I decided to take some glamour shots with all the pieces I've so far assembled to assess the composition.
Once I finished testing the track in the pit I decided to do some odds-and-ends work that I had been putting off. This included: finishing installing the internal stiffeners in the launch pad section, finishing installing the walls of the blast trench under the launch pad, installing the launch pad, priming the roadbed in the pit, and sticking down the pit track. Nothing glamorous, but all essential.
Business end of the blast trench.
It's more-or-less all scenic work from here on as I think the major structural and infrastructure components are now in place.
A major discovery in the monolith pit!
And I think the scenic work will be quite interesting. At my usual snail's pace it could take a year or so to complete, but I've only touched on lunar scenery, so lots of learning ahead too.
I spent some time over a few days installing the track in the monolith pit. I was surprised that it was quite a pleasant experience. I'd maybe work on it for a couple hours each day and almost immediately after beginning my mind would enter a flow state. I thought this would be a stressful job given the precision needed to get all the pieces to fit properly, but it turned out to be rather restful.
There are some minor alignment issues with the landscape, but they are easily corrected. After watching the loco climb the grade I think the loco still has enough - as my father would say - 'oomph' to pull a couple of cars.
I think the next task will be to do a little landscape cleanup.
I joined together the launch pad and excavation pit portions of the layout. It was a little tricky getting the measurements right, but I'm happy that the result was a nice, smooth grade down from the left area to the right.
There's still lots to go, but I'm happy that this part is complete and not too bad.
Track risers are mainly cut from 1" thick pink foam sheets
I've continued to work on installing the track risers that lead from the launch pad area down into the monolith pit. They're all in now except for some supports I need to add to the corner pieces to bank the track a little.
Shot during a mid-construction break
My reporting on how this square spiral is constructed has been a little skimpy as forming the pieces requires a little bit of junior high level geometry, and whenever I write about the math aspects of layout construction I see a lot of sad faces :-) I find that concerning; however, I figured I'd just present some in-progress photos so at least I have a record for myself on how the layout looked before scenery. And I suspect anyone who is serious about building something similar can figure out the geometry for themselves, and no doubt make improvements, from pictures of the components.
Laying track and joining the two little layouts into one big one are next. Stay tuned!
Initial stages of installing the risers out of the pit up to launch pad level.
After completing the installation of track around the launch pad I decided to get going on laying track at the other end of the layout: the pit where the monolith is located.
A bird's eye view of the overall track plan before the hard work began.
It's a bit tricky installing this track as it needs to spiral out of the excavation, so it has to go around as it goes up. Design-wise, I've limited the grade to 5%, as I don't think the lunar loco will be able to pull more than one, maybe two, cars, and 5% will be quite enough grade for it to handle.
I've been working on working out the details of positioning the track for the Tintin 2001 layout. It's very technical and mathematical and geometrical and doesn't make for fantastical posts, even though my arithmetical flubs can be comical :-)
I'm going to install the track in two stages: first in the landing / launch level, and then in the monolith pit, which will be much more challenging. The circular hole and rectangular cutout in the above photo are the excavations for the blast trench. It will be spanned by a bridge for the train, not to be used during launch or landing!
Testing, testing, testing
I'm also doing some tests to figure out the minimum turning radius of the RDC-M. It can handle the 9" radius curves on the Way Out Layout no problem, but it jams in the 3-1/4" radius curves on the E. L. Moore micro-layout. Some impromptu tests with flex track bent freehand suggest some radius between 9" and 6" is the limit. I'm hoping it's closer to 6 than 9, but I'll have to abide by whatever more rigorous testing shows.
Well, I'm off for coffee, and maybe a movie. I'm watching a lot of sci-fi films these days, what with being submerged in the Tintin 2001 layout and all. I hadn't seen Dune, so I gave it a try. There was one scene that seemed like a cross between something I had seen ages ago in Enter the Dragon accompanied by the old Blue Swede song, Hooked on a Feeling. I assure you I was only drinking coffee, but I nearly fell out of the Lazy-Boy laughing. Test it for yourself. Here's the song. Don't spill your coffee :-)
For some time I've had an idea for a kitbashed building based on the Moebius Moon Bus kit to serve as a combined lunar launch control and rail control centre for the Tintin 2001 layout.
I've had this kit on my shelf for longer than I care to admit. I think I bought it when it was first released. At the time my intent was to build it up as shown on the box into a replica of the 2001 movie moon bus. At one time I did make a start on that, but lost interest and returned the partially started kit to its box.
That was a long time ago now, and it was dawning on me that I was never going to build a box-stock moon bus, and I should just overcome my reticence, get out the razor saw and grinding tool, and dive into the kitbash no matter how sacrilegious that seemed.
As well, I wanted to check the size and shape of this fantasy lunar building in the layout mockup. The building has a row of windows along each long side so that one row looks towards the launch pad and the other towards the pit. That seems ideal for this setup. I should note the building will be slightly elevated, maybe around 25mm to 50mm above the surface of the launch pad, so it will look down into the pit. Overall, it's size, shape, and location looks just right to me.
I studied the instructions and parts until I had figured out how to make a start. I separated out the components I planned to use into a tray.
I started by assembling the passenger compartment according to the instructions.
I left off the flight deck and used the interior bulkhead that separates the flight deck from the passenger compartment as an exterior wall. It's an interesting piece because the molded on doors used to secure the flight deck are now exterior doors, which I intend to use as doors to a moon buggy garage.
After initial assembly I got out my Dremel motor tool, with a sanding drum attached, and ground off all the detail suggestive of this being a spacecraft fuselage that appeared below the belt line.
I then glued 0.040" thick styrene panels over top of the areas that had been ground down. More appropriate building-like detail will be added to these areas later.
The new, smooth panels were used as a guide to trim the bottom level. I should mention there was a lot of careful sanding and filing at this point to get the bottom even. The photo shows the side door units glued on. That step was done after the building's main walls were finished, as getting the door units shortened and levelled was a job unto itself.
And that is that for the shell. The next part will be to detail it and add an interior for the garage. You can see the opening for the garage in the photo above. Those doors would never withstand the pressure gradient between the inside and outside, but hopefully most viewers won't realize that, or will at least allow me artistic license on this detail :-)
After making one 3" radius curve I was pumped and made another, and then another, and then another, and so on. In no time at all I had the seven I need for this layout.
And now some serious fun is about to begin. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, warm up your time machines and get some popcorn:
I'm going to need a few small radius, quarter-circle curves on this layout to both complete the loop around the landing pad area, and go down into the excavated pit where the monolith will be located.
I need to make these bends as tight as possible, and it looked like a 3" (~76mm) radius was about the tightest turn I could get away with. So I got the track bending tools out again, and followed the procedure I used on the big loop around the landing pad to make this little turn.
Bent rail awaiting the installation of ties.
This curve wasn't quite as difficult as the first; maybe because I had some practice, and there wasn't as much rail to wrestle with.
Once the bend was made I had to test it. I wasn't sure if the lunar loco's wheels would bind going around the curve.
I was happy to see it handled the curve just fine. Now I need about 5 more - curves that is!
It doesn't look like much, but this semi-circular piece of test track was a #$%#! to make.
One end of this little layout will have lunar landing pads for the Tintin rocket and fellow travellers. At this end I wanted to have a loop of track around the pads and a stop for loading and unloading cargo. I decided to build a test loop using the track bending methods I used on the community garden layout and associated test pieces. They worked with Peco code 100 HO/OO flex-track and I wanted to try them with Atlas HO code 100 flex as I have a stack of odds and ends lying around I figured I'd use up on this project.
The flex-track rails were carefully pried from their plastic tie strip. The rails were then curved to produce an 8" radius semi-circle.
It turns out the strips of Atlas flex-track are quite different than Peco's. On a piece of Atlas flex one rail has embossings on the bottom that make it impossible to slide out from the tie strip, so it has to be carefully pried out. Some broken spike heads do result, but not enough to render the tie strip useless. Those busted heads were later superglued back down once the curved rails were slipped back into the tie strips.
Since the curve forming technique I use requires the curved rails to be slid back into the tie strip I had to use my motor-tool to grind the embossed rail's bottom surface flat.
The curved rails are slid back into short pieces of tie strips. The tie strip pieces were sprayed with grey paint A truck is used to check the gauge.
The Atlas tie strip is also quite different from Peco's. The Atlas version as one side of its tie strip with just about all tie ends connected together, and the other side has ties connected in pairs, making that side quite flexible. I took a pair of sprue cutters and pruned the connections on the heavily connected side so it matched the connection pattern of the other side, making the entire tie strip quite flexible.
This may sound like a simple, albeit laborious, job, but in fact it turned out to be a major headache. I don't recall the similar test I did with Peco track for an E. L. Moore micro being this difficult. In the end though I did produce a piece of free standing, semi-circular track which the lunar loco has no problem navigating. I probably should have done things the easy way and bent a piece of track by hand and just stuck it to the foam, which is what I did on the Way Out Layout, but I wanted to see if I could make a free-standing piece with no internal residual stresses.
Other rockets that may appear on the layout.
This end of the layout isn't going to remain flat. I have some ideas for three-dimensionalizing it with an elevated launch pad, flame/dust trench, and overhead track cover. These days I'm finding myself becoming more and more interested in working on landforms whether it's for this lunar thing, the community garden, or other dioramas I have in mind. I was bitten by some type of landform making bug on the Mount Lowe layout, so, you might see a lot of terra- and luna- forming ahead :-)
You may recall back in the post about building the lunar loco I discussed how to juggle relative sizes of things on layouts so that big things looked big even though they might be considerably smaller than their prototypes, and I also discussed scale considerations. After Debra finished building the Lego Tintin rocket I pulled out the lunar loco and the Tintin-ized Airfix astronaut to do a size comparison. Looking at the photo I'm thinking that proposing OO scale for the layout was the right way to go. The loco and astronaut do look small compared to the rocket, but are still recognizable and relatable.
To the left: Patient X, Vintage Classics 1:76 Airfix Astronaut; to the right: 3/16" diameter Acetal ball.
Warning: Those of you with a weak constitution may want to avert your eyes for the next bit.
With the head-dectomy successfully completed we quickly move on to the installation of the new helmet.
Success! The helmet was slightly flattened on one 'side' and attached with superglue.
The life support backpack was modified with styrene scraps to become Tintin-esque.
The patient is expected to make a full recovery and live a long and adventurous life on the moon tending the lunar railway.
The staff of 30Squares Labs extends its apologies to The Temptations and highly recommend listening to this classic while they prepare for the next breakthrough in figure surgery.
I asked Gemini to replace the bland, black background in the opening photo to the Lunar loco construction post with a lunar environment. Up there is what it generated. It's not bad, although a tad stereotypical with the frip-frap in the background. I guess further prompting could have eliminated all that.
Next I asked Gemini to take this scene snippet from the lunar loco test run video and remove the southern California style environment and replace it with a lunar setting and futuristic lunar buildings:
I could see that things weren't moving in the right direction from the get-go, and after a couple of prompts to try and steer Gemini to something plausible I gave up at this stage of image creation:
It looks like a strange desert scene, but I'll give it high marks for injecting more Way Out into the Way Out Layout :-)
The Lunar Loco goes for a lap on the Way Out Layout test track. There’s a little hesitation on a dirty switch at the yard entrance, but the loco has 4-wheel power pickup so it easily runs through.
A lunar locomotive inspired by Cerny & Hayden's Apr '78 MR April Fool's project.
A couple of weeks ago Steve was telling Debra and me about Lego's upcoming release of the moon rocket from Tintin that was featured in the albums Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon. This lead to a fairly wide ranging discussion, and me being me, I started to wonder about the feasibility of building a small, maybe micro-sized, futuristic lunar model railway. And with April coming up this lead me to again think about the article A lunar railroad you can modelby Alan Cerny and Bob Hayden that appeared in the April 1978 issue of Model Railroader.
Once a scale was settled on I started to work out dimensions to fit the drive unit, and look right when an astronaut stood beside it. The loco is unmanned.
After that initial discussion I started to think long and hard about a freelanced little lunar layout that would incorporate, and maybe showcase, Lego's Tintin rocket and the Cerny & Hayden train. To make a very long story short, I eventually settled on a layout that included the rocket, elements of the C&H train, as well as the excavation site in the moon's Tycho crater where the monolith is discovered in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, you read that right: Tintin, C&H, and 2001 in a single layout :-) If I can get the locomotive, train, and track to pass various layout feasibility tests I have in mind, I'll post the layout plan, but until then it's all highly questionable as to whether it will work. Regardless, this gave me a good excuse for trying my hand at making an operating version of the C&H loco as I've wanted to do for 48 years!
These figures are molded in some hideously soft plastic.
The first question that needs to be dealt with is scale. I won't keep you in suspense: I chose OO, 1/76 scale. Why? Well, there are two reasons: one technical, and one artistic.
The technical one is easy (although not completely separable from the artistic one): I have 2 boxes of Airfix OO scale astronauts, and an HO motor bogie from BD Concepts (16.5mm gauge with a 34mm wheelbase).
And then there's the artistic reason, which gets down to questions of size and viewer relatability.
Let's start with the Tintin rocket. It sure isn't OO scale. The Lego website states it's 49cm tall, and the official Tintin site states that according to Tintin canon the 'prototype' stood 75m tall. So, this puts the Lego model at 1:153 scale, which is in the range of the various N-scales that are used throughout the world: 1:148 to 1:160. If the Lego rocket was in OO this would put the prototype at 34.7m tall, considerably shorter than 75m.
Does this height discrepancy matter? As you know I've posted a lot about Selective Compression over the years (for example, see: Selective Compression [alternate], Selective Compression [alternate #2], Use small to seem large, and Selective Impression) and its application to make big things still seem big on a layout even though rigorous adherence to scale is violated. Recall that I'm still trying to build a TD-Centre replica for an HO-scale micro layout, and if I was rigorous about scale an HO scale model would stand nearly 8 feet tall! So, the answer is, the rocket needs to seem a lot taller than surrounding elements, especially people, even though it is considerably shorter than its 'prototype'. Given that the Lego rocket stands 490mm tall, and the astronaut figures are around 20 to 25mm tall, that relative height requirement is meet.
Also I should point out that the rocket itself makes it easy to play this game with scales because of its lack of visible size markers like windows and hatches. There is a lower hatch on the fuselage, down near the fins, but when closed it disappears into the red-and-white checker board pattern.
If I had stuck to N-scale I think the non-rocket elements on the layout, especially the people, would be too small to be relatable to viewers. There'd be a giant rocket and everything else would be teeny-tiny. As well, I don't know how I'd build a C&H train that small.
So, compromise and judicious balancing of layout element sizes is the order of the day.
The BD Concepts motor bogie used to drive the lunar loco
The article states the C&H loco is built to 3/8" scale, which is roughly 9.5mm = 1ft. OO-scale is 4mm = 1 ft, so my model is considerably smaller than theirs, and my model's size is driven by the size of the BD Concepts motor bogie I used: their 34 mm wheelbase unit. They have smaller ones. I used their 28mm unit in the Spumoni Flyer. I only had the 34mm one on hand, so that was that. My choice makes the loco longer than C&H's.
The loco is built up from 3 styrene boxes cut from 0.020" thick scraps: a rectangular box that covers the drive unit, a box with trapezoidal ends that sits on top, and a funny shaped 'nose box' that's stuck on the front.
Ok, you're at 30Squares, and you know I'm interested in the backstories to old model railroading projects, and this one had a strong pull :-) I've wanted to build it for a long time, and looking back, 1978 was a rough year for me, so there's a little bit of nostalgic retrospection going on in me with this project.
I got a little confused when I started searching for Cerny references in the Model Railroader archive because there was mention of an Elmer Cerny and an Alan Cerny. It turns out Elmer was Alan's father. Elmer was an exceptional draftsman, and had a career in the pages of MR as a contributor of highly detailed drawings of locomotives, rail cars, buildings, and other structures.
Two nuts from my cast-offs box were glued in for weight. The hatch panels are cut from scraps of 0.010" thick styrene.
It appears Elmer's first contribution was a letter to the editor in the December 1952 issue. From what I can tell his first full length piece in MR was an article called Build the Bartlett Building Materials Warehouse in the September 1970 issue.
State of construction at the end of day 1.
From then on Elmer Cerny was a fairly regular contributor of exquisite mechanical and architectural drawings until the October 1978 issue. MR had very high drawing standards, and Mr. Cerny's work was one of the cornerstones of that tradition. By my count it looks like he contributed 13 articles and/or drawings throughout the 1970s.
The top of the rectangular box is made from 0.040" (about 1mm) thick styrene. The opening is sized to accept the drive unit mounting clips. I explained how to attach one of these drive units here.
Mr. Cerny contributed a number articles of a type of what I might call, building profiles. In these articles he'd present photographs of a building that caught his interest, describe it and talk about it, and include fine architectural drawings that would allow a modeller to build an accurate replica. So, in some ways, MR was at times playing the role of an architectural historical archive.
Jumping ahead in the build sequence: here is the drive unit clipped into the opening. I haven't decided on how I'm going to couple cars together, so no couplers yet.
Alan Cerny, Elmer Cerny's son, was a MR staff member in the Art / Layout department. His first appearance in MR's masthead, under the Art / Layout heading naturally, was in the February 1976 issue. His name continued to be listed there up until its last appearance in the January 1979 issue when it looks like he left the magazine.
State at the end of day #2. The nose box was also built of 0.020" thick styrene. The bumper is a piece of 0.060" x 0.060" styrene strip.
His name is listed as a collaborator on a few technical drawings that appeared in MR over the years, but his splashiest bylined contribution during his tenure I think was the lunar model railroad article.
The other side of the shell at the end of day #2 The greeblies came from various kit leftovers: The antenna, front lights, and camera are from a Moonscope kit. The lifting hooks are from a Sikorsky Skycrane kit. The lifting handholds are from some long forgotten airplane kit.
The article seems to have gotten a lot of play.
It was mentioned in Russ Larson's April editorial. Reading that editorial all these years later makes we wonder if MR okayed this project to capitalize on the excitement created by Star Wars, which was released the previous year, and since they noted that Cerny was "caught up in the current space fantasy craze" maybe he was just the guy for the mission :-)
Rare behind the scene view of 30Squares' scrap and greeble bins located deep in the bowels of 30Squares' secret construction facility :-)
The Bull Session column in the May '78 issue has a lengthy note in the tradition of those book and magazine articles that were published in that era that had titles like The Making of 2001, The Making of Star Trek, and the Making of Star Wars. This bull session note was their The Making of The Lunar Model Railroad. The author mentions the idea of lunar railroading was kicked off by Bob Hayden on the afternoon of 28 October 1977, which would indeed put it in the midst of the Star Wars craze.
State at the end of day #3: A horribly bungled paint job that had to be stripped! I was giddy with joy at being able to spray paint outside on a day with summer-like temps. It was windy though, and I held the spray can too close for too long to the shell and.... blobby paint resulted.
And there were other things going on in the culture that may have also fuelled interest from MR. The lunar model railroad article notes Stewart Brand's book, Space Colonies, which was published in September 1977, as a reference. Also, Gerard O'Neill's highly influential book, The High Frontier, was first published in January 1977, and in paperback in January 1978. Star Wars itself was released at the end of May 1977. There was a positive space vibe in the air at the time, so maybe MR was looking for a little piece of the action.
State at the end of day #5, the final day of construction. Day #4 was spent repainting the shell with a brush! And doing detail painting and decaling. On day #5 all that was left to do was snap in the drive unit....and voila!
The June and July '77 issues contained a number of positive letters from lunar railroad fans in the Railway Post Office column. One correspondent, a Mr. Thomas G. Levy, noted: "If the lunar train concept and modelwork had been in existence before 1968, it would have undoubtedly been included in the lunar surface footage of the motion picture "2001: A Space Odyssey." It would be an excellent idea to be included in the upcoming movie "Star Wars, Part 2"". Challenge accepted :-)
The paint stripping wasn't perfect and left a rough surface. I rather liked it and just painted over it. Maybe it's some sort of thermal coating that's been eroded by moon dust :-)
Another correspondent, Mr. Dan Swearingen, noted that some of the components used looked like those in his old Erector Set, and one proposed shipping container looked like a sardine can. Mr. Donald L. Ward commented that: "...the lunar railroad was excellent! Previous attempts at "April foolery" have been just foolishness, but here is an article filled with creative imagination." Overall the response, well at least those published, was quite positive.
I think that greeble on the right is a starter motor from a car model :-) I haven't figured out what to do about couplers. And weathering, that'll be much later if a layout comes to pass.
There's a brief biographical note about Alan Cerny in an article that introduced MR's then current staff in the August '78 issue. It notes he had a longtime interest in model building and art, and that he studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. The article also says he regarded model railroading as "a renaissance hobby in which you can learn about the world and yourself - "about your skills and limitations.""
Looks like the Dodge boys had a hand in this thing. Ugh, I see areas that still need touch-up.
It appears that Alan Cerny's last 20th century appearance in an MR article was in the March 1983 issue as the winner of a MR layout planning contest. The intro to the article notes "Many MR readers will remember Alan's byline from his imaginative article, "A lunar railroad you can model", in the April 1978 issue." It also notes he was then employed at Signode Corp.
Out for a spin on the Way Out Layout. It runs well. I need to post a video.
Well, that's that. Next I'll either try my hand at a couple of lunar freight cars, or try some tests to figure out what the minimum curve radius is this thing can handle and what sort of grades it can climb.
While you're waiting for me to make up my mind, I'll leave you with the Deodato hit from '73:
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