A problem in composition

The mountain top observatory

As I was adding trees to the layout I came to realize that the sight lines they formed drew the viewer’s eye up to the mountain top, but upon arriving, there was nothing there to see. I couldn’t just add another tree or two, that would be rather anti-climatic. 

Sight lines lead to nothing to see at the mountain top

I gave this compositional problem some thought and decided to add a small observatory on the mountain top somewhere near where the tree sight lines met. The Mt. Lowe Railway had a large observatory along its right-of-way, so I thought some sort of observatory was a good addition: it solved a compositional problem, and introduced a feature I admired from the prototype. 

I built a close approximation in N-scale to the actual Mt. Lowe Observatory many years ago. At that time I was still in the dreaming stage about what a Mt. Lowe inspired layout would be. Back then I thought I’d land on N-scale, so, being intrigued by the observatory, I went ahead and built one.

I played with the idea of incorporating the N-scale one on this layout as part of some sort of forced perspective scheme, but the upshot was N scale was too small, and even HO seemed difficult to adopt. Eventually I figured I’d build an observatory in S similar in size and proportion to one of the small ones on the grounds of Ottawa’s Experimental Farm, but in Mt. Lowe style.

The Photo Equatorial Building at the Experimental Farm

The Farm ones are built from stone, but I thought something inspired by them in the Mt. Lowe white wood theme would be possible. At one time I was going to place one of these small observatories on the Centennial Experimental Farm layout, but after producing some HO scale drawings I thought they’d be too small and fiddly to build. In S scale though, a small observatory was quite doable.

The building was designed around the roof from the N-scale Mt. Lowe observatory

Composition in general is a topic I’ve been thinking quite a lot about lately along with light & shadow, impressionism, structure & construction, and streetcar potential. I’m considering exploring these topics here at the blog as they relate to my work. They’re becoming more important to me, and writing about them will help me understand them better.

Well, that’s for the future, let’s get back to the observatory.

I decided to build the S-scale observatory around the roof of the old N-scale one. In N, the roof fitted over a large telescope room, but in S it would cover a smaller structure whose size was more inline with the other structures on the layout. So, the old roof established the width of the building. The height was decided on by some trial-and-error until I settled on a dimension that looked right and didn't overshadow the other structures.

The 8 walls are laid out in a single, contiguous strip of Bristol board.

The building is quite simple as far as construction goes. The only slightly tricky part is laying out the walls so that the resulting octagonal footprint will allow the roof to sit on top. 

The building's 8 walls were laid out in a contiguous strip on a piece of Bristol board (much like was done with Cal's Cabbage Co.) in accordance with this formula:

wall width = radius of the roof dome / 1.307

For this model the radius of the roof dome is 1-1/4 inches, and after a little arithmetical handspring, the wall width works out to be 24.3 mm.

I should also note that the door opening is a scale 3' x 7', and the foundation is 3' tall. 

The floor was drawn on a scrap of Bristol board using a grade school compass trick.

The other possibly difficult piece is the floor, which was drawn on a piece of Bristol board using a compass trick I learned in grade school.

The wall strip was cut out and the wall divisions were scored with the back edge of an X-acto knife for folding. Along the inside top edge of the foundation, along the wall strip, some thick cardboard pieces were stuck in place to support the floor. The wall strip was then wrapped around the floor.

I should note I used 3M Transfer Tape for all 'gluing' as it's a dry method and doesn't distort the card as the pieces are being put together. It also bonds instantly so when putting together a slightly tricky structure like this one there's no fumbling around getting the structure together due to bonds that haven't set up. 

The wall wrapper gap is fixed by gluing a strip of paper along the inside.

Look at that gap :-( So, even after some careful work to get the dimensions right I still wound up with a small gap at the wall wrapper joint. It's likely due to approximation errors when laying out the wall strip and floor, not properly accounting for the thickness of the card, and 'squeezed' cardboard at the folds that distorted the pieces a little.

Regardless, it was easily corrected. I simply added a paper strip to close the gap. When it came time to panel the wall exteriors I adjusted the dimensions of the two walls bordering the gap by about 1mm. Once they were in place, and with trim glued on, the structure looks perfect and no gap is noticeable. I guess my advice here is: small errors are usually easily corrected and can be made to disappear. 

A thick cardboard stiffener was added to the inside upper edge.

The last step in building the underlying structure is to add a stiffener to the inside top. This provides support for the roof and turns the rather floppy telescope room into a rigid structure. The stiffener is cut from a piece of cardboard and is dimensioned to allow the roof to set easily on top.

From here on the remaining work is mainly decorative. 

Although the structural core is cardboard and paper, the exterior is styrene.

Textured styrene sheets were transfer taped to the cardboard core.

I used textured styrene sheets bonded to the exterior with transfer tape. That's another good use for this tape: sticking together dissimilar materials, especially card stock and styrene.

The foundation is surfaced with the same rocky sheet material I used on the structure at Inspiration Point to produce a family look between the two buildings. When it came to painting, I also painted this one to match the other.

The walls are covered with Evergreen Scale Models #2050 V-Groove.

Trim is strip styrene.

Wall trim is a mixture of 0.020"x0.060" and 0.020"x0.080" styrene strip stock glued to the panels with styrene glue.

The door is just a laminate of two pieces of 0.020" thick styrene scraps. Later a bent wire was added to simulate a door handle. 

Top edge cap cut from 0.020" thick styrene, edged with 0.040" square styrene strips.

The final styrene piece was a cap to fit over the top edge of the now panelled structure to neatly close off the top, and to provide a structure to hold the protruding bottom edge of the roof dome in place. 

Upper styrene cap in place; painted and weathered. Interior is painted khaki. 

The roof isn't glued in place, but has been left loose and removable so I can later add a telescope and let viewers see inside. I'm thinking of a telescope model along the lines of the one I built for the El Camino Estrella.

Now the sight lines lead to something.

After painting and a light weathering I spent sometime playing around positioning the observatory. I'm happy with the new feature and its location on the layout. It seems to take care of a visual dead spot in an interesting way that keeps to the overall spirit of the layout. 

Precariously balanced high above the Circular Bridge.

A piece of 0.100" thick styrene was cut for the structure's layout base - it's the white sliver under the observatory in the above photo. The base is attached to the mountain with a blob of Das. There's still work to be done to build out the mountain ground-forms to blend in the base. For now though it's solid and level, which is a good start.

From above the Granite Gate Pass

As well as blending the foundation into the mountain some extra details will be added to suggest an abandoned trail to the observatory. Probably a couple more trees will be added along with some overgrown vegetation. 

Although, when adding all these extra details I need to be mindful to keep the total height of the layout below 30" so it can be carried sideways through door frames! Right now it stands only 23" tall - so far, so good.

1978 El Camino Estrella

I was chatting with Steve about Lego's new Mountain View Observatory and it got me thinking again about the Mt. Lowe Observatory and the very fictional El Camino Estrella. Although I used the Estrella's background story in the Streetcar Noir series, I haven't posted a collection of pictures of it here.

I worked on this project just before getting going on the Custom Dodge Rampage build*. You can see some of the Rampage parts on the workbench as I was test fitting parts for that project during final construction of the El Camino. So, maybe it was built in 2005 or 2006 - I should keep better records.

The base kit is Revell's '78 Chevy El Camino Lowrider 2 'N 1. Many additional parts came from my scrapbox, but I can't remember which ones - again, I should keep better records.

Although, I can say the telescope's body is scratchbuilt from styrene tubes. Also, I think the telescope's support yoke came from an AMT Moonscope kit, and the eyepiece was - believe it or not - a gnarly 1/24 scale carburetor I found in my scrapbox that seemed to look the part.

I don't know why I bothered, but I did a little underside detailing and weathering. It might be authentic and it might not, but it does look dusty under there.

Well, that's that. I'll close the tailgate and be on my way.

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*Being nerds, Vince and I are discussing the definition of kitbash as opposed to its alternatives like kit-mingle and kit-lance. This is kind of a how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussion because even though the popular, mainstream definition of kitbash is firmly entrenched, it's still an interesting theoretical diversion. Ok, cutting to the chase, I think the Rampage project falls into the more formal definition of kitbash as several kits were used to produce a single model. The Estrella is not really a kitbash, but a light customization - more a mingle than a bash? Well, the discussion continues. Maybe I need to consult the non-existent pages of the non-existent Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms.

At the Mt. Lowe Observatory

I got my act together and finished the Mt. Lowe observatory - well, I finished the exterior, the interior still needs to be furnished.

There wasn't much left to do. I painted the interior, finished the roofs for the wings, added clear plastic to the window openings a la the E. L. Moore window construction method, installed exterior doors and steps, and added some trim along the bottom perimeter.

The real McCoy has that lower trim too. On the model it's just a scored 2 foot wide strip of 3x5 card that I painted with a mix of burnt umber and red paint. 

But once I got that trim glued on the whole look of the building popped. It seemed a lot less bland. More realistic too.

All the roofs come off so you can see what's going on inside. Right now nothing is and it's a big, blank canvas.

I need to put my thinking cap on and figure out how to build the telescope. That one above, the back of the El Camino Estrella, was built up from styrene tubes and some leftover 1/24 scale model car parts from my scrapbox.

The Dominion Observatory

Recently Michael Adams mentioned that he added an observatory to his excellent N-scale Mt. Adams module. I blush to mention the observatory was partially inspired by my Mt. Lowe observatory. I need to get the lead out and finish that project, but in the meantime I thought I'd post some photos of an observatory that is located here in Ottawa.

In the summer I was riding my bicycle here, there and everywhere in the city and visited the Dominion Observatory a few times. It's on the border of the Central Experimental Farm and is a short ride from my house. 

You can read all about it at Wikipedia, but the short story is it was built in 1902, was used as an observatory until 1970, had its telescope transferred to the Science and Technology Museum in 1974, and is today used as office space for a branch of the federal government's Natural Resources Canada department. Construction of the wooden Mt. Lowe observatory was finished in 1894. It was destroyed in a wind storm in 1928.

One thing both observatories have in common is that they were accessible by an electric railway. 

[This fascinating series of photos showing the observatory in various stages of construction was sourced from The Canadian Astronomical Society's page dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Dominion Observatory.]

In 1908 the Ottawa streetcar system extended a double track line from Holland and Carling into the Central Experimental Farm. It ran parallel to Carling from Holland until it got to somewhere near the observatory where it then made a right turn and continued down to the main farm buildings. From there it looped around and came back. In 1924 a loop was installed at the observatory turn. The Ottawa streetcar system was finally closed down in 1959, and all traces of track at the observatory and farm have long disappeared, but I wouldn't be surprised if sections of the network of roads and paths on the grounds were originally streetcar roadbed.

A model of the Dominion Observatory would be quite challenging for me to build. This little building - building #9 on the site map, the Photo Equatorial - across the driveway from the observatory might be something more manageable. It's distinctive, small and captures the feeling of the stone construction and green dome of its big brother.

Not all the buildings on the site are early 20th century. Nearby is this abandoned 1960s modernist structure. I need to do a little research into what it was and why it's now derelict. It was probably very striking in its heyday.

Mt Lowe observatory telescope dome

Once the wings were done I moved on to finishing the dome that forms the roof of the telescope room. Prototype pictures appear to indicate that at various times the dome had different types of doors: at one time there were external sliding doors, and later there was one that slid up and down over the opening. I chose to incorporate the latter because that's the open I figured I could make into a working model without too much trouble.

This isn't an exact model of the dome door, just an approximation that I could make work and didn't look too bad. The first job was to install an internal track. I took a length of U-section styrene and cut off one arm to convert it to an L-section. I then cut a thin piece of card to the width I wanted the two tracks to be separated and taped the L-section rails to the card. This assembly was gently pushed into place and liquid plastic glue was used to bond the rails to the inside of the dome. This was a rather tricky bit of installation and I had to think it through and practice holding the various pieces through several mock installations before I actually worked up the nerve to finally glue it in place.

I let this set for a few hours then peeled back the tape and carefully slid out the card spacer. The rails held in place and looked good. All that was needed was to trim the ends.

The door is a strip of 0.010 in. styrene cut to the track width and a little longer than the opening. Friction holds it in whatever position you want.

Here it is slid into the fully closed position....

... and likewise here it is fully open. It slides back and forth quite easily in the track.

The next job was to make a base ring for the dome. This is built up from 4 layers of 0.020 in styrene. The top ring matches the diameter of the dome bottom, the two middle rings match the outside diameter of the telescope room, and the bottom layer matches the inside diameter of the telescope room. 

Here it is all glued together and ready for attaching to the dome.

Before painting some trim strips of 0.010 in styrene were glued to the dome's bottom edge and around the opening. Some 0.020 in styrene was used as filter sections at the top and bottom of the opening. A piece of decorative trim was glued inside the dome at right angles to the opening. That's it! It's ready for painting.

The dome was first sprayed with Tamiya's white fine surface primer and sanded a little when dry. A coat of Krylon flat white was then sprayed on to make the dome more opaque. Finally, a mist coat of the white primer was applied to finish things off.

That's it for basic construction. I'm moving on to building the roofs for the wings - they'll be removable - detailing the interior, and applying the remaining trim to the exterior. Until then, keeping with my random-walk state-of-mind these days, I leave you with another Lowe that I have absolutely no relation to,

Mt. Lowe observatory gets wings

The next step was to add the left and right wings to the telescope room.

I started with the one on the right. To begin, I used the telescope room as an anchor from which to draw the wing's floor plan in N-scale using dimensions from the drawing. Once the floor plan was finished, I used its dimensions to draw the wing's walls onto a single strip for folding into the final shape.

After the wall strip was cut out, the wall corners were scored and folded into shape. In this picture you can see that I've also cut the floor from a piece of 1/16" balsa and used it for some test fitting before gluing everything together.

A balsa ledge was glued to the bottom perimeter to support the floor and thin paper tabs were glued to the inside of the wall strip to use as a glue strip for holding the wing to the telescope room. Those tabs were trimmed to size before attaching the wing to the room.

It's a little misshapen before the floor is squeezed into place. Keen-eyed viewers will notice that I've glued the wing onto the wrong sections of the telescope room :-( Once I clued in, I carefully sliced it off, cleaned the residue off the telescope room, and then glued it to the correct section. 

The wing shapes up nicely once the floor's in there. White glue holds everything together.

The other wing is assembled the same way. Once the wings were in place, all of the inside walls were panelled with 1/32" balsa. This helps to significantly stiffen the structure and will make for a nice interior since the roofs will be removable. Again, the eagle-eyed will notice that I've cut another door in the telescope room wall that leads into the left-wing - I had mis-located the original connecting door. The left-wing's internal partition is made from a piece of 1/16" balsa.

After the interior work was done, all the windows and doors were framed with strip basswood I had in my scrap box. I used the smallest and thinnest material I had on hand as I didn't want to buy anything, but you'll note that it's a little oversize for N-scale.