Improving the Badger paint stirrer

Long time board member, Director of Advanced Technical Research, and Zen Airbrush Master here at the 30 Squares Media Empire World Domination Headquarters, Vince, has an awesome article called Improving the Badger paint stirrer in the August issue of Railroad Model Hobbyist. Check it out!

Dominion: "Jaunty Model Buildings"

Last summer I posted about the artist Seth and his miniature city, Dominion. Recently I saw a post at HiLoBrow about Dominion and a new article about it by Joshua Glenn that is up at ArchitectureBoston.

Although Dominion's miniature buildings are simply made from cardboard, they're highly evocative, and ring true to me about what Ontario looks like even though the models are highly stylized. Well, the models capture a certain period in Ontario that lives on today mainly in remnants. Seth's graphic novel, It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken, captures the sense of Dominion, or maybe Dominion captures the sense of the story - it's clear they're intertwined even though the novel preceded Dominion's first buildings by many years.

Plot-wise, the book chronicles Seth's attempts to track down a mid-20th century cartoonist named Kalo. While reading it I sometimes wondered if Kalo might have contributed a cartoon or two to any of the era's model railroading magazines. Although Kalo had cartoons published in Esquire and The New Yorker, he did have an early one in Modern Mechanix. Kalo's style is distinctive, so even though a cartoon might be unsigned, or unlisted in a table-of-contents, I think one of his might be identifiable on style alone. Well, if I ever see a model railroad one in his style, I'll let you know.

[Update 1 October 2020: Dumb me. Here I was thinking Kalo was a real person. No, Kalo is fictional as is the story - well, yes I knew the story was fictional, but for some reason I thought it incorporated real elements. Says something about the quality of Seth's writing as well as my gullibility.]

The Foundations of Samurai Aerodynamics

In Samurai Crafts I mentioned that Kuethe and Chow's book, Foundations of Aerodynamics, has a minor role in Helen DeWitt's novel, The Last Samurai. That was surprising to me because besides the rarity of the mathematics of aerodynamics being discussed, however briefly, in any literary novel, K&C's textbook was the one used in the introduction to aerodynamics course I took when I was an undergrad. The only difference being the edition mentioned in TLS was the 1986 one, and my class used the previous one from 1976. The first edition was published in 1950. The book was one of the best in the field, and maybe still is.

Ludo, the child prodigy and TLS's main character, receives a copy of an aerodynamics textbook from Sibylla, his mother, for his birthday; I think from the story's chronology it was his 7th, maybe 8th. I, on the other hand, didn't buy a copy of K&C until I was 20 or so. When I was 7 or 8 I couldn't spell aerodynamics let alone deal with its mathematics. At this point in the story the book's title isn't mentioned, and Sibylla buys it on the strength of the perceived humour in the passage about calculating the manoeuvrability of a grebe in water by approximating its body with an appropriately sized sphere, and on its use of classic 18th and 19th century math, which she thinks shouldn't be that difficult for her son to grasp.

It seems to me though that he does find it hard to grasp. There are several passages where Ludo picks up the text and tries to make headway, but soon puts it down in favour of some other book. It isn't until much later in the novel that Ludo confesses,

I put down Scientific American and picked up my book on aerodynamics. Sometimes I thought I understood it and sometimes it was hard to follow, and when it was hard to follow it wasn't easy to tell what would help; the thing that would really help would be to be able to ask someone who didn't sum up the mathematics required as 18th 19th century stuff. Any idiot can learn a language, all you have to do is keep going and sooner or later it all makes sense, but with mathematics you have to understand one thing to understand another, and you can't always tell what the first thing is that you have to understand. And even then either you see it or you don't. You can waste a lot of time trying to work out what you need to known and a lot more time just trying to see it.

When I read that a wave of deja vu and sympathy washed over me.

I'm an aerodynamicist by training, but I had a hard time with my first encounter with the subject. My introductory class seemed to me to approach the subject from a purely mathematical standpoint, and it wasn't clear why certain methods and assumptions were applied. The instruction had a strong air of 'that stuff should be quite self-evident' about it. I should note that the class wasn't taught to the K&C book; it turned out the book was only used as a reference. It took me a long time to dig into the experiments and observations of the early pioneers to finally appreciate why certain mathematical approaches were used. So, to be candid, it didn't help me that experts well versed in the mathematics of the subject were teaching it. What I needed was pre-mathematical insight into the physical nature of what was going on.

Back then I did a lot of reading into aerodynamics' early experimenters and writers. I eventually figured out that many of the fundamental physical insights and observations came from Fredrick W. Lanchester, and were discussed in his 1907 book Aerodynamics. I don't have a copy, but I borrowed it many times from the university library back in the day. The mathematical edifice Ludo encountered didn't exist when it was written, and it turns out it was the work that allowed practical mathematical approaches to be developed. I only mention this old thing because this pioneering work is a great combination of words and pictures, and that's what I think should be the first approach into the subject. 

You don't need to seek out Lanchester's book as there are later ones that will give you a physical sense of the field and are light on the math, but don't talk down to you. I haven't practiced in the field for a very long time, so I'm not up-to-date on good recent books, but there are a couple of old ones that I like. One is The Science of Flight by O. G. Sutton. It was first published in 1949 and updated in 1955. It's a charming Pelican Book, and includes reprints of a number of the more crucial pages from Lanchester's book. Another choice is Aerodynamics: Selected Topics in the Light of Their Historical Development by Theodore Von Karman. It was first published in 1954, but Dover published the second 1957 version in 2004. A somewhat more modern choice is The Simple Science of Flight: From Insects to Jumbo Jets by Henk Tennekes. It was published by the MIT Press in 1997.

I guess from our vantage point 113 years after the publication of Lanchester's book, maybe aerodynamic flight does seem like a simple science, but I continue to think of it as The Beautiful Science. Flow visualization, along with physical observation, have been key to its development as has mathematical insight. I've found that triumvirate fascinating, and have often thought of aerodynamics as a form of sculpture, where what is being sculpted is the air around a moving body.

When I was Ludo's age there was a period when my father would sometimes take me to a local hill to fly a windup toy airplane. It was small and very forgiving in a crash, so it was easy to try and launch it over and over, making small adjustments, until we got a few nice flights. Even for an adult, if aerodynamics and flight is something you want to learn, that's where to start.

Samurai Crafts

I recently finished reading Helen DeWitt's book The Last Samurai. I've heard about it for a long time, and some reviewers were claiming it to be the best novel published so far in the 21st century. Be that as it may, I kept putting it off. 

Being at home and having time on my hands I finally decided to give it a go. However, it was with some apprehension as I thought it might be a struggle to get into as say Infinite Jest was, which took me at least 50 pages before it started to click, and I required a long break when I was about half through. I was dead wrong about TLS. I was engrossed right from the beginning, and surprised myself that in 6 days I'd finished it. 

I'm not going to get into a detailed discussion about the main themes and plot, just note a couple of sub-themes that hit home: hobbyist magazines, and Kuethe and Chow's textbook Foundations of Aerodynamics.

The story centres around child prodigy, Ludo, and his mother Sibylla.  Part of Sibylla's backstory is that she lost her place at Oxford, then took a job as a secretary at a small publisher to forestall returning to the US, then lost that job when her mentor left the company. Luckily, to further postpone leaving England, Sibylla's mentor provided her an opportunity to type articles from various popular hobby magazines into a database that the publisher was building as part of a project on 20th century language. On the upside, Sibylla could work from home, but on the downside the job only paid £ 5.50 / hour and she's a single mother with a child to support; a child who we'd commonly think of as a prodigy. Although, one of the main themes investigated in the story is whether prodigies are simply children who are given the opportunities they need when they need them, whereas so-called normal children are those who, for whatever reason, are not provided with opportunities or resources they need when they need them that would make them better and happier. Stated a little more crudely, is it nature or nurture that makes the difference.

Throughout the book, Sibylla's work on transcribing articles from hobby magazines is cast as a scathing commentary on what constitutes normal interests and reading material in contrast to her ongoing attempts to continue to live an intellectual life regardless of her situation. We're treated to some wry commentary as she types in articles from mid-20th century magazines with these titles,

Melody Maker

Advanced Angling

Pig Fancier's Monthly

Weaseller's Companion

Mother and Child

You and Your Garden

British Home Decorator

Horn & Hound

The Poodle Breeder

Practical Caravanning

The Modern Knitter

Tropical Fish Hobbyist

Magazine of the Parrot Society

Carpworld

International Cricketer

Sportsboat and Waterski International

British Ostrichkeeper

Are any real? Are they all just made-up? Some are eye-rolling: British Ostrichkeeper, Carpworld, Weaseller's Companion, Pig Fancier's Monthly ! Some have an uncanny reality: International Cricketer, Mother and Child, Tropical Fish Hobbyist. It hardly matters which are real and which aren't as Sibylla's point is that this material - what we'd refer to today as 'content' - is a waste of our precious life compared to spending time with the world's intellectual riches. Throughout she implies that this has happened because our childhood education and development has been squandered, and we don't know any better than to overly concern ourselves with practical diversions as exemplified by our banal recreational reading material. Although, the skewering is funny, and I particularly liked this passage on Practical Caravanning,

PRACTICAL CARAVANNING said Sibylla. What in God's name is practical about caravanning and why in God's name should the word 'Practical' be thought to add appeal to the activity am I yet again in the market of one? Impractical Caravanning. Impractical Boating. Impractical Knitting. I would buy any of the above and I have not the slightest interest in knitting, boating or, God help me, caravanning.

Let me add: Impractical Model Railroading, Impractical Scale Modelling, Impractical Scale Model Streetcars. I have more than a slight interest in them and I'd buy any of those :-)

All this cuts close to home as I spend a lot of time with this type of material, and have even gone as far as suggesting some of it forms a literature, and at one time, and maybe still does, a folk art :-) 

It's interesting to note what sorts of hobby magazines haven't be satirized: those that at one time in the 20th century covered what were then referred to as the mechanical hobbies. Miniature and model airplanes, boats, cars, trains, clocks, engines, and so on. Magazines that taught skills, presented how-tos, reported on news, contests and products, ran ads, showed off projects, and told stories. At times the material was what we might call STEM-oriented in that it was hoped to provide a training ground for future engineers and technologists. At other times the material was simply for hobbyists and enthusiasts. I'd also argue that some of the material was old folk art practices migrating into the consumerizing world. The best of them combined thought and handwork that allowed readers to improve their chosen craft; the worst merely acted as conduits to sell loads of ready-to-use products to acquisitive and passive consumers. But, one major failing, one that still exists today in many venues, is understanding and recognizing the history and development of the various fields, as well as the threads into other aspects of thought and life.

I'd counter Sibylla's critique that as far as craft, and its attendant magazines and journals, is concerned - and we're not talking about modern-day, touchy-feely therapeutic pastimes, but the more traditional ones - developing skills that interweave thought and handwork, at whatever age, is a long, deeply human, and honourable activity. Not completely intellectual, not rote, but involving and thoughtful. Should one engage in craft? Which ones? What is the right age to start? I'll agree with Sibylla on this though, I don't think we live in a society that knows or cares.

After writing this and thinking about it a bit more I can see I need to understand more about definitions, similarities, differences and popular concepts of arts and crafts and hobbies.

And what about Foundations of Aerodynamics? I've gone on too long and I'll leave that for another time.

Maybe it's International Space Station Alpha from 1995?

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of Airfix Model World's special issue Scale Modelling Real Space, and Vince was telling me he picked one up yesterday. It's an excellent bookazine, and I especially enjoyed the lead article on building Revell's 1/144 scale International Space Station. It' a real eye-opener to me about what's involved in building a more-or-less accurate version of ISS. There're lots of after market components, and it seems like every piece of the kit had to have some special work done.

After all that work, the resulting model is quite fine. I only had one minor quibble, the robotic manipulator on the model's Japanese module shouldn't have a Canada logo on it as it isn't a Canadian product.

The author mentions that so much custom work had to be done because the kit wasn't that accurate in comparison to the space station. I took a look my kit, which I think I bought around 2005, maybe a year or so after I had returned to model making, to see what could be learned regarding sources. Not much it turns out. The instructions have a 2000 copyright, and given that date, I think the kit might be more reflective of a mid-90's International Space Station Alpha version of ISS. That stapled reference guide up in the photo's lower right corner is a summary of the ISS as it was envisioned by the time of NASA's 19 March 1995 Incremental Design Review. So it could be that the kit is actually a better representation of an earlier stage in ISS's development than how it exists today. I haven't made a 1-to-1 comparison of the kit's parts against the review document, but the box top and cover image on the design review package are tantalizingly close.

Grumping aside, the ISS article, and the bookazine overall, are excellent and well worth a look.

How to Build Model Ships

Got 'em

Awhile back Vince was testing my knowledge of slot car books published in the '60s and '70s. He mentioned How to Build Model Cars by William Nordner and sent along a photo.

The title didn't ring any bells, but as soon as I saw the photo I instantly remembered taking it out many, many times from the local public library when I was a kid. I even remembered exactly where it was shelved. Actually, the layout of the entire library and its contents flooded back in photorealistic detail. It was a strange experience. 

I immediately went online to see if I could find a copy. No dice, but I did find a copy of Nordner's How to Build Model Ships for a couple of bucks and bought it. I don't remember seeing this at the library, but it's never too late to experience what I might have overlooked :-)

Need 'em

And, strangely enough, I wondered if there was an E. L. Moore connection - being I'm a man with a hammer and all that. Mr. Moore wrote 2 articles, one published and one not, about projects where boat models were prominent. The unpublished one, submitted to MR in March '69, was called A Pair of Canal Boats, and the published one, add a Harbor to your Pike, was published in January and February '68 in RMC. In the introduction to the RMC article he mentions that a chance buy of a marked down copy of a book on ship models was partial inspiration to get going on the project. Was Nordner's the book? No, it was published in 1969. Maybe Mr. Moore eventually saw it at his local library, but we'll likely never know. The search continues for that inspirational marked down book.

Streetniks

After embedding the Shuffle Demon's Spadina Bus video along with the Rapido New Look bus notes, I went looking for the Shuffle Demon's lp in my vinyl collection. Yeap, it was there. On the back it suggests the Spadina Bus video was recorded at the corner of Queen & Spadina on 25 April 1986. Punch those coordinates into your time machine for your next trip :-)

A look at Rapido's Deluxe TTC 'New Look' Bus

Maybe you’re thinking, I thought you were a streetcar guy and had no truck with buses. Well, I am a streetcar guy, but the TTC, which my new streetcar layout is heavily influenced by, is a transportation system where buses play a role along with streetcars and the subway*. In the period I draw heavily from, the TTC in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, I rode them all and when I saw Rapido’s HO rendition of the classic TTC bus from that era I figured I needed one somewhere on the layout so I could tell my story properly – well, I bought one after my usual humming-and-hawing and gnashing of teeth about price and so on and so forth :-)

Let me get the obvious out of the way: it’s an excellent model and I’m glad I bought one.

[The bus model on the right is of one that preceded the New Look. I don't know who manufactured that model, but it's level of precision is a step below.]

The fidelity of the model is phenomenal. I don’t have any other new look buses to compare it to – its box proclaims it’s the first ever 'accurate' New Look produced in HO, maybe there were others, I don't know the history - but you can get a sense of its exactness when placed side-by-side with some other buses.

The bus holds its own in comparison to Bowser's TTC PCC, which is a quite fine item.

Inside the box there's a bag of extra parts, mud guards, decals for route boards, a magnetic wand for triggering the reed switch that controls the lights and some papers with some explanation and an exploded diagram.

I've got to give them bonus points with the parts bag because it lets you use the model as a prop on your layout in a variety of ways. I especially like the inclusion of advertising card frames that can be mounted to the outside. All these buses seemed to have advertising cards mounted on the outside, so those frames increase it's prop value. It would be nice if Bowser had included the same with their streetcars.

The front wheels are posable. Another nice touch that makes it useful as a prop.

And the body shell can be easily pried off. Very nice detail on the inside, but much cleaner than I remember the real things to be. It looks like it will be quite easy to add passengers and a driver. It would be a little weird to have this out on the streets of the Alta Vista TC without people inside. Lots of scenes come to mind, but there’s one I would like to model: the classic situation where the driver has pulled over to the curb to dash into a shop to grab a Sun and a coffee leaving the bus idling, front door open, passengers glaring out the windows at the indignity of waiting while he refuels. No doubt some, like me, were wondering if they could slide into the driver’s seat and make off with the bus. Well, the doors don't open, but that would be asking for too much.

Never seen the real TTC New Look bus in action? No worries, 30 Squares has got you covered. I leave you with the legendary Shuffle Demons circa 1986 (and yes, route boards for 77B are included with model, but you're on your own to find HO Shuffle Demons)

---
*What about the subway aspect on the layout? For that I’m going to have one or two street-level subway entrances to suggest the subway’s existence, but there won’t be any subway trains.

Fine print: I don’t have any association with Rapido, and I bought and paid for this model with my own cash.The only person I owe a debt to is my wife who went out of her way to pick it up when she was in Toronto.

A little more Ottawandering

Through some online wandering I came across this trailer for Ottawander. It gives a 60 second look at the show's visual style. Over at SoundCloud you'll find a number of sets from Ottawander by the Orienteers. Here's one simply called wandering,

Ottawander

Yesterday afternoon Debra told me about a movie she read about at the CBC website: Ottawander. There was a special, one-time screening at the Mayfair at 9:30, and why wasn't I going? If you're a longtime reader here at 30Squares, you know I'm partial to staging urban night photos on my layout, so it was right up my alley. I went.

Actually, Ottawander is a new local tv series available on Bell Fibe - I have Rogers, so the Mayfair screening was all I was going to see unless I switch - whose episodes are 40 minute nighttime wanders through various Ottawa streets with an ultra- high-res digital camera taking in all the sights. So far, only the first episode has been shot, and that's what the Mayfair was screening. 

The Ottawander crew's initial outing was a low-speed ramble along the hard luck Sparks Street pedestrian mall at around 9pm on an evening in late April. The photography is gorgeous. Pop-ups and superimposed old photos are inserted at various points along the way to explain facts and events that happened in the locations being shot. At this showing the band providing the soundtrack, the space-folk group the Orienteers, performed live. You might think of this a 21st century silent movie experience: ultra-high-res digital movie, dialog-less with integrated text, and an excellent live band providing music, all staged in a 1930s era movie house. 

At the post-screening Q&A it was noted that Ottawander was meant for ambient viewing at home or a party, but it does holdup for viewing in one sitting. I would have liked to have seen more regularly inserted pop-ups to provide a little more information about what I was seeing and to help keep the movie flowing. Although from the ones provided I did learn where Pierre Trudeau watched The Godfather in '72, where D'Arcy McGee was assassinated, and where Britain stashed all their gold reserves during World War II. This was a most enjoyable episode and I'm looking forward to seeing more in the Ottawander series.

Garner's Sin Sniper is not crummy

“I see,” said the inspector, his voice modulating once again. “What’s your trade, Dightwood?”

“I’m a folk singer.”

“Before that?”

“I was a CNR brakeman in Moncton.”

“How’d you lose that job?”

“I quit when my marriage broke up. I decided to come up this way.”

“Was your hair down to your shoulders when you were riding a CNR crummy?”

Dightwood smiled at the inspector’s use of the word “crummy” for caboose. “No, Sir. The long hair is just part of my act.”

Contrary to that exchange between Inspector McDumont and a long-haired, hippy folk singer suspect, The Sin Sniper has nothing to do with trains and such, although the gritty realism of the novel no doubt has some roots in the author’s years hoboing across Canada and the US during The Depression. It’s the story of an investigation by the Toronto Police into the shooting of five women in downtown’s Moss Park area over a week in late March of 1965. It’s a tough tale and not for the fainthearted.

Lurid cover aside, the novel is a straight ahead police procedural, but what makes it unique is its strength of characterization of Moss Park, its inhabitants, the police, and mid-60's Toronto in general. And the Toronto characterization is quite good: the further I read, the more it sent a traceroute to all those deep memories I have of that long ago city I thought were purged from my mind. I guess one couldn’t expect anything less from a literary heavy hitter like Hugh Garner.

Hugh Garner, 'Skinny' Moore and The Sin Sniper

One summer day in 1933 my friend Howard “Skinny” Moore and I set out for the United States with a package of makin’s, a dime in cash, and a bag of my mother’s cucumber sandwiches. We slept the first night on somebody’s lawn in Oakville, Ontario, and made it to Niagara Falls the following day, hitching rides. We split the dime between us to cross one of the bridges to Niagara Falls, New York; I made it past the US Immigration, Skinny didn’t. I went on to New York and Washington and ended up in California. And that’s how it was done.

And so begins a long and fascinating section of Hugh Garner’s One Damn Thing After Another!, his autobiography, describing his time from 1930 to 1939 hoboing all over the US and Canada - and naturally I was caught off-guard by the random coincidence of seeing the surname Moore mentioned in the opening sentence :-) Mr. Garner was one of Canada’s most famous writers, and one of my father’s favourites. Later in his career, Mr. Garner wrote a series of popular mystery novels set in Toronto featuring Detective Inspector Walter McDurmont. The first was The Sin Sniper, published in 1970. I have no idea if it’s a good read, but I’ve got a copy on the coffee table, and if it’s as taut and forthright as his recollections of life on the rails during the Depression, it should be fine. 

I lived one summer in New York on 60 cents a day, and stooked wheat along the Soo Line and Assiniboine Line in southern Saskatchewan for a buck a day and board, which was the going wage that year. When I’m asked why I rode the freights and beat my way through much of Canada and the United States instead of working at the terrible little jobs I had in Toronto between trips, my best answer is that when I was home I was poor, but when I was on the road I was merely broke. And there’s a lot of difference between the two.

Buildings in Miniature

This book is intended for those modellers, the individualists, who want to go out and sketch or photograph their own buildings, and yet are not quite sure which would be the best way to start building them.

G. Iliffe Stokes opens his classic book with a few classic words.

After two years of searching I finally found a copy of G. Iliffe Stokes' Buildings in Miniature - $20 from an online bookseller here in Ontario. It's more like an extra thick pamphlet than a paperback book, but it's beautifully designed and put together. I think it was published in 1958. About 1/3 of it is photos and charming line drawings. The work is excellent. I'm looking forward to reading it.

American Folk Art Buildings

I learned about the collection described in this book, American Folk Art Buildings: Collection of Steven Burke and Randy Campbell, via this New York Times article, which was the aha! moment behind the E. L. Moore folk-artist-as-model-railroader idea.

There are all sorts of model buildings and small buildings in the world. This collection focuses on those made by non-professionals who don’t make them for a living and build for personal reasons. There aren’t things like architect’s models, doll houses, birdhouses and so on in the collection. As well, most of the pieces date from roughly the late 19th century to around 1950. The book itself has high production values: glossy pages, and all photos are colour, well lit and sharp.

The models themselves span a wide range of architectural types from houses to stores to churches to businesses and so on, and have made use of wide variety of materials in their construction. It appears that a few were likely used at one time as scenic accessories on model railroads. Being an E. L. Moore aficionado I looked for obvious examples of his work, but didn’t find any. It's an extensive collection, and makes it clear that making small buildings was a pastime for many people even though it wasn't a mainstream hobby - it was a strong, although lesser unknown tributary in the popular culture.

An important thing that comes across in this book is that the owners of this collection have worked hard to display the models to their best advantage. I especially like how they often use a white column or pedestal to bring a piece up close to eye level. The common practice of displaying small models on waist level tables, layouts, bookcases and other types of readily available furniture has the advantage of being low-cost and convenient, but usually doesn’t do justice to a model, and by extension, its maker. Again, the owners of this collection have clearly spent a lot of time and effort on optimizing the viewing experience. I think that makes a great difference.

The Model Railroad Right of Way

[The Model Railroad Right of Way by Oliver Wilson Whitwell, published by The Modelmaker Corporation, 1935. I bought this well preserved copy a couple of weeks ago for $20 US]

But remember those good long articles by George Allen ... they were long and strung out but intensely interesting. However, there aren’t too many George Allen’s around and incidentally I wonder what became of him.

E. L. Moore wonders what became of George Allen in his sales letter for 1973’s Bunn’s Feed and Seed to Model Railroader.

[About a quarter of the book's pages are dedicated to excellent line drawings such as these of tunnel openings. To me, this alone makes the book worthwhile. Both US and UK practices are covered.]

Discovering, among other things, we would have to build three culverts, we searched high and low for data. Our files not only failed to reveal a single sketch, but neither of us were in the mood to spend a raw, cold Saturday afternoon measuring some out on the wild moors of Long Island. Then I remembered Oliver Whitwell Wilson’s Model Railroad Right of Way (by the by, where is he these days?)

George Allen in Chapter 7 of 50,000 Spikes: Getting into the Groove with a River, a Mill, a Swampy Swamp, a Few Culverts... and a Waterfall That “Flows” Without Water from the April 1942 issue of Model Railroader wonders what became of Oliver Whitwell Wilson.

[There are also many photos of Mr. Whitwell's International Midland Railway used to illustrate the concepts. That bridge across Devil's Gulch isn't representative of the high quality modelling shown in the photos, but I was rather attracted to its quasi-abstract style. It must have been a distinctive feature on his layout.]

... I discuss the right of way and its problems. In order that the book can be complete as far as it goes, bridges and actual buildings are not considered. It does include, however, the background of the picture, the landscaping, tunnel mouths, culverts, fences and many another incidental unit which should line the right of way.

Oliver Wilson Whitwell introduces what his book is about in the Preface.

Streetcars at the Ottawa Train Expo

[The card attached to this beautiful little diorama noted: "Streetcars 695 and 854 on an Ottawa street in 1954 (Scale of models - 1:48)". Said street looks a lot like Bank Street.]

I went out to the Ottawa Train Expo on the weekend with John and Garret. It's a general interest, family-oriented model train show held annually in the spring in Ottawa. This year it was set up in a hockey arena out in Rockland. There were many good layouts on display, no streetcars though other than the one shown in the lead photo which was part of the OC Transpo Streetcar 696 restoration booth. It was set up in the overflow area way up at the top of the stands. The two 1:48 scale streetcars were well done and showed a high degree of craftsmanship.

[12 January 2022 update: Photos and a backstory about the models can be found at: O-scale models of Ottawa streetcars #695 & #854]

Bachmann Spectrum Peter Witt streetcar in TTC colours

Last year around this time I wrote a review of my HO streetcar fleet. One of the members was a Bachmann Spectrum Peter Witt streetcar in Chicago Surface Line colours. Last November I finally picked one up in Toronto Transit Commission colours to go with my small collection of Bowser and Con-Cor PCC TTC streetcars. Unsurprisingly, the colour of the body doesn’t change the operational behaviour of the model :-) The TTC and CSL versions perform the same. Serviceable, but not near as well as either the Bowsers or Con-Cor. Although, I’m happy to have a TTC version of the Peter Witt.

A visit to the Diaz Contemporary to see the Kim Adams exhibit

[The Diaz Contemporary]

I was in Toronto over the weekend and had the opportunity to see the Kim Adams exhibit at the Diaz Contemporary gallery. It opened on 18 July and runs until 17 August.  There is also a Kim Adams exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario running until 11 August, so if you’re in Toronto, you can catch the double bill for a couple more weeks.

The Diaz show is quite different from the one at the AGO. It consists of around 10 - this is an approximation, I should have counted - small, 12 inch x 12 inch, dioramas. Each features a caboose(s), usually accompanied with a crane or two, as an exploration - often a whimsical one -  into how to use a caboose for everyday living or business. All are built from readily available HO-scale model railroad components.  Thematically, they are calmer than either the Artist’s Colony (Garden) you can see at the AGO, or the Bruegel-Bosch Bus at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

The dioramas are displayed much better in this gallery than the Artist’s Colony (Garden) is at the AGO. They are spread out along the white walls of the display room with lots of space between each one so that they don’t impinge on their neighbours. The room lighting is clear and uniform, making it easy to see all the details. Focusing on display may seem unimportant, but care on this aspect helps to show the dioramas to their best advantage. The only display improvement I might suggest is to somehow show them on free-standing pedestals so viewers can walk around and see all sides, although I admit this would require even more gallery floor space than might be practical or readily available.

I like these builds. Although they all represent unusual uses for cabooses, they all seem plausible and could be possible in ‘real life.’ If there are any enterprising GTA real estate developers out there reading this, buy ‘em all, spend sometime looking at ‘em, maybe try ‘em in different arrangements like puzzle pieces, and maybe if you’ve got your eye on some land somewhere just laying around and not earning its keep, maybe this’ll all add up to a money maker. If not, they still look great, and you’ll have some good art to enjoy - and no doubt appreciate :-) If you’re a model builder, they’re great examples of ‘what-if’ modeling. If you’re an art collector, they’ll look good in your collection - again, after you buy one, try and display it on something free-standing if you’ve got the space. Well, regardless of your interest, go see them.

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Postscript

The Diaz Contemporary gallery is located on the corner of Tecumseth and Niagara, just a short walk from the intersection of King and Tecumseth - which is also a convenient streetcar stop. The AGO and Diaz are pretty close to each other - well, relatively speaking - and smack dab in the part of the city that’s criss-crossed with a dense network of streetcars, so you can ride the rails and check out the art. Although I must admit I usually walk everywhere when I’m downtown. The terrain’s dead flat so the walking is easy; there’s lots to see and do on the street: food of all kinds, gawking at buildings, as well as people and streetcar watching. 

[I clipped this ad from the weekend Globe & Mail. It was interesting to see the old TTC PCC streetcar still in use in popular media.]

Philly Friday

A few weeks back I bought this DVD at the Ottawa Train Show – the first rail oriented DVD I’ve ever bought so I guess I’m an official rail fan now :-) It’s produced by GPS Video of Toronto. Although the titling and narration shots are a little dated, the footage of PCCs running in Toronto in various eras is excellent.

A lot of the scenes appear to have been shot in the ‘60s or ‘70s, but many have some generic music meant to be evocative of the ‘30s or ‘40s playing in the background. I suspect this was done to help convey a sense of place when the PCCs were new and in their heyday –also, that particular music was probably also easily licensable. To me though, in my mind I hear the music that came from that equally great North American streetcar city: Philadelphia. Specifically, The Philadelphia Sound.

I didn’t know it, but according to Wikipedia there was also a Toronto Sound whose prime years were from around 1959 to 1969. This predates the glory years of The Philadelphia Sound that I’d say extended from sometime in the late ‘60s to maybe the early ‘80s. Philadelphia International Records was certainly a foundational company when it came to producing The Philadelphia Sound, and their first hit to top the Billboard singles chart, for three weeks in December 1972, was Billy Paul’s Me and Mrs. Jones.

A review of Kim Adams’ AGO Exhibition

Back in March Debra and I were in downtown Toronto. While she attended to her business, I went down to the Art Gallery of Ontario to see the new Kim Adams show. 

There are two pieces on display: a big diorama called Artist's Colony (Gardens), and a much bigger stand alone “ship-in-a-bottle” type model railroad / spacecraft / farm equipment piece called, Travels Through the Belly of the Whale.

[The Dundas streetcar goes right by the front door of the AGO]

The diorama is located in the AGO’s Thomson Collection of Ship Models gallery, which as the name makes clear, is full of excellent ship models, and Artist's Colony (Gardens) is located in a little brightly lit nook at the bottom of the stairs leading to the ships. Surprisingly, the light down there is rather low and gloomy – other than the bright, clear light over the Artist's Colony (Gardens) – and doesn’t do justice to the ship models.  I thought the placement of Artist's Colony (Gardens) in this gallery rather odd, but maybe it’s the only place it could be properly lit, and possibly the gallery staff figured all models belonged in one place (there are boats in Artist's Colony (Gardens) after all). Artist's Colony (Gardens)  does make for an interesting contrast to the traditionally constructed ship models, and, if there weren’t any practical constraints, it would have been better placed in the centre of the gallery under spot lights instead of tucked away in a alcove. This might be more dramatic, and would require visitors to snake their way through the ships, toward the brightly lit diorama. This would also allow visitors to walk around all four sides of the diorama. As it is, only three-sides are freely accessible, and the fourth is against a wall. 

[Artist's Colony (Gardens)]

I won’t give a detailed description of the diorama, but there are some photos at the AGO site. It’s basically a wild, densely packed, free-lanced assemblage of scenes built up from HO scale model railroad components – the operative word being ‘free-lanced’, followed closely by ‘wild’. Its production values are high, and clearly a great deal of thought and care went into its construction. Although I’m ducking out of describing it, I can offer a tip for looking at it since actually spending time viewing its various parts is the most important thing. There’s so much going on in the piece, I needed to look at it several different times. Basically, I’d have a look for 5 minutes or so, wander off to see a few ships when others came by, then wander back to take a look at another section when there were no other viewers around. After a couple rounds of this, I’d wander off to another gallery and then come back and repeat the sequence. So, view it in several short sessions, taking a good break in between. I think that way you can avoid being visually over-saturated by the density of the thing and get a better appreciation of the whole. But, I can’t guarantee that this odd behaviour won’t get you flagged as suspicious on a security camera :-)

Artist's Colony (Gardens) is sort of reminiscent of a side of model building that isn’t seen much anymore. Back in the ‘60s and early ‘70s monthly hobbyist periodicals aimed at scale model builders like Car Model magazine often featured projects and models that weren’t so much meant to be replicas of prototypes, but were imaginative what-if exercises – often rather wild and exuberant ones at that. The model railroad press wasn’t immune either, although the free-lanced stuff seen there was nowhere near as wild as what the model car builders were up to. 

These days free-lancing - whether extreme or mild - and imaginative explorations in model building seems rather uncommon. The detailed representation of actual prototypes with models is dominant, and far more advanced from a technological standpoint than it was 40 or 50 years ago, and its wilder cousin – the Yeti of the model building world - is elusive and relatively hidden. It’s too bad that this kind of thing is not as easily accessible as those long ago Car Model pages. Having to go to a gallery to see this sort of thing instead of in a magazine I could once buy at a corner smoke shop seems like an unfortunate development. But, maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places – it wouldn’t be the first time :-)

[Travels Through the Belly of the Whale]

Travels Through the Belly of the Whale is an entirely different piece. It’s sort of a “ship-in-a-bottle”, but the ship is a simple, HO scale model railroad setup, and the bottle is some farm equipment assembled to look like a spaceship.

Yeap, that’s right, the bottle is the hull of a spaceship built from farm equipment. As soon as I saw it, the conical front part said Gemini capsule, and the cylindrical back part – that houses the layout – said Apollo Service Module. But unlike either the Gemini or Apollo spacecraft, this structure has clear, stubby wings where the model train loops out and back into the bottle. Also, the spacecraft has large windows to the interior where the nose-cone and the rockets would go, as well as a smattering of smaller viewing ports. 

Unlike Artist's Colony (Gardens), Travels Through the Belly of the Whale is carefully staged in its own gallery. The natural lighting is excellent, and there’s lots of room to walk around the piece and get a good look from many different angles.

I’m not much into finding meanings in art works. Basically, I’m happy if I like looking at them. I think art works should stand up without ancillary explanatory material.  If I don’t find something interesting to look at, I move on. Back when I was in the 5^th or 6^th grade in the early ‘70s, our class was taken on a day trip to the AGO. There was one gallery where the ‘art’ consisted of a bunch of rusty old chains strewn about on the floor. As we entered we all dutifully gave it a studious look for a few seconds and most, like myself, probably then wondered when we were getting lunch. Once our guide had everyone corralled around the chains, she asked if anyone could describe what they meant. My friend Rob, who was off to one corner of the group raised his hand and gave what seemed like some sort of sophisticated answer. Our guide was stunned by such an articulate response, so she naturally followed up by asking how he knew that. Rob promptly told her he read it off a little card on the wall. The kids laughed. The guide went red. And so went my introduction to finding meaning in art. I can’t say that this apocryphal story has influenced me to this very day, but it has stuck around in my memory as a lesson of some sort.

All I can say is that I find both of Mr. Adams’ works quite interesting and fun. It’s probably because I’m intrigued anytime someone uses common place objects to make things that weren’t intended to be made from them, and Mr. Adam’s work is a highly inventive take on using every day, utilitarian objects, and the common materials of traditional scale model building, to construct fascinating things. If you’re in the AGO part of Toronto before the exhibit closes on 11 August, I’d recommend seeing these pieces.