To the left: Patient X, Vintage Classics 1:76 Airfix Astronaut; to the right: 3/16" diameter Acetal ball.
Warning: Those of you with a weak constitution may want to avert your eyes for the next bit.
With the head-dectomy successfully completed we quickly move on to the installation of the new helmet.
Success! The helmet was slightly flattened on one 'side' and attached with superglue.
The life support backpack was modified with styrene scraps to become Tintin-esque.
The patient is expected to make a full recovery and live a long and adventurous life on the moon tending the lunar railway.
The staff of 30Squares Labs extends its apologies to The Temptations and highly recommend listening to this classic while they prepare for the next breakthrough in figure surgery.
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:
I was chatting with a friend of mine this week about a Rocket Garden he's building where all the rockets are being made from Lego. He recently finished a Saturn 1B, an impressive work of Lego kit mingling supplemented with carefully chosen speciality Lego blocks, that will be parked next to a massive Lego Saturn V. The scale of these turns out to be 1:110, and I mentioned that was close to TT, which I thought was 1:100. It turns out TT's scale ratio is more complex than I thought. Wikipedia tells me this: in its country of origin, the USA, it's 1:120; in the UK its 1:101.6; and in Russia it's 1:130. Clearly my thinking was stuck on UK usage. And, as it turns out, Revell’s Jupiter “C” rocket and rail-based gantry kit, is also 1:110, not quite TT, but close, and it's the same as the Lego rockets. I haven't yet finished the kit. About a year ago I added some more details and stripped off the HO trucks. I was going to replace the HOs with N-scale trucks so I could use Kato Unitram track as the basis of the launch pad layout. Watch this space - so to speak - but don't hold your breath :-)
Over the last few weeks I've been working on Lindberg's 1/96 scale U.S. Moon Ship when the EVRR track work wasn't appealing. It's been sitting on my shelf for awhile so I thought I'd finally work on it now-and-then over the summer. Last weekend I took the fuselage part out to the backyard to spray it flat white. It was a little tricky to assemble the centre section with those stacked spheres, but when the filler and dust settled, it wasn't too bad.
Here it is on the bench just before painting. I painted the sphere's insides with flat black to make the thing more opaque. Over on the left are the parts for Gromit's airplane by Airfix. I've also wanted to built that for a long time - now's the time!
A friend forwarded some photos of the Soyuz rocket being hauled out to its launch pad in winter. I wondered if there were any videos of the train in action. There is. And I stumbled across this in the process.
[Model train layout used by NBC News to demonstrate the Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A rendezvous maneuver. Photo shown in the Safety Valve letters to the editor column of the March ’66 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman and attributed to NBC News. The wikipedia entry on the rendezvous says that the mission plan was for Gemini 6A, after launching on 15 December ’65, to meet up with Gemini 7, which had launched on 4 December ’65, on its fourth orbit after leaving Earth. These 4 orbits are likely the four main loops you see in the trackplan. Over on the left you can see where the track comes together in some sort of curved switch or crossing - I wonder what sort of piece of track that is - I’ll have to dig in some old Atlas catalogues to see if I can figure it out.]
The ape, racing to the moon, holds no fascination for me . . . I much prefer the sedate company of the tomcat who suns himself out on the back porch.
I’ve waded through lots of old model railroad magazines while on the E. L. Moore trail, seeing many sights and reading the most fascinating things. This is one, and with the death of Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell earlier this month, and the confirmation of gravitational waves last week, I thought about posting this snippet of a small intersection of my interests in space exploration and model railroading.
Back in the March ’66 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, a reader, Philip Schmucker of Detroit, wrote in and asked the editors if they knew anything about the model railroad he saw on tv that was used to demonstrate the docking of Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A that happened on 15 December 1965.
The editor was interested and contacted NBC for more information. This is what they reported:
... the NBC News Gemini coverage in which loops of HO trackage were laid so as to approximate the elliptical orbits of the two Gemini spacecraft, including the actual rendezvous. Al Chambers of the NBC News staff advises that the 12-foot-square layout was built by Model Railroad Equipment Corporation’s Andy Uveges, who used Atlas’ curvable track and switches. Tyco power cars specially built up by Andy held the Revell Gemini capsules. Diodes permitted the two cars to ride the same track. Power was also by Tyco. The track laid in close approximation of the actual flight pattern, designed to show the orbital mechanics of the two spacecraft. Much to NBC’s delight, Astronaut Wally Schirra referred to the flight as “just like being on rails” at the Dec. 30th news conference in Houston ...
[Safety Valve letters to the editor column, Railroad Model Craftsman, March 1966]
Those Revell Gemini spacecraft models might have been the 1/24 scale kit released in 1965 and re-issued in 2000 and 2012. Today one could use DCC to replace the diode-based control system, making this demonstration layout rather straightforward to recreate.
[The Revell Gemini models making the rendezvous. Photo shown in the Safety Valve letters to the editor column of the March ’66 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman and attributed to NBC News. The wikipedia entry on the mission states that during rendezvous the two spacecraft remained in close proximity for 270 minutes and at one point got within a foot of each other.]
Some say good things come in threes, others say bad things come in threes, either way, the third bit of space news I’ve stumbled across this month is this amazing video, Cinema: A Space Odyssey
Let’s wrap this up with some words from Edgar Mitchell,
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.'
[Edgar D. Mitchell (Astronaut; Apollo 14 moon walker; b. 17 Sept. 1930; d. 4 Feb. 2016)]
[The caption beside this photo reads, The launching rocket for a Soyuz spacecraft, at Baykonur. The Soviet approach to more elaborate space operation and giving cosmonauts more room in orbit involves more than one spacecraft docking at a Salyut space station, while unmanned cargo ships ferry supplies from Earth. Pages 110 and 111 of Spaceships of the Mind; photo attributed to Novosti. This is where the train in the NASA photo was hauling that rocket.]
I’ve been thinning my library and came across this photo in Nigel Calder’s Spaceships of the Mind from 1978. If I ever get around to actually building the Launch Pad Layout, this could be the centre-piece.
Over the weekend I installed the gantry on the carriage. It puts the height of this model at around 33 cm, which translates into over 90 ft in HO scale. According to the instructions, the gantry is designed to fold flat on the carriage for transport. Unfortunately, I managed to break one of the support struts,
so I figured the parts were a little too delicate for this feature; well, this model will be glued-up in the deployed position. Anyway, this HO scale interpretation will make it difficult to fold the gantry and pull the carriage with some sort of loco, so I guess this is all for best.
I wanted to work on a completely different and relatively straightforward project over the last week so I decided to make a start on the re-issue of Revell’s Jupiter “C” rocket and rail-based gantry kit I bought a few years ago. I discussed it a little in the Launch Pad layout post. According to Mat Irvine’s book Creating Space, it’s a 1: 110 scale kit of the rocket and gantry that put the USA’s first artificial satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit.
For me, as a model railroader of conventional scales, 1:110 is an odd one. For an HO layout, at 1:87, this kit would be a bit too small; for N scale, at 1:160, it’s way too big; but, it’s pretty close to TT, 1:120 scale. Looking at the parts, and comparing them to some figures, I thought I’d replace the kit’s trucks - it looks like the gantry is self-propelled - with some HO ones that would require the gantry to be moved by a diesel engine, and turn the kit into some sort of generic small rocket - maybe some sort of sounding rocket - launching system. Everything else will be box stock. With judiciously chosen figures it might not look too bad in HO.
Anyway, the gantry carriage is built and up on some HO trucks I had in my scrap box. Now, all this thing will do is travel in a straight line back and forth from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad. Not very exciting, but its job is very simple.
I was reading an article this week reporting that the Voyager spacecraft will soon be leaving the region of space under the influence of our Sun and heading into interstellar space. The article eventually led to a NASA photo archive site, and being a train person I decided to search on ‘train’ to see what would come up. Among the results were some great photos of the train used to roll-out the Soyuz spacecraft rocket to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. I’d recommend going to the NASA site directly to get all the details if you’re interested. There’s lots more photos other than these two I’ve posted, and they certainly provide some intriguing ideas for developing a freelanced launch pad layout.
John Varley’s 2003 sci-fi novel Red Thunder is a fun read. I picked it up because I had heard that it was written in classic Robert Heinlein style, and being a Heinlein fan, I wanted to see if it was true. It was.
In the story the main characters build a spaceship out of used railroad tank cars. They can get away with using such low-tech components because one of them has discovered a propulsion source so powerful that the mass of the vehicle it propels is irrelevant! All that matters is that the structure is strong and robust enough to handle the rigours of pressurization and flight, so seven cylindrical railroad tank cars - a central one surrounded by six others - fills the bill.
My guess is that it’s probably rare that a sci-fi novel features a spaceship built from used railroad gear, but this one goes even further and in Chapter 21 Mr. Varley describes an HO-scale model of the ship that is used by the team for PR purposes. Mr. Varley even discusses some of the components used to build it: the landing legs came from an old model of an Apollo Lunar Excursion Module (my guess would be the Airfix 1/72 scale LM), springs from an R/C Hummer model, and spherical fuel tanks for the magic fuel were made from Christmas tree ornaments.
So, maybe if I eventually get my act together and build the launch pad micro-layout, I’ll have to consider adding a model of the Red Thunder.
I like to read the Micro / Small Layouts website from time-to-time. I'm always impressed with what people are doing with small footprint layouts. The timesaver track design I've used is a fairly common track plan in these railroads. So, in some ways, even though my layout is 6 feet by 5 feet, I often think of it as having a kinship with layouts seen on Micro / Small Layouts.
When I saw this picture of NASA's launch pad 5 for the Mercury project (it's a NASA photo) it sort of jumped out as being a good candidate for a micro-layout of some sort. I really need to try and design something based on this great photo. It would probably have a launch pad or two at one end, and some sort of vehicle preparation building or facility at the other. I'm sure if E.L. Moore were designing it, it would no doubt have the ability to launch rockets with much attendant smoke and fireworks :-)
I've also got this kit of Jupiter "C" rocket in my stash that I bought a couple of years ago that I'd want to work into the design. It's in 1/110 scale, which makes it a little small for HO (1/87) and much too big for big for N (1/160). If it was used with small diesel switchers and other small freight cars, I don't think it would look too out-of-place on an HO-scale micro-layout.
The rocket itself looks very easy to build, but the railcar gantry that straddles two parallel tracks looks much more interesting. I suspect with a little modification this could be turned into a functioning HO-scale car.
This is the first page of a four page article entitled "Lunar railroad you can model", by Alan Cerny and Bob Hayden, that appeared in the April 1978 issue of Model Railroader magazine. No doubt it was probably meant as something of an April Fool's joke, but it was a well thoughtout concept, complete with detailed drawings and 3/8-inch scale models of a locomotive and freight car, for a model of a railroad on the Moon. I was mightly impressed at the time this was published, and it was always inspirational in all things to do with space modeling. This was certainly in mind while building Moonscope and the Lunar Postal Vehicle. Yeah, not much here to do with model railroading other than I came across this issue of MR while moving and reorganizing things around the house. I think I spent more time thumbing through old issues of model building magazines than actually moving stuff :-)
