maybe even abandoned it as a bad idea. I'll see. Hey, I try to keep up with what's known in the field: I sometimes go out to the garage to sit in the time machine and read what the dictionary might say on this subject :-)

Ok, I think I've breathed in a little too much foam dust so it's back to writing for me ...

Hacking Kato's Unitram track, Part 2

Compared to the last hack, this one is not for the faint hearted. I used a cut-off wheel in my Dremel to round the track corners on the observatory end of the layout, and to cut a standard piece of 4-7/8" straight track in half to square off the layout end on Carling Avenue. Sanding sticks were used to cleanup the cuts. I think the round corners are going to need a little underneath support to keep the track flat once it's laid on the sheet foam base.

One other thing: the layout's dimensions are now pretty close to 100 cm long by 50 cm wide, which seems a good size for this thing.

And one last thing: it should be clear that any and all warranties are now well and truly voided :-)

Hacking Kato's Unitram track, Part 1

'Cut' indicates where the track corners need to be sliced off

This is a trivial one: a slice had to be cut off the left and right curves on the inner loop track in order to connect the outer loop track to the switches.

A nice thing about these switches is they can be configured for either routing power in the direction of the switch setting or not. They come from the factory set to power routing. With power routing enabled and both switches set to run a trolley around the outer loop, the inner loop isn't powered and vice versa. No extra wiring is required to disable power to those loops to create 'parking spots'.

One drawback though is that a Unitram switch's manual control switches both tracks at the same time. I don't know if there's a modification to somehow control each track switch individually. Another drawback is that the switches on both ends need to be properly set to cut power to a desired loop - setting just one doesn't do the job. These things need more investigation.

Planning the Lost Observatory Loop

After many iterations of Kato Unitram track fiddling, the LOL III

Planning seems like a rather highfalutin word for developing my thoughts for a little layout inspired by Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm trolley line. Calling it a layout doesn't seem right either. It's more of a little diorama with a trolley loop. And come to think of it, I'm misusing the word diorama. Classify it as you will, I'm naming it the Lost Observatory Loop.

I was going to write some lengthy post on all the ideas and iterations that went into planning this layout, but as I thought about it I realized there were only a couple of points which I think might be generally applicable, so I'll focus on those.

For developing ideas I find it useful to use a sketchbook. I particularly like the 5.5" x 8.5" spiral bound format. I find larger sizes a bit intimidating - all that blank space on a page demands to be filled even if the idea I want to play with is just a small one. I like using a soft 4B or 6B pencil because I feel they allow for a wide range of marks, although I'll use anything on hand if necessary. I rarely use an eraser; I just draw over any mistakes. Also, to help overcome 'getting started' anxiety, I'll open the book at some random blank page and start to work. I don't like the feel of rigidly starting at page one and marching through the book page-by-page to the end - there's something grim about that, and the book doesn't have so many pages that I won't be able to find my work again when I return to it. Also, the quasi-random organization helps me think.

6 of the 20 or so pages devoted to working out ideas for the LOL III

For me planning is trying to find a composition that somehow balances the features I want the layout to incorporate. In this case the main features are: things I like about the CEF, especially around the trolley line; a loop for the trolley (or trollies) to run on; lots of scope for trying modelling techniques I haven't tried before (like making stone walls for buildings and deciduous trees); uses mainly materials I have on hand; shouldn't take more than a year to build; be relatively small, light, and transportable; and most importantly: be fun to build! So far I've been working on a design for a little over a year.

The Tyco trolley is a little too wide.

One aspect I kept going back and forth on was track: standard or narrow gauge? I had settled on HO-scale. I finally decided on HO-9 making use of Kato's N-gauge Unitram track.

When I first saw Unitram track several years ago I was entranced. I bought up a lot thinking I would build an N-scale homage to Toronto's streetcars called Tor-N-to. Time has gone on, and I realize Tor-N-to is never going to happen, although I still love that Unitram track, especially the switches.

Last year's test of the HO-9 Hong Kong tram running along Unitram track in an HO scale street scene convinced me some sort of HO-9 streetcar layout was itching to be built - I just wasn't sure what it would be. 

Although, here's the problem with using Unitram track this way: 2 HO-scale trams can't pass each other because the tracks are too close together. I figured if I incorporated an internal passing track this problem would be minimized. Well, ok, I could make thinner trollies, but that isn't going to happen - I'll need to go to a 1/24 scale hot rod customizing school first to practice my body modification skills :-)

So, in the end there was lots of back-and-forth between trying various Unitram configurations and sketchbook ideas until I settled on a track plan. Frankly, for all the time I spent thinking about this layout, the plan is a dead simple one I've played with many times before, so I don't know what all the planning fuss was about. Anyway, I can now see the basics of the thing, and have settled some questions, so I guess that's what planning is about.

Dig that funky trackwork

Soon after motorizing the Hong Kong tram I started to wonder about the feasibility a small HO-9 streetcar layout built with Kato's Unitram track. I could have got out the pencils and rulers and measured things to do my wondering, but instead I got out the track and buildings and tram and ran a test. I videoed it and posted some stills back in December. The video seemed a little sterile, but I've recently learned how to add a music track with some of Youtube's fee free audio. So, here's the test, jazzed up with a funky soundtrack :-)

Oh, the test results? Things look good, but the tram is a bit too wide, and two can't pass each other without colliding. Still though, I kind of like the idea. Or, maybe it's just the music :-)

A loop around the Unitram block

The week between Christmas and New Years is always an odd one, and this one is no different. I've had the urge to wrap up loose ideas I've put off looking at throughout the year. This is one. 

While working on motoring the Atlas Hong Kong tram, and again while drawing up the new layout, I wondered how the HO tram on an N-gauge power unit would run on the Kato Unitram track in an HO scale urban setting. It turns out it runs quite well, but I don't think trams could pass each other going in opposite directions without colliding on the centre line. These trams are just a little bit too wide for the track.

But, I think there's a layout idea in there somewhere. Maybe something with a pair of switches to create a second loop so the layout is divided into two parts. I have wanted to do something with a city part and a part similar to Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm. But, not right now. It's just an idea to play with this odd week.

The omni-circulatory streetcar layout

In the past I’ve posted a bit about the omnivagant model railroad concept first proposed by Linn Westcott back in the May 1940 issue of Model Railroader. To me it’s an interesting way to look at building a layout that incorporates trolley, tram, interurban or streetcar elements. All of the posts in the omnivagant series are tagged with the word and can be found here.

[Some slotcar layouts seem to exemplify the omnivagant concept more so than model railroads - to maximize the fun :-) This ad appeared in a 1960s issue of Boy's Life.]

I find that the word ‘omnivagant’ often trips people up. Like myself when I first encountered it, I thought it was spelt wrong, and was sure it should be omnivagrant, with an ‘r’. With omnivagant being an archaic word even when Mr. Westcott first mentioned it in 1940, that missing 'r' seems like a natural mistake. Some internet searching cleared things up. One of the more interesting findings on omnivagant and its relations is at The Inky Fool which has a post on noctivagant (wandering around at night), omnivagant (wandering absolutely everywhere) and extravagant (wandering around outside), and suggests how Shakespeare had a hand in changing the meaning of extravagant from its original one of ‘out-of-bounds’ to today’s ‘out-of-budget’.

[Not to be satisfied with merely a flat, omnivagant slotcar layout setup on the rec-room floor, Glen Wagner in the Nov. '66 issue of Boy's Life showed how to build this multi-level twister through mountainous terrain.]

Vagrant also has the connotation of not having a home, job or any fixed connection to a place or activity, as well as wandering. That makes being vagrant somewhat different from merely having a penchant for wanderlust. A railed vehicle can indeed be vagant, but it likely follows its geographically wandering path with a purpose, and repeat it in accordance to a schedule. It would hardly be vagrant.

[This is the Flat River Railroad and Union Traction Co. that appeared in the Feb '57 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman by 'the layout doctor'. This layout is the most omnivagant setup I've seen published so far. It's got streetcars, interurbans, trolley buses and a railroad all in 6 x 14 foot space. Linn Westcott's Union Bay Railway is still the most stylish and best thought out omnivagant layout I've seen. the layout doctor's layout pushes the boundary between spaghetti and omnivagant setups, but it stays in the omnivagant envelope and excels in sheer scale, density and integration. Sophistication of integration of the various transportation systems being modelled is what distinguishes the omnivagant from the spaghetti. ]

This is especially true for an urban streetcar system. I was thinking about how Mr. Westcott’s concept applied to a setup like the one in Toronto where streetcars plied streets laid out on a grid. In the Decatur, Jackson and Newton layout where Mr. Westcott introduced omnivagancy, the setting is small town and rural, and the tracks and streets conform to the terrain. In grid cities the geography is more-or-less beaten flat and sliced up into a Cartesian plan. There’s still omnivagancy, but of a particular kind.

[This is the Toronto Transit Commission's streetcar network in 1973 (sourced from Transit Toronto). It weaves together many streets as does an omnivagant layout, but it does so in a way that more-or-less conforms to the street grid.]

The omnivagant plans I've developed didn’t quite get to the core of what the particular kind was. Streetcars were going everywhere and making all kinds of places accessible as a good omnivagant layout should; however they didn’t remind me of the streetcar lines in Toronto. I guess they couldn’t. Classical omnivagant designs seem better at integrating pre-1950’s North American rail transport where interurbans play a big role along with passenger train service. 

[These postcards - by JBC Visuals - I bought at a train show a few years ago resonated with me as they succinctly summarized a lot of my memories of riding Toronto's streetcars. That rush hour streetcar traffic on the left reminded me of my trips downtown, and that image on the right conjured up memories of riding the streetcar with my mother to visit my grandmother. Yes, those are PCCs, but the TCC ran them until 1995, and in the '70s they were still the backbone of the fleet.]

My omnivagant designs weren’t passing my personal nostalgia test. There were many non-Toronto elements I wanted to include – experimental farm, observatory, ocean beach, archeological dig, etc – but the core, the long straight streetcar runs, that could hang a tight 90-degree turn when the route demanded, that I remember riding, weren’t there.

[This is Toronto's street railway in 1921. (sourced from Transit Toronto) More extensive than in '73, but the long gone pieces were still following the city's grid.]

I failed to consider the grid and that the streetcars circulate through the grid. The element of that grid most amenable to compact modelling – that is, via a shelf layout -  is the long, rectangular loop, which was often short-cut with smaller, inner loops. It circulates amongst all the streets; so, it's omni-circulatory.

[A late-19th or early-20th century idealization of the most basic streetcar circulation system for a large urban area (sourced from somewhere in the Street Railway Review)]

I suspect the ‘ideal’ streetcar layout for me has some sort of omni-circulatory, rectangular loop in the urban core, and a more free-form omnivagant arrangement on the outskirts.

[This is a Walther's ad from the 1950's. It's true that a setup should go beyond the simple loop, but for certain omni-circulatory layouts, a square loop would be a better starting configuration than a kidney :-) ]

Kato Unitram track isn’t the perfect medium for building an omni-circulatory layout, but it’s pretty good. On the plus side, the track is high quality and precision made, so it has the quality needed for use in kitbashing projects.

[This is the Cincinnati streetcar route map. It's simple and has the basics of the omni-circulator with a twist around Twelfth and Race that makes it a simple figure-eight.]

Unitram track is excellent stuff. I suspect for its intended use – modelling Japanese street trackage - it’s ideal. What I have in mind – old-fashioned Toronto and more North American style layouts – is outside the intended market for this item, so it’s no fault of the product. So far I’d say the most significant downside is that the curves are rather wide for Toronto, whose streetcars must be able to negotiate a 11 m radius turn (around 69 mm in N scale) . The Unitram curves have a 180 mm radius. Using Unitram means approximations to the look of the streets will be in order. But, I think with the long runs that N-scale makes possible, this shouldn't detract from making the thing omni-circulatory.

On the other hand the layout shouldn’t be just a land of nostalgia. I’d like to have some space for playing and thinking about things. Layouts are great for that sort of activity.

The lead photo for this post isn't my layout, the one above is. The lead photo is just digital trickery to use what I've got to figure out where I'd like to go. I think some creativity is going to be needed to keep costs within reach.

A couple of final thoughts. This whole omnivagant vs omni-circulatory rambling is likely obvious to professionals who design these things, and modellers who pay closer attention than myself, but it seemed important to me to try and wrap my head around what makes a streetcar layout different from a model railroad. Also, although Unitram might not be ideal for a omni-circulatory North American streetcar layout, it might be perfect for a Launch Pad Layout. :-)

Kato Unitram and Omnivagancy

I bought a couple more pieces of circular Kato Unitram track to fiddle with. I was thinking that even though the variety of streetcar trackplans that can be constructed with it appears limited, it does seem a rather easy way to build some sort of omnivagant streetcar layout. Given that I'd also like to try making some larger buildings, this comment about scales by Linn Westcott that appeared in his December '72 Model Railroader At the throttle column entitled, The Hobby with a Heart: Scale Model Railroading, seemed very insightful to this situation.

Don't adopt a scale. Traditionally modelers classed themselves as "N scalers", "O gaugers", "Trolleymen", and so on. This caused more friction than it did good. Instead, choose scales for your models that solve whatever problems you have with them - but remain full-sized yourself.

It's an interesting column and I have Vince to thank for pointing it out to me, and Debra to thank for providing me the DVDs so I can peruse all this interesting stuff at my leisure. 

Bachmann PCC + Kato Unitram = N-scale TTC?

I bought a few sections of Kato's Unitram track to see if Bachmann's N-scale TTC PPC streetcar would run on it. The answer is yes. It runs quite well on both the inner and outer tracks. The Unitram track would need to be painted for it to look closer to the streets of Toronto, or many other North American cities where streetcars run or ran.