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Enter the Growlery: Dead Tree Edition

Post-derecho remains of a pine tree with a 23" diameter trunk as seen in 2026.
The internet tells me this tree could have been up to 115 years old!
That age is sobering.

'Sit down, my dear,' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'This you must know, is the Growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.'

'You must be here very seldom, sir,' said I.

'O, you don't know me!' he returned. 'When I am deceived or disappointed in - the wind, and it's Easterly, I take refuge here. The Growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!'

John Jarndyce explains the need for his Growlery in Bleak House to Esther Summerson (the 'said I' in the above); from Chapter VIII, Covering a Multitude of Sins in Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

Top piece of said pine tree that bounced off the roof my vehicle

On the May Victoria Day weekend in 2022 one of the most powerful storms in Canadian history swept through Ontario and Quebec, extending 1,000 km from Windsor in the west all the way to Quebec City in the east.

We were in a cabin in the bush when the storm blew through. We survived alright, but our vehicle didn't: the top 2 or 3m or so of a mature pine tree that was maybe 18 to 24 metres tall snapped off in the fury and bounced off the roof of our vehicle. Luckily only the top-most part of that log hit our vehicle, but that was enough to put a significant V-shaped dent in the roof, wreck the sun-roof, smash the windshield, and crush all the roof mounted electronics. I'll say this for Honda's CRV, it can take a punch as it was still drivable. Total repair bill: $10K. Luckily again, insurance covered it. 

Ignominiously being towed home as seen by me from the back window of the tow truck.
It was drivable, but the windshield was completely shattered and the cops said it would likely blow out at speed.
No, it didn't blow out while being towed, but why risk it? The interior was already covered in glass shards. 

Back in the fall of 2021 I had started to take a serious interest in trees and how to model them. Strangely, experiencing this event, and seeing all the smashed and destroyed trees, deepened my fascination with them. There was something about seeing how all these seemingly solid, eternal things, could all be destroyed in a matter of seconds struck a chord. Yes, yes, I have a couple of chainsaws, I've cut down trees and cleared brush, I've seen logging, but this was different: it was wild, violent, and pitiless.

Well, then spring turned into summer as it usually does :-)

I did a lot of sitting around that summer of 2022 because I had injured my left shoulder and it was taking a long time to heal. On the day in late July when the summer issue of Voie Libre arrived I was sitting under a tree in the backyard so I decided to read the issue as soon as the mailman dropped it off in the afternoon. This line in the editorial got me chuckling: "Issue 110 of Voie Libre is designed to be enjoyed sitting in a shady corner, with a few friends and a glass of cool wine. Just like a proper summer issue should be, packed with ideas for projects, or simply dreaming of projects, in case action is postponed until autumn." 

That's exactly what I was doing: drinking some cool red wine under the shade of a tree and thinking about layout projects now and then. 

And I got to thinking about how I hadn't seen a Canadian themed layout by a Canadian in that magazine even though I'd seen some excellent Canadian inspired ones by non-Canadians. They were a little on the stereotypical side in my view as there was something about them didn't properly say 'Canada' to me. That's when I decided as a bit of a lark to take some photos of the Loonar Module and send them off to the editor. One thing lead to another, and I was very happy to see the Loonar Module appear in the Spring 2023 issue of Voie Libre, and later in the Nov'23 issue of The Interchange, the OVAR's newsletter.

The very first construction photo of the Loonar Module from October 2021.
Positioning the island and track plan on 2' x 2' foam sheets.
At the time I didn't know this was classified as a micro-layout, albeit a large one.

The Loonar Module doesn't completely reflect the entirety of Canada either. No layout can as they are all reflections of how the builder sees and experiences the specifics of their piece of the country and translates that into a layout. The Loonar Module's terrain is based on that found in some of my favourite haunts in Hastings County, Ontario, which are dominated by tall trees, extensive wild forests, rocks, rocks, and more rocks, and lakes. Oh, and loons of course :-) The whole story about a narrow gauge experimental test railway run by the Ontario Department of Lands & Forests is completely fictional, but with lots of inspiration from the real government department. 

Final configuration of the Lost Ocean Line (dimensions in cms).
I must admit this was a favourite which the Way Out Layout has not yet surpassed even though it was meant to.

I consider The Loonar Module my first truly personal expression in layout form. The old Lost Ocean Line, and its descendant, the Way Out Layout, incorporated personal elements too, but they had a lot of outside stuff on them as well that steered the layouts towards being statements of style and whimsy. 

One of the first planning photos of the Centennial Experimental Farm layout from September 2022

Work on the Centennial Experimental Farm layout started in the fall of 2022 as my shoulder started to feel better. The layout is an homage to Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm, a place I would frequently visit on my bicycle, and incorporates many of the features I like about it. It turns out the farm did have a trolley line, so unlike the Loonar Module the rail aspect isn't completely fictional. I also consider this layout a personal statement. The Centennial Experimental Farm appeared in the January 2025 issue of Continental Modeller. 

Early design work on the Havelock Yard layout in July 2023

The Havelock Yard layout came about because early in July 2023 I became obsessed with building some sort of nostalgic tribute to the real Havelock yard that I've visited since the 1970s. The track plan is an inglenook with some display tracks added so I could show off a few models of freight cars I've seen there over the years. The layout is operable, but I haven't finished the scenery. Ok, strictly speaking, I haven't really started on the scenery. There's something too personal about this layout that gets triggered whenever I make a start on scenery that causes me to stop. Maybe one day I'll figure out what that is. So even though this layout is also a personal statement, it has some sort of negative charge associated with it.

After 4 days of part time work I had the infrastructure for the 3 pieces for my entry to
Le Grand Defi finished! A record of sorts for me.

I started my entry for LR Presse's 'Le Grand Defi' in late February 2024. Although it was for a challenge, I instantly had an idea for an entry based on VIA's Sudbury to White River line, complete with RDC. I considered this a personal response to the challenge, and not some stereotyped concoction for contest purposes. I was quite energized as I built this thing and finished in record time for me, completing all three pieces by late April 2024. I still have this extended diorama as I don't have the heart to cannibalize it for parts.

Starting to play around with objects to size the Mt. Lowe trolley.
Track planning came later when the trolley was finished.

I was on some sort of high at the end of April 2024 and immediately began work on the Mount Lowe Layout, which was a layout I've had in mind building since 2013 or so and now I finally had an idea on how to proceed. However, unlike the other personal layouts I didn't start with a track plan, but with building a vehicle inspired by Thaddeus Lowe's personal trolley. I needed it to help figure out the curve radii and grades on the layout. 

Ok, this layout isn't set in Ontario, but in a fictionalized version of California's San Gabriel Mountains. All I can say is I've hiked parts of the Mt. Lowe trail twice, have studied the railway for a long time, and have been charmed by it for a number of reasons. So, I'll claim a personal connection and this layout as a personal expression. If the world wasn't in the state it's in right now, I would return to finish hiking and exploring all the sections of the trail I haven't yet seen. The Mt. Lowe layout appeared in the Summer 2026 issue of Voie Libre.

Photos from the early planning days on:
Top: Community Garden | Middle: Tintin 2001 | Bottom: Inglenook Lake

Which brings me to today, almost exactly five years after beginning the Loonar Module in September 2021, which started me on the path I'm on now. Right now I have 3 little layouts on the go. I think the Community Garden layout will proceed and get finished. It'll be my first true micro-layout, and not one that pushes the outer size boundaries as have my others. It's both a personal statement on a place I quite like, and has a number of technical and modelling challenges I'm quite interested in working on. The Tintin 2001 layout might be stalled for awhile as I think about how to panel the monolith pit. Inglenook Lake will likely proceed as I think it's going to be a deeply personal layout, possibly with a more serious feeling to it than either the Loonar Module, the Centennial Experimental Farm, or Mount Lowe.

Yet another sketch for an MCM-7 Taronna (aka Toronto) layout.

The 500-lb gorilla lurking in the background is Taronna, my homage to the places and streetcars of Toronto that has yet to take off even though I've built many buildings for it, doodled many sketches, and acquired many streetcars. The Lost Ocean Line had some Toronto pieces incorporated; the ill-fated Alta Vista TC (for Transportation Commission) was a serious attempt at a Toronto layout, but it had so many design problems it was completely unworkable, and most importantly, was boring; and Taronna, the MCM-7 version of Toronto, is still just lines on paper. This layout continues to be parked. I have a Rapido TTC CLRV on pre-order to complete the streetcar fleet for this thing, so when it arrives in the far flung future I hope my thoughts will have settled on a way to proceed with the layout.

I think there are a few reasons why some layouts get finished and others stall out: 

Too much nostalgia is a killer. The Havelock Yard, Alta Vista TC, and even the yet to be started Taronna are soaked in personal nostalgia. Clearly, it doesn't sit well with me. I need to think more about Taronna if I'm going to actually build something that reflects whatever is going on in my brain about this layout.

No room for improvisation. I think at some level I perceived a lack of possibilities for improvisation in the Alta Vista TC and Havelock Yard that helped to kill the first and stall out the second. I explicitly consigned the Lost Ocean Line to the junk yard precisely for such a lack. I feel the improvisational lack creeping into Tintin 2001 too, and it certainly was a factor in stopping work on the N-scale homage layout to E. L. Moore's Elizabeth Valley RR. Well, that one was also stalled by the complicated wiring work involved. I'm not a fan of wiring and electrical work. I sometimes wonder if Mr. Moore had someone wire his layout for him because he noted in his writings a distaste for it, and the EVRR is relatively complicated wiring wise.

Trees. This one sounds strange even to me. It seems like if a layout has plenty of trees, interesting ones, not dull store bought ones, then it has a high chance of not stalling out during construction. Well, no stall outs so far.  As evidence I present the tree dense Loonar Module, the Centennial Experimental Farm, and Mt. Lowe. Look, both the soon to be tree dense Community Garden and Inglenook Lake layouts are on my construction tables while the tree barren Havelock Yard, Tintin 2001, and the EVRR, are off to the side in the workshop. Maybe this is a sign? I'm already thinking of trees and tree placement on Inglenook Lake based on my derecho and post-derecho observations of trees in Hastings County, and I haven't even finalized the track plan yet! 

Story. When it comes to story I think mine have to have one to be successful. Looking back on the story side of things I think I'm sort of a Johnny One Note in this regard. I have this one 'master story' in my head, and I all I do is write additions to it and variations on it. Every successful layout, even including the Lost Ocean Line and the Way Out Layout, are bits of that story. Well, except maybe Mt. Lowe, which is an outlier I need to think about more. Stalled layouts either have no story, don't derive from the 'master story', or are dominated by nostalgia. I'm starting to agree with Johannes Hofer that nostalgia is a deadly disease! 

More sketches for Taronna

I'm still trying to fully understand what that 'master story', that conglomeration of veiled personal statements in fictional form, is all about, but here are my thoughts so far. 

To get the best sense of where my mind is at regarding a ‘master story’ is to read the novellas I wrote and posted in instalments here at this blog. 

The first one was called Light Ray Blues. The inaugural instalment was posted on 6 September 2012 and can be found here. The last instalment was published on 13 August 2013. Most of the story was composed in my head on lunchtime walks away from the office. Strangely, this novella was the most popular series of posts at the blog until I started in on the long running E. L. Moore series.

The second novella was unimaginatively called Light Ray Blues, Series 2, and the first instalment was published on 6 June 2015. It can be found here. The series wrapped up on 30 October 2016 with instalment #20.

The third novella was called Abandonment and kicked off on 27 March 2020 after a long hiatus. This was a short series, and the 10th and final part was posted on 17 July 2022. Yes, over 2 years later! I was losing interest. At the end of the 10th post I include a post-script on abandonment in general and abandoning the series.

I tried to revive the series with a new novella called Tales of The Midnight Hobby Shop. The first instalment appeared on 2 September 2024. This series only ran for 3 instalments, but unlike the others it was left in an unfinished state. I left everything hanging in the 5 October 2024 episode. 

There were a few stand alone, single post stories too. One was written as an ersatz episode of The Twilight Zone where Ed Bryce visits E. L. Moore, another has Frank Madwood confronting three spirits in a Christmas Carol homage, and a third is a transcript from Madwood’s call-in radio show where he discusses the differences between model railroads and layouts with Professor Mary Ellesmere of the University of New Toronto’s Centre for Rail Guided Transportation.

I refer to all four novellas and stories in the series as Streetcar Noir, reflecting the dominance of streetcars in the series, and that they’re written in my attempt at a somewhat tongue-in-cheek hard-boiled noir style.

I wrote a little guide to the characters, places, and technology that appear in Streetcar Noir in the so-called ‘Understory’ that you can find at the bottom of the second instalment to Abandonment. 

I’m thinking the series ran out of steam with Abandonment and Tales of The Midnight Hobby Shop because of the pandemic, and that I was spending more and more time on layout dreaming, layout construction, and making things for those layouts. Maybe the ‘master story’ had formed enough in my mind by then that I could set it aside awhile and pursue it in model form.

Taronna thoughts continue to develop

The world those novellas take place in is a Canada in a parallel universe. Most of action takes place in a city called New Toronto, some of its outskirts, and nearby wilderness areas; however, the stories do move at times to Ottawa and British Columbia.

In this version of Canada electric powered rail guided transportation systems dominate the transportation landscape: electric streetcars, trams, trains, personal railcraft, along with some non-rail automobiles and trucks. There’s something called the Inter-Track system, which is vast network of many rail gauges and weights for all sorts of rail vehicles that runs through all cities, towns, villages, and wilderness areas. Ed Bryce has inherited a little trolley shed on a spur of one chunk of the Inter-Track System that runs through a forest area a few hundred kilometres from New Toronto. Telecommunications technologies aren’t that developed in this alternate world. A rudimentary internet-like system can be accessed through kiosks located near some public telephones.

The setting and tales are highly anachronistic. I mix technologies and styles from various eras according to my own likes and dislikes. There are handheld sources of cold fusion power, advanced electric-powered vehicles, and so on, rubbing shoulders with telephone booths and lunch counters and other accoutrements of our own world and its pre-internet predecessors. I freely take this approach with my layouts too. In my mind lots of eras exist in parallel so I have no problem expressing that. Maybe I believe that all time exists at once and its directedness is an illusion created by our physical being, but I’m probably wrong, but it sure often seems that way.

There aren’t any geopolitics directly discussed in the stories, but New Toronto is so-called because in its universe a big chunk of Toronto was destroyed in a brief continent-wide war and was rebuilt in the aftermath. Hints at what happened appear in some instalments. For example, in the first series Ed Bryce recalls how as part of an energy deal China built a cross-Canada mag-lev system. In the 3rd part of Light Ray Blues, Series 2, Frank Madwood explains how being injured in the war lead to his career in scale modelling, and the founding of his company, Model Investigations.

The characteristics of this long series of stories and the features of the layouts that didn’t stall out seem to be cut from the same cloth. Even the Mt. Lowe layout sort of fits given its highly anachronistic style, with its continuation of the railway into something approximating our era, much like the Loonar Module and Experimental Farm do. Story fragments pop up in construction posts from time-to-time, and upon re-reading some of them, they could easily form the basis of new novella instalments in the world of Streetcar Noir. Here’s a few: one, two, three, four.  On the other hand, the stalled layouts seem to all fall outside the concepts established in Streetcar Noir. Maybe one reason the successful layouts are successful is because they follow a prototype: the world of the ‘master story’, the Streetcar Noir story?

Hmm. This lengthy investigation may point to ways to pull the stalled layouts out of limbo. I’ll let you know. Thanks for hanging in until the end. I had no idea where contemplation of a tree stump would take me :-)

I returned to the scene this year to slice off the top of the stump for a layout base.
My chainsaw proved to be no match for the mighty stump :-(
(Also, the terrain was a bit too challenging for me chain saw wielding-wise.)

Mount Lowe Micro-Layout in Voie Libre #126!

The Mount Lowe Railway is featured in the latest issue of Voie Libre, #126, July / August / September 2026. I've only seen what you see over there on the left, which I saw in an ad that popped into my Inbox today. I submitted 46 photos - photos not seen here ! - so I'm curious as to which ones appear. I anxiously await its arrival in my mailbox! 

As they say on tv: Don't delay, get yours today! Quantities are limited! French and English editions are available!

Ok, so much for shameless self promotion. For penance it looks like the ! key on my keyboard may need repair :-(

A Short Biography of Thaddeus Lowe via the BBC

Here's the link to the podcast.

As part of their A History of the United States in 100 Objects podcast series the BBC features the biography of Thaddeus Lowe - yes, that Thaddeus Lowe, of Mount Lowe Railway fame - in episode 4. His story begins at the start of the American Civil War, continues on through the creation of the Mount Lowe Railway, and ends with Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, orbiting the Moon. Give it a listen. You won't be disappointed.

Mid-Century Basement*

Popular Mechanics, Dec '54; Model Railroad With Sound Effects

"... Tolcua Lines, the big central system that is located in the basement of Chet Tayloe's home in North Hollywood, Calif.

To provide the space he needed for the joint railroad system Tayloe had to remove 60 truck loads of dirt from under his home, then build new foundations to support the house. The model layout is 65 feet long and 25 feet wide and there is a sunken way along its center from which all parts of the layout may be reached. The system is actually two systems in one, there being some 1200 feet of "O" gauge (1/4 inch to the foot) and 800 feet of "O" narrow-gauge track.

Two months ago the final "mile" of narrow-gauge track was completed and the occasion was fittingly noted by a "golden spike" ceremony attended by model railroaders of the neighborhood, including Dick Wessel, television star who helped build some of the background scenery, and by A. D. Jack Scott, paint-store manager who installed some of the narrow-gauge trackage."

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* Digressions

Awhile back Vince alerted me to this old Popular Mechanics article. It's a fantastic model railroad, but I must admit I was most taken by the layout illustration at the end of the story done in classic mid-century modern style. I love that style of illustration, and this picture in Popular Mechanics reminded me of the Bill Baron illustration I stumbled across in 2020.

I was surprised to read in the article about the attendance of actor Dick Wessel at the Golden Spike ceremony, and that he was referred to as a model railroader. Although I couldn't find mentions of any layouts by Mr. Wessel in Model Railroader magazine, I did find two full length articles about the Tolcua Lines: A visit to Tolcua, Aug '65; 45 years of the Toluca Lines, Mar '73.

Interestingly Chet Tayloe has a 2-page article in the Feb '73 issue about a 1/4" scale model he created of the Echo Mountain cable incline on the Mt. Lowe railway. The article notes: "Two of the passengers [JDL: of the real cable incline railway] in the 1920s were Chet Tayloe and his bride on their honeymoon."

The Mount Lowe Railway Alcove

The stand rotates so all faces can be made visible.

Just in time for Christmas

The Mt. Lowe layout emerges from the workshop for a Christmas appearance. Here's what it looked like around this time last year.

Of Painted Backdrops, Mt. Lowe, and E. L. Moore

One of the backdrops hanging from the curtain rod support ready for a photo shoot.

I've been working on painting two backdrops to be used when shooting Mt. Lowe layout glamour shots. They're fairly big things: 30" x 40" illustration boards painted with artist's acrylics. 

I haven't done these sorts of paintings before and was a little reticent about getting started. At first I thought maybe I should get a couple enlargements made of photos I took on the Mt. Lowe trail to use as backdrops, but gave up on that because they wouldn't look right. They'd be 'photo realistic' and the layout would be 'craft realistic'. The two forms of realism wouldn't go together.

I finally realized that even if my backdrop paintings were rough-and-ready things it didn't matter too much because in any given photo not much of the background would be visible. There'd just be hints of sky and distant mountains. Once I realized this I didn't have any problem diving in and having a go.

The second backdrop.

The skies are just loose mixes of Liquitex cobalt blue and titanium white acrylic tube paints. For the mountain profiles I first troweled on some Golden brand Fiber Paste to give them some texture as I didn't think I could create convincing textures with paint alone. Once the paste was hardened I painted on colours I used on the layout's mountains. When that was dry I applied some thin washes of cobalt blue to create a little aerial perspective.

Backdrop painting E. L. Moore used for his Canal Boats article.

This work on backdrops got me thinking about the backdrop work E. L. Moore did for his photo setups, especially the one I think he used for his unpublished Canal Boats article. I still don't know if he painted this one or any of the others he used over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if he did, but I don't have any supporting evidence.

A Gemini colourization of the Canal Boats backdrop painting.

Be that as it may, I started to wonder what that Canal Boats backdrop painting would look like colourized. I asked Gemini to colour it, and that image up there is what it produced. It's quite credible, and Gemini seems to have done a little restoration to the image as well.

Looking through E. L. Moore's photos it looks like he used a number of painted backdrops over the years. I'm curious to see if Gemini could strip out the foreground images, fill in missing backdrop imagery from the stripped areas, and colourize the result to create pictures of what those backdrops might have looked like. An interesting project for another time.

Test photo for glamour shots

A test shot for composition with the partially completed backdrop

I've been working on painting a backdrop for when I take glamour shots of the layout. This is the first time I've tried my hand at backdrop painting. I'm using acrylics on a piece of 30" x 40" illustration board.

Normally when playing with this layout it would be set up opposite the couch in the family room so there wouldn't be any backdrop present. This is purely so I can take photos of scenes I have in my mind.

Early sky layers

I see a lot of things to tune-up in the photo, but I'm liking the direction things are heading. I have a vision of the adventure I'd like to see in these photos, and I'm getting more positive that I'll be able to realize it.

A base for the Mt. Lowe layout

The layout on the base mock-up.

Before starting on shooting layout glamour photos I thought I'd finish building the mockup for the base. Who knows, maybe this will become more than a mockup and be the actual base.

Trefoil base plates are rough cut with a Japanese handsaw.

When I set aside base construction last year I had the three tubes cut out and covered with that wood grain contact paper for a 70s Radio Shack look. The trefoil tube arrangement supported the layout quite well.

Marking the location of the bearing on a foam plate.

Sometime last year Galen suggested mounting the layout on some sort of bearing so it could be turned around for better viewing. I was intrigued by that idea, but I had to resolve a few problems before it became viable. First was the layout had a power cord sticking out of it for plugging into a controller. If it were to rotate, the layout couldn't have any external power or control cables coming out of it. In keeping with the 70s vibe I decided to build in a battery powered controller to solve that problem. With the benefit of hindsight I'd probably make use of an external wireless controller in future projects. 

Plate edges were shaped with a rasp and smoothed with a sanding block

Then there was finding a suitable turntable bearing. The one I eventually settled on is a bit of overkill as it's rated to support a 750 lb load (!), but it cost less than $30 and had the diameter I was looking for, so the decision was easy.

Exposed portions of the base plates are painted with black acrylic.

For awhile I thought I'd use plywood or chipboard for the base's trefoils, but 1" thick foam sheets that are used for house insulation won out. The load to be supported is minimal (I should weigh the layout, but I'll simply comment that it is "quite light" ) and this material is good enough for supporting light loads like those often encountered with micro-layouts. It's easy to work with too. All I ever use is a small handsaw for rough cutting, a rasp for final shaping, and a small sponge sanding block for smoothing edges.

Transfer tape was used to bond the turntable bearing to the foam plates.

Finally, in the mockup spirit, I decided to bond the bearing to the foam trefoils with transfer tape. The tape provides a surprisingly strong bond. I've used it extensively in layout construction, so I thought I'd use it here too to make construction quick and easy.

Top and bottom plates have been bonded to the turntable bearing.

The bottom of the base panel that rests on the floor has a some anti-slip material bonded to it. Again, I used transfer tape for this. The part I haven't figured out is how to attach the layout to the tubes. If someone bumps the layout, it could take a heartbreaking tumble. Of course, if the layout were attached to the tubes the whole thing could still be tipped over because it's rather top heavy. I might need to add some weight inside those tubes to try to make that harder to do. Well, that's what experiments and mockups are for: finding out this sort of stuff. 

Anti-slip material is bonded to the bottom of the base

Well, that's basically it for construction. The tubes were stood on the base and temporarily held in place with good, old duct tape. Here's a video of me 'taking the base out for a spin':

I see a few things that need to be fixed, so it's back to the workshop for me.

Done

Friday afternoon, while I was in the workshop installing the final trolley wire support arm, I had a feeling come over me that the layout was now done. Done in the sense that all the things I wanted to appear on the layout were now in place, the trolley ran, and the layout could be shown to civilians in the right setting. 

The old saying that a layout is never really done I can see applying here even though I've declared the layout done. There'll still be primping, tuning the details here and there, and maybe even adding some minor ones. And there's the stand that needs finishing, but it's the stand.

So, it's done.

Genesis of a Micro-Layout

This layout has been a long time in the making. I first had the idea of building something inspired by the Mt. Lowe railway back in 2014 after a stay in Pasadena. However, I had no idea how to proceed.

In the spring of 2015 we visited the Los Angeles area again and I was able to hike a portion of the Mt. Lowe trail in the San Gabriel mountains which runs along the old roadbed of the Mt. Lowe railway. Bad weather and scheduling constraints prevented me from hiking the entire route.

Throughout 2015 and 2016 I toyed with the idea of building a Mt. Lowe inspired layout in N-scale. Strangely enough as a test piece for the layout I built a model of the railway's observatory. Nothing else came of that layout idea.

It wasn't until January 2020, just before the pandemic, that I was able to return to Mt. Lowe and resume hiking the trail. Again, I was only able to hike part as ice and snow made the trail a bit too risky for me. Near the end of that trip I caught what we now know as covid-19, but at the time no one knew exactly what it was. I had a miserable flight home and from news reports we watched I expected to be quarantined when we landed in Montreal. That didn't happen, but I was so sick I stayed home for about three weeks.

In the fall of 2023 after reading a few interesting pieces by Bill Schopp on trefoil shaped layouts in some old Railroad Model Craftsman magazines a light went on in my head and I finally had an idea on how to build a layout that captured what I wanted to express, and wouldn't take years and years to construct. By this time I had also dabbled with micro-layouts for a few years. My experiences with the Loonar Module and the Centennial Experimental Farm had opened my eyes to other forms and approaches that could allow me to express things I previously found inexpressible.

Instead of starting with an observatory I wised up and started the layout by building a trolley inspired by Thaddeus Lowe's personal trolley. The scale was S and the gauge 9 mm. It took a lot of thinking before I settled on that scale and gauge. Things like how I could build a viable trolley from commercial drive units, support tight curves on the layout, deal with steep grades, availability of figures and scenic accessories, provide adequate clearances, and so forth factored into the decision. By starting with the trolley this gave me a vehicle to test grades and curves to see how steep they could be on the layout, and assess what sort of clearances and dimensions I'd need. This was very important, so much so that I'm thinking of writing a future post on general trefoil layout design principles and the necessity of testing designs with rolling stock.

In June 2024 I finally made a serious start on the layout. By the end of June the track was installed and the trolley could run along it. And, you may not believe it, but the area of the layout's footprint is 4 square feet, the upper limit on micro-layout size. 

Building up the terrain was a long process. The big new technique I learned on this project was casting rock molds from latex and later using them to create the layout's rocky terrain. The mountains' basic form though was built up from styrofoam sheets. By August 2024 the final shapes were starting to emerge; by September the shapes were defined enough to begin solidifying the mountain structure and do final shaping with spray foam.

October 2024 was more-or-less dedicated to surfacing the mountain with Cel-U-Clay, making use of the latex rock molds. Creating the mountain surfaces was a big job and continued well into December. I kept working on the mountains into January of this year, but by this point I was wrestling with painting the mountains as shaping them was wrapping up.

You know, for a guy who considers himself a structures guy, I didn't start building structures until February. I started with the station at Poppyfield Flats because it seemed the simplest to me, and then went on to build the lookout at Inspiration Point, and then what I considered the most difficult structure, the Circular Bridge. The last structure, the Observatory, was almost an after thought to help sort out a design problem, unlike the observatory on the ill-conceived N-scale layout which was the first thing I built. 

Amongst all the structure building there was a considerable amount of tree 'manufacturing'. 

Later, much, much later, I built a simple passenger car for the trolley to pull. 

Interspersed amongst all these significant projects was a lot of detail work. There was construction and installation of trolley wire support poles and arms, trolley wire installation, tree installation, layering on of ground cover and bushes, and lots of odds-and-ends work that is too persnickety to write about.

Again, much later during construction, in August, I changed my mind on how the layout should be powered and controlled. At first I merely provided a power jack for an external controller to plug into, but came to think the controller's power cord would inhibit play. I then scratchbuilt a battery-powered controller into the side of the layout so it would have stand-alone power and control. On a future project maybe utilizing some sort of wireless handheld controller would be better.

Now, all this may make it sound like I had a master plan right from the get-go and simply followed it to the end without any hiccups. I did have plans at the beginning. I wouldn't start a project like this without them, but once I got started there were lots of detours, changes of mind, conundrums that left me stumped for awhile, times when I just stared at the layout and thought about its design, mistakes, fumbles, and realizations about things I'd do different next time. Many of them are documented in the posts that can be found stamped with the Mt. Lowe tag. Some I'll take to the grave :-)

What's Next

Taking photographs to capture what's in my mind's eye is on the horizon and could last for a few months. Then there's the lead up to Christmas. I want the layout to be looking and behaving its best so I can show it off during the holiday season.

The Future

?

Dante's Staircase

Where once stood a proper stairway and winch,

now only remnant remains, 

against which a measly ladder leans, 

that leads to a string of metal steps and

a drooping chain handrail. 

Ascent is not for the faint of heart.

Planning discussion while awaiting the trolley

Crossing the Circular Bridge

Testing continues now that a lot of the scenic work is wrapping up. I need to give the track and trolley chassis a good cleaning. There's a little bit of stuttering and hesitation during the loop. So far so good though.

Six Seconds in the Mountains

Shot during a test run of the trolley and passenger trailer. I've removed the trolley's overhead pickup pole on this run. The trolley is just leaving the Circular Bridge and is heading for the stop at Inspiration Point.

27 Trees

Layout cranked up to nearly the ceiling.

When I work on my little layouts I do so at a standing desk that I've put on wheels, equipped with a 2' x 4' hardboard top, and has a crank so I can move that surface up and down. It comes in quite handy when it's time to add scenery as I can crank the top surface up and down as well as turn the whole thing to various angles since it's on wheels. This allows me to get a variety of views while I'm adding things.

Over the last few weeks I've been adding trees to fill out the scenes. There're 27 in total. Funny thing is back in May I thought I had made too many trees! Turns out I was right and wrong. I had a few too many tall ones and not enough small ones, so I had to make some little trees to balance out the scenes.

The other side.

These days I'm adding rock debris and shrubbery. At one time I thought I would put in the effort to accurately replicate chaparral found in the region, but I've given up on that and decided to keep with the more simplified and somewhat abstract look I've started with the trees. I'm focusing on size, placement, and colour instead of fidelity to 'prototype'. 

Adding shrubs and other foliage is taking a surprisingly long time. Ok, I'm the problem because as usual my method is to add a bit, have a look, add a little more, take a break, look again, and so on - my standard operating procedure on this layout. So, you can see why it's a long process :-)