I've been focused on books for so long I'd forgotten about video, so I decided to search YouTube for Kim Adams videos. I had some great luck and I found this excellent new/old one. It was posted around 10 months ago, so it's relatively new, but it's of a lecture Adams gave in 2010, so it's relatively old too.
It's long, around an hour and forty minutes, but if you've got the stamina, Adams himself will tell you a lot about his inspirations and work. Believe it or not, like any decent modeller, there's a lot of prototype inspiration. If you want to jump ahead to more model railway-like pieces, fast forward to around the 59:50 mark.
Kim Adams: Bruegel-Bosch Bus | Kim Adams: One for the Road | Kim Adams
I've written a lot about Kim Adams' work over the years, but I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I've never gotten around to buying those three books shown above. Since I'm back to studying artists' use of miniatures, I figured this was a good time to have a look.
These three titles span many years, and as the years go on, the books get bigger in size.
The rightmost is simply titled Kim Adams. It's an exhibition catalogue published by two galleries to accompany two shows of Kim Adams' work. One was at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto from 23 June to 3 September 2001, and the other was at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square from 5 May to 12 August 2001.
The middle one is also an exhibition catalogue for another show of Kim Adams' work called Kim Adams: One for the Road. Although the book was published by Museum London, the show was held at three galleries: Museum London, October 20, 2013 to January 6, 2014; Art Gallery of Hamilton, February 8, 2014 to May 4, 2014; and Varley Art Gallery, September 13, 2014 to January 11, 2015.
The leftmost book, Kim Adams: Bruegel-Bosch Bus, was published by the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 2021 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Adams' Bruegel-Bosch Bus that is on permanent display at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
All three contain extensive photos of Adams' work, essays by art critics, and interviews with Adams.
I’ve never felt comfortable commenting on critical essays as I’m not well versed in the arts to say much of anything as to the essays’ insights and assertions. I read them though, and give them consideration as they’re usually interesting if they aren’t mired in insider jargon. However, it’s the photos and interviews that intrigue me the most.
I have seen some of Adams’ work up-close-and-personal as they say, and have written a little about those encounters, but mostly what I’ve seen are photos of his work.There are lots of photos online, and you can get a good sense of many aspects of his work from them. I should note that the 2021 Bus book is the best collection of photos of the Bruegel-Bosch Bus I’ve come across. I’ve seen that work in person, and I’d say it defies photographic representation. Photos just don’t capture the experience of interacting with it; however, those in Bus come pretty darn close. The other two books have good collections of photos as pertain to the shows they are representing. In Kim Adams I particularly like the chapter of photos and texts rather cheekily called Kim Adams’ Vocabulary: Catalogue of Products and Instructions for Use by Tomas Pospiszyl.
All three books cover all aspects of his art, although general coverage is a little thin in Bus, which focuses on the BBB. As far as I can tell his artistic creations fall into roughly 5 categories: Large 1:1 scale assemblages / ‘kitbashes’ (often referred to as ‘Street Remakes’), items that look like kitbashed plastic scale models, dioramas incorporating kitbashed pieces and model railroading items, large layout-like pieces, and drawings. Adams’ themes and interests flow and weave throughout all the categories, and they really can’t be considered in isolation from each other, but in this post I’m only going to focus on some aspects of his kitbashed plastic kit based work and his layout-like pieces.
As I mentioned, it’s the interviews that really grabbed my attention in these books. There are three, one in each:
with Marc Mayer (held on 22 March 2001) in Kim Adams
with Robert Enright (held 23 October 2012) in Kim Adams: One for the Road
with Melissa Bennett (various times around 2020) in Kim Adams: Bruegel-Bosch Bus
One thing though that seems to be missing from these interviews, or is somewhat skirted over, are questions and discussion regarding early influences from model building and model railroading. Naturally, the conversations stay mainly in the art groove, but look, I’m a model maker, a kitbasher, and a model railroader, and chances are you are too if you’re reading this, so I find it quite interesting that my interests are being used in interesting ways in the art world :-) Adams is using unusual media for the art world, plastic model kits and model railway gear for his small scale pieces and giant layout-like things, but the, let's say the model building world influences, aren't discussed in interviews with the depth that the art world influences are. This isn't unusual given the backgrounds of the interviewers, but I think adding a little investigation into how the hobby and art worlds come together in Adams' work would help give us a little more insight into it.
There’s often a pattern in the lives of model builders and model railroaders. It goes something like this: as a child there’s a fascination with model making or model railroading, it lasts maybe until high school, sometimes through high school, but then life takes over with education, careers, and family, but then in middle-age the model building or model railroading bug strikes again and the activity is resumed with renewed vigour. This is a stereotype of course, but it’s more-or-less the trajectory of a lot of people, and I wonder if it applies here and might help unearth those early hobby influences in more detail.
So, ok, with this in mind, I tried to piece together some of Adams’ early life story from the disconnected pieces available in some interviews and online bios I could find. Before we dive in let me say I’m no expert, so if you see errors in what follows, please let me know.
Kim Adams was born on 17 December 1951in Edmonton, Alberta. His father was Alvin Clarence Adams and his mother was Harriett Maude Eliott. In World War II his father was an engineer, and his mother was an anti-aircraft gunner. There’s an interesting black-and-white photo in Bus dated 1953 with the caption: “Kim as a child with his brothers, and their father’s model train layout.” The photo shows very a small child, which I assume is Adams given the date, and three other considerably older boys, who I assume are his brothers. You can see the layout’s benchwork, which looks a little plywood-pacificiky at this stage, in what appears to be a room walled by cinder blocks, maybe it's a basement or garage. This is the first time I've heard of there being model railroading in his family life.
When I saw that photo so many questions popped into my mind. Was Adams’ father a long time model railroader, or was it just a dalliance? Were there model railroading magazines lying around the house? Did any of it have any influence on Adams’ interests later in life? I don’t know.
Ok, so let’s continue the timeline. Adams mentions in the Bus interview that the family relocated to Australia when he was seven for his father’s job. So, let’s say that was sometime in 1959.
So, ok, we’re in 1959 and Adams is 7. In the Enright interview he asks Adams this:
“Enright: Were you a model builder or a model railroader as a kid?
Adams: I was always making models. I think the very first one was in Australia. I was seven and the PT 109 model was out. Everybody in the company my dad worked for got one and because he worked night shifts, he said he would help me in the morning when he got back from work. But I had already built it by the time he got home. That was it; he never volunteered again. But we did other things, like take motors out of cars and build houses.
Enright: So you very quickly moved beyond the PT 109 kit to make things on your own?
Adams: I think so. There was somebody in the area who was carving boats out of balsa wood and motorizing them, and I picked that up from him. Balsa wood was the first thing you could use to build from scratch. You can play with it quite a bit, too. Then later it was finding things, dragging them in, and banging them together. I don’t try to invent a train engine or something.”
I did some internet searching and found that Lindberg released an all plastic 1:64 scale model kit of a PT boat in 1959. It was a variation of a kit they first released in 1955. This kit didn’t have PT-109 emblazoned on the box top, but simply said Patrol Sea Raider, and earlier versions said P.T. Boat. Lindberg released the kit again in 1963 with a new box that said P.T.109. I suspect this was to coincide with the movie PT 109 that was released in June 1963. Also in 1963 Revell released a PT 109 kit, and I suspect it too was to get in on the movie release action. Is Adams misremembering dates? I don’t know, but, look, I can’t really remember things from when I was seven. Maybe the important thing is he clearly remembers the first kit he built, and that he was quite young when the model building bug hit, even though the kit’s brand and date might be elusive. In 1963 Adams would have been 11.
I had a feeling of déjà vu when I read those passages from the Enright interview. I had a couple of old magazines that featured Adams interviews, so I dug them out to have a look. I turns out there’s also an Enright-Adams interview in the January 1999 issue of Border Crossings magazine. The interview was held in December 1998, 14 years prior to the one in One for the Road. Consider this segment from the 1998 interview:
“Enright (1998): Did you make models as a kid, or were you a junior railroader?
Adams (1998): Not a railroader but I definitely built models. I started in Australia. I got a little PT boat, I think it was Kennedy’s PT 109. My father was going to help me build it but he didn’t come home so I built it myself. My parents just kept throwing models at me after that. I took to the military ones for awhile and then borrowed my brother’s lighter fluid and burned them in the carrot patch and got in trouble. I didn’t have good guys or villains in mind. It was just basic killing.
Enright (1998): How did you end up in Australia?
Adams (1998): I was born in Edmonton but we went to Australia when I was a kid. My father was a policeman for awhile and then he was a streetcar driver. He had a buddy who moved to Australia and he just followed him out at some point. We lived in a tin shack for awhile. It was outside of Melbourne. Nunawading was probably the closest town, and then we were in an area called the Dandenong. Eventually dad built a house. I think I was about seven when we moved and we were there for five years. For a kid it was just adventure.”
Although not exactly the same, there are parts that are quite similar. In this one though Adams mentions his parents were providing lots of model kits, and he enjoyed building them.
Left: Border Crossings, January 1998 | Right: C, Summer 2001
I also dug up the Adams interview with Rafael Gomez-Motiana in the summer 2001 issue of C magazine. Here’s what Adams had to say about his early beginnings with plastic model kits:
"Gomez-Motiana: So all of your works are models, whether full-scale models, or miniature scale models. How did you actually get into miniature scale? Was it through constructing studies for your larger models?
Adams: My first memory of sniffing glue at a young age was when I built a model kit of President Kennedy’s boat [JDL: PT 109]. After that I was constantly building models. Especially cars. Model building was big. Then it disappeared. At the University of Victoria [JDL: Adams attended between 1975 and 1977] I got back into making model cars because it seemed to make more sense than learning abstract painting or something like that [JDL: !].
The first car piece I ever saw was by Joseph Beuys at the Guggenheim in the 1978-79 retrospective. He had a VW bus on the ramp, together with the survival sleds. And it just made so much sense right there in the gallery, which is basically a car park. Just think: Winnipeg, Regina, these prairie towns, they all have mini Guggenheims. I think that made quite an impact on me, just seeing a car in that high-art situation. I didn’t understand the survival part, I was just thinking, “Ooh, cars look alright in galleries, especially old, rust ones.””
Did Gomez-Motiana fall out of his chair laughing at the suggestion that the Guggenheim wasn’t much different from the parking lots of Winnipeg and Regina? We’ll never know :-) But what we do know, or at least is pretty clear from all the interviews, is that Adams believed himself to be a seriously devoted model builder as a kid, and he makes the statement that model building, especially car models, was a big thing in the 1960s, which it was, and yes, it did more-or-less collapse in the early 1970s.
"But Barris, even as at ten, was wild about cars, carving streamlined cars out of balsa wood."
The model car building and slot car craze of the 1960s and early 1970s was an offshoot of the larger custom car craze in the popular culture of the time. If you haven’t done so I’d recommend reading Tom Wolfe’s 1963 essay The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby to get a sense of the craze as only Tom Wolfe could capture. Although the essay was first published in the November 1963 issue of Esquire magazine under the title There Goes [Varoom! Varoom!] That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby it was reprinted in the first collection of Wolfe’s essays in 1965 with the shorter title, which was also the title of the book.
A few issues of Car Model from the 1960s and 1970s.
There was lots of information about model car building circulating at the time in both books and magazines. Two of the biggest enthusiast magazines were Car Model (published out of New York), and Model Car Science (published out of Los Angeles). Car Model magazine started up with a July/August 1962 issue and ran bi-monthly until September 1963 when it became a monthly, and published as a monthly until its last issue in July 1974. Model Car Science ran as a monthly right from the beginning in April 1963 until its last issue in July 1972.
Some winners at the MPC/WKNR car model contest held 23-25 Jan 1970 in Detroit. Stack of 4 photos on the far right feature George Barris examining some entries. Car Model, August 1970.
Model car building magazines weren’t confined to the US. Other publications that either were devoted to model cars or covered them also started up in that late 1950s and early 1960s era and include titles such as Model Cars, Model Roads and Racing, and Airfix Magazine. Buying these magazines wasn’t limited to specialist hobby shops as many were readily obtainable in places like smoke shops, grocery stores, jug milk stores, and pharmacies. I won’t go into the vast range of books available at the time, but again, they were easily obtainable at public libraries. The point is you didn’t really have to go out of your way in that era to find out what was going on in the wider world of the hobby. Much like our electronic internet is everywhere, that old paper-based internet was just about accessible everywhere too.
Left: Some entries in the Monogram Tom Daniel Design Contest; Car Model June 1971. Right: Kim Adams' Surfer Rick, 2001; from Kim Adams. Surfer Rick has strong stylistic similarities to wild custom model builds of the 60s & 70s.
I wonder if Adams was influenced by any of that literature? I know I was. Once I stumbled across Car Model at a local smoke shop in the summer of ’72, model building for me took a whole other direction. Kitbashing wasn’t something I knew about until I read about it. Well, not by reading articles about ‘kitbashing’, I don’t know when I learned that term, but seeing the results of using parts from several kits, and maybe modifying them a little. Kitbashing without knowing I was ‘kitbashing’. I usually thought of that work as ‘customization’. I think I learned the official term sometime later. The Gomez-Motiana interview touches on kitbashing a little:
"Gomez-Motiana: Both your full-scale work, if we can call it that, as well as your miniature work, is assembled from off-the-shelf components, things you can buy, whether actual car parts or model-car-kits. Where does the “craft” come into it? Is craft even important here?
Adams: It’s making these model-building kits look like the period, that’s what the craft is. Painting it to look aged and square; they have to look how the kit’s supposed to be made. But then it’s also when you start “bashing” them. All my work is what I would call “kit-bashing.” This is a common term in the industry: you cross breed a Volkswagen with a Cadillac, and you’ve got a kit bash. They must do it in architecture too, although I don’t know if they talk about it in those terms."
When he mentions ‘square’ I have to wonder what that means. Square as in all the paint and pieces are aligned properly, or the old hippie meaning of conforming to the norms of the generation prior to the hippies. Given the bits of sly humour in the responses in this interview I have to wonder.
It turns out car customizer George Barris, one of the guys Wolfe talks about in his essay, cross bred a Volkswagen with a Rolls-Royce. It was called the Raspberries Rolls since it was a promotional vehicle built for the rock group the Raspberries sometime in the early 1970s, likely 1972. I can’t quite place a firm date on it, but I should note that Revell came out with a kit of it called the Barris Kustom Rolls / VW in 1973, and the first incarnation of the Raspberries dates from 1970 to 1975. Weirdly, Liberace had a Barris-like Volks-Rolls built for him in the late 1970s to carry his furs and capes around (!).
Well, I don’t know about real architecture, but in model railroading architecture (a new field perhaps? :-) ) kitbashing is certainly a thing. We’ve talked about the king of kitbashing in the 1970s and 1980s, Art Curren, here, and also that Ur-kitbasher of the 60s, Gil Mellé. Did Adams know about these two guys or any of the others doing HO building kitbashes back then? I don’t know. I don’t know what sort of miniature kitbashes he was doing, if any, back in the 1960s or 1970s. Building kitbashes that I’ve seen date from much later. Did he dabble in architectural kitbashes during his UVic days when he got back into model car building? I don’t know.
One thing’s certain though, his HO scale building kitbashes weren’t anything like what was or is going on in the HO scale model railway world. Most model railroad kitbashes are pretty prosaic - square maybe :-) - and don’t pass the Bug-Caddy Conjecture test. My assertion here is Adams’ HO building kitbashes are heavily influenced by the world of cars and not buildings, but, well, that’s just an assertion at this point.
Long term model builders often have origin stories that stretch back to childhood.
So far we know model building from plastic kits, especially car model building, was a passion of the young Adams. We also know from these interviews that Adams also dabbled in building model boats from balsa, but he denies any activity in model railroading even though it appears his father had at least a passing interest in it, and was even a streetcar driver for awhile. Still though, the interview segments about this early period of Adams’ artistic development, and interest in model buildings, seem cursory when compared to the questioning about influences from the art world. Maybe there isn’t anything more to tell, but model builders who return to building as adults often have rich model building backgrounds to talk about as the years go on.
From the Enright (1998) interview it’s not clear if Adams moved back to Canada after 5 years, or moved out of the tin shack after 5 years, because in the Bus interview we’re told the family returned to Edmonton when Adams was 15, which was during 1967. So, from the interviews it’s a little unclear when he returned, but I’ll assume the most recent interview, the 2020 Bus interview, is the more accurate as it’s the most direct on this point: “…when I was fifteen, we moved back to Canada…”.
At 15 Adams would likely have been in high school. His online biographies and interviews note a few things about his school years. Over at the Canadian Encyclopedia Adams mentions “My research began in high school while I was skipping classes.” And he once mentioned he attended 12 different schools in 12 years before settling in Victoria.
When it comes to post-secondary education all the online Adams bios state the first college he attended was the “Northwest Institute of the Arts (1974)”. So, I go online and look for the institute and can’t find any place with that name, but I do find a place called the Northwest Coast Institute of Arts, which was founded in 1974, and in 1976 was renamed Victoria College of Art. I don’t have concrete proof for this, but from what I’ve read about Adams my money is on a typo in his various online biographies. Also, the 1974 in the bio entry would mean he attended the institute the year it was founded. Adams was 22 in 1974.
His online bios then all go on to note that he attended the Kootenay School of Art between 1974 and 1975, and the University of Victoria from 1975 to 1977, where he got an MFA in 1979. Recall that in the Gomez-Motiana interview Adams stated that while at UVic he got back into model car building. What sort? Kitbashing? I don't know.
The origins of his model railway-like sculptures are a bit murky to me, but the first one, Earth Wagons, Adams seems to have started construction on it around 10 years after his graduation, and with its incorporation of full-size rolling things, wagons in this case, you can see the influence from his full-size 'Street Remakes' works, some of which are shown in One for the Road and Kim Adams. As I noted at the beginning of this post one can't neatly separate all his works into distinct categories, as they all feed on each other.
Earth Wagons was a long project, and was under development from from 1989 to 1991. However, to me, that seems rather quick for a model railway - ok, model railway like sculpture in this case - of this scope.
Photos of Earth Wagons shown in Bus from the time it was being built show a large railway trestle with a train running along it as part of the 'layout', and you can see it in the above photo if you look closely, give it a strong model railway feel. Bus notes, along with the Winnipeg Free Press, that Earth Wagons was the precursor to the Bruegel-Bosch Bus. When I look at Earth Wagons I wonder if Adams was coming back to some earlier model railway experience he had, even though he wasn't a "junior railroader", and integrating it into his artistic mind.
Was the spiritual forefather of Earth Wagons the Artists' Colony diorama, a large piece that looks like a section from a model railway in its use of HO scale items and organization? I don't know.
And that's where I am right now, circling in the I-don't-know cul-de-sac. Well, as you've read, there are a lot of I-don't-knows in the story that I need to resolve, and a lot of bits-and-pieces of story lines I need to stitch together into the big story of influences and development. Some sort of chronological catalogue of Adams' sculptures, maybe similar to the one in the E. L. Moore book, might be needed to help anchor the story in time. The evolution of ideas might then be more apparent with that sort of reference.
I'll wrap up this post right here, obviously incomplete and with lots of hanging threads, because the I-don't-knows are becoming too prevalent and the factual pieces too scarce. However, I'd recommend all three books, but especially Bus because you can see the piece at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the book is a good souvenir of the experience. The other two are good if you want a little fuller understanding of Adams' work in general.
I started this pleasant little project over the Christmas holidays last year. I paused awhile until I could spray paint outside in good weather. Well, a day of good weather showed up last week so I spent a little time spraying the shell.
The paint is Krylon metallic silver paint + primer. It went on quite well. I thought I'd have to go through a few rounds of painting, filling, and sanding, but that didn't turn out to be the case. Although the body work isn't award winning, it looked ok when painted, and I didn't think I could make it any better.
After a few days curing I blackened the exhaust vents, applied decals, and added airhorns and Kadee couplers, although given it sits on a streetcar chassis I don't think it could pull anything other than a single, light car, if that.
Here's a 5-second video of the RDC-M as it passes through the Way Out Layout yard on a victory lap:
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 modelby 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:
Test assembly after lifting. Nothing is glued together.
At the end of the last instalment I thought I'd move on to smoothing out the seams in the pickup box. I did a little putty work, but then thought, why avoid the next big job, just get on with it.
So I did.
The 'prototype' from Car Model magazine, Sept '72. To me the stance is hyperactive.
Lift it that is.
But not too much.
Even when I was 12 I thought the body sat too high above the wheels, so when I raised it I figured I wouldn't raise it as much as the one in the magazine.
Ok, so let's get going.
The box stock chassis before shortening
There are two steps:
1. Shorten the chassis because I shortened the pickup box.
2. Lift the chassis because we're goin' Baja!
First thing: cut out the gas tank. The 'prototype's' gas tank is in the pickup box.
MPC kits were my brand back in the '70s when I was obsessed with building plastic model car kits. I liked their subjects and the pieces always seemed to be clean, sharply moulded, and unwarped, all of which made for a good assembly experience. Revell kits, at least the ones I bought, were a crap-shoot. It was always 50:50 odds a kit's body would be horribly warped, or the parts would be blobby, or some other insult had been inflicted on the parts that would require superhuman modelling skills I didn't possess to properly fix the thing. It was heartbreaking as I didn't just like Revell's subjects, I loved them, but they didn't always reciprocate. I built plenty of AMT too - I just saw a re-release of an old flame which likely will show up here next year - but there was something about their kits that never got a strong reaction out of me save for a rare few.
There were a couple of Christmases where I received MPC kits as presents and was very happy. Christmas was the only time I had a stash! I might receive 2 or 3 kits and there it was: a 2 or 3 kit stash! Normally I would buy and build immediately. I never suffered from the embarrassment of excess kit build up in the basement region :-)
After much measuring and marking and soul searching, the saw is drawn, the cuts are made. Shortness is obtained.
So, this Dodge is an MPC and a re-pop of more-or-less the kit I built in '72, less a few custom parts for the Baja Brute version. It's showing its age. There's considerable flash to clean up, and the chassis in the pickup box area is a little warped. These aren't big things and are easily corrected, but it's clear time has passed on these moulds.
Reuniting the severed parts with soothing styrene glue and an impromptu jig
Shortening the chassis and lifting the body is not overly complicated stuff, but the old CM article is very misleading as it leaves these steps out and concentrates on what I'd call detailing. That is interesting stuff, but hardly the meat and potatoes of this build. Maybe the article was just filler to boost the page count to their minimum, or maybe the magazine was too long and they cut the mundane part of the project, or maybe they ran the article to promote a new kit, or something else? We'll never know.
Reunited and it looks so good: A bond to build a dream on.
On the way to this point in the build I was thinking about how a real vehicle of this sort would be constructed to accommodate a shorter box and lift. I knew mine wasn't quite right. I started to fret about it as a modern modeller would who is browbeaten by the unyielding scrutiny of digital cameras and the internet. But, I had done all this cutting and gluing and having fun and didn't care anymore. Worrying about reality was spoiling the fun of building.
I decided just to proceed based on what looked interesting to me. I'd add greeblies and details and paint as I felt necessary get the look I'm after. I'd check for real life practices if that became a concern, but I wasn't going to let that dominate the project.
It was a breakthrough of sorts.
Reconstruction begins: A piece of 0.040" thick styrene is rough cut to fill the gas tank hole.
And that I realized was the hidden message from 1972.
Back then I got pleasure from these projects when I tried hard to make them as 'realistic' as possible. Getting pleasure in that manner isn't what I'm after these days. There's so much prototype information readily available today it makes kit assembly seem merely like the final stages in an industrial process to assemble the kit in accordance with all that information. Well, at least it seems that way for me. These days I want them to look as interesting to me as possible. What 'interesting' means is going to vary from one project to the next.
0.250" tall styrene blocks were added between springs and chassis. Prototypical? Nah.
As far as this Desert Dodge is concerned it was interesting just to slip into a flow state of mind and work on lifting the chassis without prototypical worries.
Interesting? Yeah!
Given the fun I'm having modifying this pickup I'm thinking of doing the long delayed custom RDC project.
Athern HO scale RDC body shells
In 2024 when I was working on my Le Grand Défi entry I bought two Athern RDC body shells online. I thought I'd create shorter RDCs in Kitbashed-X style for use on a micro-layout I had in mind. Although I built the RDC-X, I got squeamish about cutting up 'good' shells and postponed indefinitely. I shouldn't have.
It doesn't hurt to check things twice, it works for Santa Claus.
Hopefully Kitbashed-X style will see a resurgence in 2026.
What's next for the Desert Dodge Do-Over? Your guess is as good as mine. Stay tuned!
