Did E. L. Moore read this ship modelling book? or Adventures in 21st century book hunting

2003 Dover reprint of 1942 original published by W. W. Norton

“I had put off this harbor-tugboat project for well over a year feeling that my hitch as a sailor long years ago did little to fit me for the role of shipbuilder. Then, later when I had begun some research on the subject, a chance buy of a marked down copy of a book on ship models, which seemed at the moment a good omen, added almost nothing to my scanty knowledge. From it, I did learn though, in a discussion of appropriate woods, that no serious modeler ever considers balsa.”

So notes E. L. Moore in the introductory paragraph to part 1 of the add a Harbor to your Pike series that ran in the January and February 1968 issues of Railroad Model Craftsman. This is the series where he builds the tug boats Taurus (from a kit) and John McKeon (scratchbuilt based on the Taurus), a barge, and a sail loft.

Model of the S.S. Prince Edward Island at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. She was a ferry that could carry 12 railway cars.

For long years I’ve wondered about the title of that ship modelling book. Mr. Moore never mentions it, and the only thing he says about the book, other than it being an omen, was that its author didn’t think balsa wood was a suitable modelling material. It’s a clue, admittedly a thin one, but still a clue. I’ve worked with less. 

I admire traditional ship modelling and consider it something of the apex of the model builder’s art. It’s beyond my abilities, but I admire it nevertheless. So, whenever there are ship models to be seen I like to have a look.

Information card associated with the model

Last year when we visited Halifax I had the opportunity to visit the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. It’s a fascinating place, and has an interesting collection of both full-size and model boats. I’d say the model boat display is better than the Thomson collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

I think it's 1/4" scale given the size of those passenger cars.

Both museums have excellent models, but I give the Halifax collection bonus points for having what they call a ‘Visible Storage’ area right beside the main collection. This is where they have stashed in glass fronted cabinets unfinished models, models not currently on display, nautical odds-and-ends, and other memorabilia related to the main model collection that are easily accessible to museum browsers. 

Some cabinets in the Visible Storage area

Maybe this was just a way to cheap out on offsite storage, but being a model maker myself, I much appreciated this ‘behind-the-scenes’ window into the museum's collection.

A typical cabinet in the Visible Storage area

I also like that the museum notes on cards strategically placed throughout the exhibit area information about the model builders whose work they have on display. Those model makers don’t remain anonymous. and the cards give some background on their lives as craftsmen.

Some issues of Model Ship Builder from 1982. Bought at BMV

Well, fast forward a year or so and I’m wandering around BMV and see copies of an old magazine called Model Ship Builder. I’d never heard of this magazine and decided to buy a few issues.

Each issue has an interview with an expert model shipbuilder. I found the one in the September / October 1982 issue with Bruce Hoff interesting, and especially the comments on how he got inspired to start ship modelling:

"It all started sixteen years ago on a Sunday afternoon at the Winnetka Public Library. Bruce was looking for something to read and picked up V. R. Grimwood's American Ship Models and How to Build Them. "This is a perfectly remarkable book. It contains just about everything anyone really needs to know about building solid hull ship models, and I was very lucky to have stumbled across it as a foundation book.""

So, if the interview was conducted in 1982, sixteen years prior would land us in 1966. E. L. Moore had his article published in 1968, and he submitted the typescript to RMC on 27 October 1967, soon after finishing the project, so it's conceivable he stumbled across his book in '67 or '66. Now, these mid-1960s dates are all just coincidence, but for me, they got me thinking again about the title of the book Mr. Moore leafed through. 

A few paragraphs later Hoff mentions that Grimwood's book was one of the most important books he'd owned as a ship modeller. I later learned it's considered a classic in the field, so that clinched it, I had to find a copy.

On the trip we also were lucky to see the Bluenose II in Lunenburg. When we arrived some of the young, 20-something crew were discussing the musical merits of Miles Davis through the ages as they went about their chores!

Well, this is the 21st century and there isn't a huge used bookstore a short walk from my house, the public library isn't as well stocked as it used to be, and BMV is 450km from my desk, so I called the internet into action. I couldn't find a 1942 edition, but I did find a Dover reprint.

When it arrived I skipped all the niceties and immediately looked for a section on woods. There is one, and I wasn't disappointed:

"Wood is the indispensable material. A different variety grows to fit almost any need. Avoid woods that are fuzzy in texture. The novice dotes on balsa because of its ease in working. For the modelmaker it may have its uses, but I have never found them. Here is a list of woods generally used to advantage by the modelmaker."

Just to emphasize the dismissal, balsa wood doesn't appear in the list.

Does this prove this is the book? Of course not, but what it does is make it a candidate. It's a fairly famous work in its field, so that helps it stick around, even into the 1960s (a print history would help here), and it does scold about the use of balsa (but, many experienced modellers do as well), so it's a candidate. Maybe one day I'll figure out the title of the book E. L. Moore consulted, but until then I'm going to enjoy this one. It's a great find.

Well, any sustained thought on boats always leads to this song popping into my head at some point, so I'll leave you with it.

Bristol board and card and paper and balsa and watercolour

After riding The Ocean to Halifax last year I toyed with the idea of building a model onboard if I were ever to take that trip again. I thought I'd build a small structure using a few simple tools, and materials that weren't messy, toxic, or had a bad smell. Classic cardboard and balsa construction came to mind. The idea was I'd start and finish the build in the time it took the train to go from Montréal to Halifax. Upon arrival I'd box up the model and mail it home before beginning my Nova Scotia travels. 

Well, I'm unlikely to ever ride that train again, but I kept wondering if such a build were possible: a simple model, built with simple materials and tools, taking no longer than 22 hours - well, 25 if you include delays :-)

The FireHouse Iron Works as seen in May 2024, Whycocomagh, Cape Breton Island

During the trip an old, somewhat dilapidated, and repurposed firehouse located in the town of Whycocomagh on Cape Breton Island caught my eye. I quite liked the size and shape of the building, so I thought this would be the one I'd try for a 22 hour classic card build. 

Well, I might as well fess up right from the get-go: although it was a fun project in classic style, it took much longer to build than I thought. Ok, it didn't take 22 hours to build, probably only a handful of hours if you add up all the dots and blots of time, but they were sprinkled over a period longer than 22 hours. There was time waiting for glue to dry, waiting for paint to dry, and my usual humming-and-hawing about how to proceed with certain parts of the build. It all adds up. This was further complicated by the fact that there are basically three little buildings in this project, making it a more time consuming project than I had thought because of the number of parts to be made. And on the train I would have been diverted by sleeping, eating, and general lolling about and gawking out the windows for long stretches. I think a more feasible 22 hour project would be a single box structure with just four walls and a roof - maybe something like Marmora station.

As you can see I made a few changes to the building's look. All the fine detailing is simplified, or simply left off. I wasn't much interested in the prototype's distressed look, so I changed it to something a little cleaner, brighter, and more colourful with basically little to no weathering. Instead I wanted to make use of watercolour's ability to create flowing, variegated colour to add interest to the surfaces. Watercolour paints would also be easy to use on a train as there's little fuss or muss with preparation and clean-up.

I figured if I was to build this on the train I'd have to had drawn the plans before departure. You may recall I created drawings for this project, as well as few others, over the Christmas holidays and that lead to a sharpener crisis :-)  I'd say a third of the work on this project was associated with figuring out the elevations from my reference photos. I wouldn't want to do that on a train with time pressures looming.

Using the plans, the walls for all three buildings were drawn out in contiguous strips on pieces of bristol board. I used 4-ply, 500 series Strathmore bristol board that I bought a few years ago at an art supply in Pasadena. You may recall I also used it for Thrifty's and the Art Metropole projects. 

Once the walls were laid out I scored in the board separations with a scribing tool. This gives a little three-dimensionality to the surfaces and helps keep the individual siding boards from being lost as they're painted.

Painting these wall strips is easy. I can simply mix up some paint, stroke on some loose washes, and in a minute or two the painting is done for all a building's walls.

One way to build up the wall strips into boxes is to scribe the corners and then fold. You may recall I used that technique on Cal's Cabbage Company. I didn't use it here as the bristol board is considerably thicker, and I'm not good at angling out the inner bends to get a smooth corner. Instead, I cut each strip into individual walls and assembled them with balsa strips to reinforce the corners - similar to the Mike Gill approach. 

Even though the interior is a hodgepodge of leftover balsa strips, it's surprisingly strong. I used Weld Bond on all joints, and to attach the balsa. After a few days though I noticed a little concavity with some walls and added a few cross-braces before gluing on the roofs. 

You can see the additional cross-braces in the above photo. 

I consider getting the walls stood up to be a construction milestone. At this point the pieces start to look like a building. 

And the walls are looking pretty square, so there's some extra happiness to be had at this point.

So, I sat back and basked in square wall glory for a bit. Next up was framing the windows, doors and corners, which I find to be a little tedious when done as a marathon, but not unpleasant in small doses. Meaning, being somewhat compelled to frame everything in one go on a train could try my patience. 

All the framing was made from strips of 3x5 card with 3M transfer tape applied to the back. This meant the frames would instantly stick to the walls when applied, which sped up the building process a bit.

Doors were cut from scraps of the 4-ply bristol board and painted with watercolours. Doorknobs were made from dressmaker's straight pins.

Glass for the windows was cut from the clear plastic lid from a box of Christmas chocolates I had stashed away for just such a job. Again, Weld Bond was used to glue the 'glass' in place.

The metal roof panels were made by embossing the pattern from a piece of corrugated plastic onto scraps of printer paper - this is similar to the good, old paper metal technique. I used a toothpick as an embossing tool. These pieces were bonded with 3M transfer tape to roof panels cut from the 4-ply bristol board, and then painted with a loose mix of Paynes Grey and Raw Umber watercolours. No attempt was made at realism regarding colour. I just wanted something that looked interesting.

You might ask, why not just use the piece of corrugated plastic? The answer is I wanted to keep the roof stylistically similar to the walls. That is, I wanted a rather flat 3-D surface with a papery finish. The plastic would be too strongly 3-D, and watercolour couldn't be used on it.

And that is that.

So, would I build something similar in one of these overnight compartments on the Ocean (there's a fold-down table somewhere in that pile of stuff) ? Maybe, if it was a simpler project. 

But, it also depends on the smoothness of the ride. I don't think it's up to 1972 Mercury Marquis Brougham standards :-)

First visit to Havelock yard this year - no Space Hopper :-)

I closely scrutinized the ballast for Space Hopper evidence even though I didn't have my tinfoil hat or Geiger counter with me :-) No dice, but I made some important colour observations for ballasting the Havelock yard inspired micro layout.

And I picked up a trepass-free sample so I could get the colours right.

I'm getting interested in the Havelock yard micro again since I found a suitable locomotive for it at Maritime Hobbies & Crafts while we were in Halifax.

It's a DC powered Bachmann Alco S-2. It's a used item, but runs very well, and the body is in excellent shape. I need to try my hand at weathering and detail painting on this little thing. I've never seen one of these at Havelock yard in all the years I've visited, but it's in CP colours, so it thematically fits in, and also as important, it's small and fits in very well size-wise with the other items on the little layout.

MH&C say they're the oldest hobby shop in Canada, what with being established in 1946. That does make them considerably older than my regular hobby store, Ottawa's Hobby House, which had its 70th anniversary last September. The guys at MH&C were very friendly and helpful, and even knew a lot about Hobby House! 

Rooms with a view on VIA Rail's The Ocean train

 

When we went to Nova Scotia we took VIA Rail's The Ocean. The service runs from Montréal to Halifax and takes 22 hours. For us, living in Ottawa as we do, the trip took a bit longer than that once you account for the train trip from Ottawa to Montréal, a couple hours or so of layover in Montréal before The Ocean's 7pm departure, and around 3 hours of delays on The Ocean part of the trip. I can't complain though because it was a great experience.

We booked a cabin in one of the sleeper cars. They're small, but comfortable for two. There're two seats, two fold down bunks, a fold down table, cubby holes for storage, and a toilet room - it's hidden behind the open door to the corridor in this photo.

Speaking of corridors, here it is. There were a few sleeper cars in the train. Maybe 4 or 5, I lost count walking through them all. A crew member told us the train was 19 cars long.

As well as the chair and sleeper cars there was a dining car, which if you're staying in a sleeper, eating here is included in your ticket. This meant dinner on the night out, and breakfast and lunch the next day. I think my Uncle Bill would have enjoyed this.

Contrary to the image on the menu, there isn't a dome top observation car - the so-called 'Park' car - attached to this train. According to Wikipedia and the crew VIA got rid of it a couple years ago due to some operational problem with no longer having access to track they needed to turn the train around. I can appreciate the technical issues, but look, if there is anyone from VIA reading this, you really need to figure out how to bring that car back. The views from this train are one of its draws, so I suspect you're losing out by not having it. Think about this: it only took us 1 hour and 25 minutes to fly on Porter airlines on the return trip from Halifax to Ottawa, so it isn't travel time that attracts the long distance traveller. 

Ok, so enough grousing :-) The dining car has a lounge car attached to either end. One has an operating canteen and the canteen in the other car is closed. That photo up there is of the one with the closed canteen.

Here's that same lounge car, but looking towards the other end. It turns out Wifi seems to be only available in these two cars. It might be available in the chair cars, but it certainly didn't work in the sleepers. 

And here we are in the second lounge car during the night leg after I had had a couple of 'beverages' from the canteen :-)

The most unusual car had to be this 'Transition' car. Basically it's used to couple dissimilar cars. For such a prosaic car it's very nicely appointed with wall-to-wall carpeting and framed pictures on the walls.

I didn't get any photos of the train when we got in to Halifax station as it was late and cold and we were focused on getting to our hotel. But, the next morning I got that shot of the train in Halifax awaiting its return to Montréal.

Would I do it again? Probably not, but I had to do it once and enjoyed it very much. Although, VIA Rail, if you're listening, I'd be glad to return and do a 22+ hour build of some sort of railroad model streamed on YouTube live from The Ocean, with proper sponsorship of course :-)

Hydrofoil train

Left: Model of the hydrofoil train | Right: Model of Comox torpedo

Last week we were in Nova Scotia and had the opportunity to visit the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site. One of the many surprising things I learned while there was that Bell and his collaborators did extensive work developing hydrofoil vehicles. One collaborator, Casey Baldwin, came up with the idea of a hydrofoil train. I'll let the card accompanying the model take it from here:

I could have spent much more than a few hours at the museum. Hopefully I'll get back there someday.