A loop around the Unitram block

The week between Christmas and New Years is always an odd one, and this one is no different. I've had the urge to wrap up loose ideas I've put off looking at throughout the year. This is one. 

While working on motoring the Atlas Hong Kong tram, and again while drawing up the new layout, I wondered how the HO tram on an N-gauge power unit would run on the Kato Unitram track in an HO scale urban setting. It turns out it runs quite well, but I don't think trams could pass each other going in opposite directions without colliding on the centre line. These trams are just a little bit too wide for the track.

But, I think there's a layout idea in there somewhere. Maybe something with a pair of switches to create a second loop so the layout is divided into two parts. I have wanted to do something with a city part and a part similar to Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm. But, not right now. It's just an idea to play with this odd week.

TD Bank Tower Mockup in N scale

No, I didn't build a second TD Bank Tower mockup in N-scale, just re-photographed it with a Bachmann N-scale PCC nearby (a reader mentioned that this PCC is closer to 1/150 than 1/160, so calibrate your eyes accordingly). 

A non-selectively compressed tower in N would stand about 4-1/2' tall, which is a bit more than twice the height of this 2' tall mockup. Also, the mockup's ground floor lobby is probably a bit too tall in N (26.5'), and a bit too short in HO (14.5'). 

I haven't tried mockups before, but playing with them is rather fun, and it's good to see the possibilities without having to commit to a complete model.

E. L. Moore's Legacy in the 21st Century: Raymond Frankenberger and the E. L. Moore Style

When I started this series on E. L. Moore I'd heard of the old magazine Model Trains, but had never read any issues. I'd never even seen any except in photos on the internet. Model Trains was one of Mr. Moore’s main outlets early in his career. As I hunted up issues where his work appeared, I got hooked. There was no looking back. I was enchanted with Model Trains’ layout, calm ‘50s style, and editorial tone. Surprisingly, for a magazine ostensibly aimed at beginners in its later years, it contains a lot of advanced content, and some projects are decidedly not beginner-level, or at least not beginner-level by today’s standards. I branched out a bit and bought some issues on trolleys and traction and other topics that caught my interest. I guess I own around a third of Model Trains' output, so there is the other two-thirds I’m looking forward to reading one day.

[Centre spread from Raymond Frankenberger's Drag, Man? that appeared in the January 1957 issue of Model Trains. It's all story. No how-to. No layout tour. No nothing of the usual. Just a story with integrated photos.]

In the January 1957 issue of Model Trains I came across an unusual article by Raymond Frankenberger called Drag, Man?. It’s unusual because it’s not a how-to, or a layout tour, or a prototype discussion, or any other sort of standard article type one expects to see in a model railroading magazine. What it is, is a 3-page piece of fiction about some teenage boys who decide to drag race two steam locomotives [1]. It's just a story. Nothing more, nothing less. Think American Graffiti with trains. The action takes place on Mr. Frankenberger’s Pen Arden ND layout – ND for ‘No Diesels’ – and includes photos of some key events staged with HO scale locos and figures. This kind of article is rare, and more-or-less extinct today [2]. 

E. L. Moore wrote a quasi-historical fiction in this vein called The Centennial Celebration of the Golden Spike Laying at Promontory Point, Utah that appeared in the May 1969 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. It was about the exploits of Lucifer Penroddy Snooks, his 'great-grandfather', while he photographed the events at the transcontinental railroad’s golden spike ceremony in 1869. And as we know, Mr. Moore frequently wrapped his how-to articles in a fictional story to set the scene. Did E. L. Moore follow Raymond Frankenberger’s lead? Maybe it was vice versa? Maybe it was simply two independent writers following their own paths, or indulging in writing articles that weren’t too out-of-line for their times? I can’t say for sure, but I was curious and tried to track down more articles by Mr. Frankenberger [3].

[Introduction to New factory for the Pen Arden Road by Raymond Frankenberger, Model Trains, December 1958.]

New factory for the Pen Arden Road, in the December 1958 issue of Model Trains was one I found, and I was surprised to see how stylistically similar it was to what I think is a classic E. L. Moore article. There’s a woven-in fictional story to set the scene, the building is relatively straightforward to build from common hobby materials of the day – but, no balsa :-) - and the building is an attractive, selectively-compressed version of something one might see out in the world.

[The Diaz Contemporary Gallery in Toronto. I took the photo in July 2013]

However, unlike an E. L. Moore project, this one is modern – well, modern for the 1950’s. Mr. Frankenberger's factory reminded me of the Diaz Contemporary Gallery in Toronto where I saw some Kim Adams pieces a couple of years ago. The factory - with a twist - seemed like a good project for Tor-N-to: a side street gallery along the streetcar route housed in a repurposed light industrial building from an earlier era. So after my usual long period of waffling, one day I decided to jump in and build an N-scale version of the Mr. Frankenberger's Pen Arden factory, but using styrene instead of wood.

In the article, Mr. Frankenberger’s approach to construction reminded me of the small buildings game. In the game, the idea is to use odd parts – for example, out-of-scale windows and doors, kitchen tiles, parts from plastic car models or any other non-model structure stuff you find interesting – to make a small building that could possibly exist, but doesn’t. Mr. Frankenberger built his factory using standard Northeastern basswood pieces, not to scratch build with them, but to use as elements to glue up as is – cut to length of course – to construct a modern looking building. At the end of the article he encourages readers to take those materials and play with them to see what they can come up with [4]. I didn’t carry the small buildings game into my build. Mine’s more-or-less a standard scratch building project, but using older techniques closer to the Frankenberger and Moore era than to ours.

I started by drawing the walls in N-scale. There aren't any plans in the article, just what amount to some diagrams that show how to glue the basswood stock together combined with some rather detailed instructions in the text. The diagrams are 1/2 HO scale, which is quite close to N, so they make extrapolating N scale plans a little easier. I figured I'd lay out the wall pieces and windows directly on the plan.

Since the model in the article is made by gluing together pre-cut stock, I decided to cut standard size pieces of 0.020 inch styrene and glue them up in a similar approach as was used in the original. Some cut strips are lying on the magazine in the above photo.I used the same technique for building up the Fortran building. In retrospect, I could have just used sheet styrene and cut window openings out of the wall rectangles.

Here are the strips being laid on the plan and glued together. Liquid glue was used. Once the joints were dry some sanding was needed to clean up the joints and even out everything.

At this point all the strips had been glued up into complete walls. I started to test their fit. The floor was cut from a piece of 0.040 inch styrene sheet.

The walls were glued to the floor with styrene tube glue, which was also used to glue the walls together at the corners. Corner trim strips were cut from 0.010 in styrene, and the ledge strip that runs along the top of walls is 0.020 in x 0.020 in strip stock.

Along the upper inside edge of the walls I glued in some L-angle styrene strip for setting the roof on. The roof is also a piece of 0.020 inch sheet, but it's just set on the L-angle, not glued in place to allow for access to the interior.

This photo gives you a little better view of the roof ledge. 

The entrance was a little tricky to cut and fit. There's two walls, both with entrance doors, set at right-angles to each other. These walls are cut from 0.010 inch sheet styrene. 

Here's the front facade after the remaining trim pieces have been glued on. Strip stock of 0.020 x 0.020 inch was glued on the top and bottom of the window edges. All wall corners have been trimmed with 0.010 inch strips.

Here's the short side that abuts the entry. That's a large, unbroken window on the end.

And here's the other end. It has two separate windows. In this photo you can see a roof top thingie poking above the corner. It's half of an HO-scale roof-top blower from a set of Walther's roof details. 

Once the basic building was assembled, I used the plan to lay out the windows. I cut a piece of overhead transparency film, taped it over the plan, and traced the window frames onto the sheet with a fine-tipped Sharpie marker. In order to get the right amount of opaqueness, I lined both sides of the clear film. When done, these 'window walls' were cut free from the excess film.

Thin strips of gray construction paper were cut to frame the windows. These lay-ups form the inner walls and eventually they get glued to the inside of the building.

Here's one end wall where the paper strips have been trimmed. Now it's ready to glue to its styrene partner.

Before gluing the interior walls, the building was painted. In retrospect, the colour is a bit too intense, and will need some pastel powders to weather it a bit and take the edge off. In its current state, consider it a new coat of paint on an old building that wants to make a strong impression on passers-by :-)

The inside surface of the roof has an LED light strip cut from the reel I bought for Gecko Records. All I had to do was solder on a pair of leads and it was ready for installation.

The LED strip has an adhesive strip on the back, so just peel off the protective paper and press the lights to the roof interior to attach.I glued styrene U-section strips to either side to block a little of the light from coming out the front and back windows.

A hole was drilled in the floor for the light's wires to pass through.

A short section of styrene tube was glued over the hole so that the wires are hidden from view.

You can put 12v DC across the LEDs, but even with a 9v battery, the LEDs give off a good light.

Next was to fit out the interior. The paintings were cut from damaged old postage stamps. Two examples are shown above glued to a cardboard backing - the same gray card that was used to panel the inside walls.

That long painting is a cutting from a catalog photo. Those cylinders are fittings for making bolo ties - they have just the right size.

With the roof on and the lights lit, it doesn't look too bad. Well, I don't know if I'd want to stare down a cat that big :-)

One of the last things was to install the gallery initials over the entrance area. Mr. Frankenberger cut the sign letters for his model from HO-scale ladder stock, so I decided to do the same.

And that's about it construction-wise.

All that was left to do was print off some signs and glue them on near the entrance.

Some toning down on the colour is in order once it takes up residence on Tor-N-to, but there'll be no ignoring it once it's in place :-)

Digressions

[1] I thought Mr. Frankenberger's locomotive drag racing story was completely fictional, but it turns out at one time drag racing model locomotives was a thing. Louis Hertz tells the tale in his book, The Complete Book of Model Raceways and Roadways,

[A 5 lane train drag racing setup from pg. 217 of The Complete Book of Model Raceways and Roadways.]

Model train racing was regarded solely as a historical curiosity, a forerunner of slot racing, when the first edition of this book was published [JDL: the first edition was published in 1964]. Today, however, to the surprise of some, model train racing has appeared as an active hobby once again, and the races run under the sponsorship of the Toy Train Operating Society, a national organization but founded and with its chief base of operation on the west coast, have attracted considerable interest. Somewhat curiously, present-day train racing has not followed its former pattern of racing two trains on identical continuous layout, but instead has developed in the form of racing on parallel straight tracks, much akin to automobile drag racing. However, whereas in automobile drag racing only two lanes are ever used, the model train racing usually makes use of from three to five parallel tracks. Train racing is customarily done only with locomotives, or, occasionally, with very short trains. In many cases obsolete locomotives, with the motors repaired, cleaned, and tuned up for the purpose are used; in some instances modern train equipment is raced.

Louis H. Hertz, pg. 217-218, The Complete Book of Model Raceways and Roadways, revised edition, Crown Publishers, 1967.

[2] Writing a fictional background history for a layout isn’t new or unusual, but a layout fiction that's more like a short story that includes characters with speaking parts is. I can’t say the past was rife with this sort of thing because I haven’t seen a lot of examples, but what little there was seems to be all but gone in our more pragmatic, just-the-facts-ma’am age. Maybe it was common in earlier ages; maybe what we see in earlier model railroading literature was inspired by stories in the old Railroad pulp magazine; maybe it was simply a quirk of a few eccentric writers and nothing more.

[That's a Raymond Frankenberger photo on the cover of the March 1959 issue of Model Trains]

E. L. Moore appears to be the one writer who’s used this device the most, but even with him, not all of his writings make use of novelization. Raymond Frankenberger appears to have dabbled in it, and his Drag, Man ? is one of the best examples of the genre. I was surprised that even the editor of Model Trains noted on Mr. Frankenberger’s March 1959 cover photo that he had a special talent in that area,

He  also delights in writing fantasies such as this: "It wasn't until after he took the pic that our enterprising photog got the shakes. He slipped as he jumped from the path of the onrushing monsters, and aged considerably as he lay in the ditch while hundreds of wheels ground ominously on the rails within arm's reach."

Willard Anderson notes the tale that Raymond Frankenberger wrote to explain his cover photo on the March 1959 issue of Model Trains

The April 1980 issue of Railroad Modeler had an article in this genre called Big Tujunga's Secret Project. A humourous piece clearly targeted for the traditional April Fool’s serving often seen in various forms in old model railroad magazines.

Joseph Wilhelm used novelization in his Buffalo River and Empire layout tour series that appeared in Model Trains. The March 1954 instalment is a good example.

I haven’t seen other examples, but I still have a lot of good reading ahead of me, so I’m hoping there are further surprises to be found.

[3] Here's a list of Raymond Frankenberger publications I've found so far.

This Could be Verse
A letter to the editor instructing the readership in how to build a custom locomotive using a 6 line poem (!) and a photo in Model Railroader, August 1956.

Trixie the Trollop from the Thames (Custom-build a kit locomotive)

Model Trains, December 1956

Drag, Man?

Model Trains, January 1957

How to make a diner out of a combine

Model Trains, February 1957

Freelanced Pacifics on the Pen Arden Railroad

Railroad Model Craftsman, February 1957

Photo of an area of Raymond Frankenberger's layout

Stop, look and listen section of Model Trains, Fall 1957
(note, there's also an E. L. Moore photo in this section of the village of Eagleroost on his Eagleroost and Koontree RR)

New Factory for the Pen Arden Road

Model Trains, December 1958

Photo of an area of Raymond Frankenberger's layout
Stop, look and listen section of Model Trains, January 1958
(note, there's also an E. L. Moore photo in this section of his Eagleroost and Koontree RR)

Cover photo
Model Trains, March 1959

Become a Knight of the Train Table

Model Trains, September 1959.
(note, E. L. Moore's The light fantastic article - about building a low cost light fixture for your layout that can simulate both day and night - also appears in this issue)

[4] I stumbled across this photo of a light industrial area on Mr. Frankenberger's layout in Model Trains.

[This picture of a section of Raymond Frankenberger's layout appeared in the Stop, look and listen section of Model Trains {JDL: I've misplaced the issue this photo appeared in, so I'll update the post with date information when I find it}. I've added the arrow in the upper right to indicate what looks like the factory from the New Factory for the Pen Arden Road article. The other factories are in a similar style, and the photo suggests Mr.Frankenberger did a lot of scratchbuilding to produce this light industrial area. Like E. L. Moore photos, this one is carefully staged, lit, and includes a background mural that seamlessly integrates into the foreground scene.]

The editor points out the large number of automobiles in the parking lots. And it's true, the lots are full, as they would be on a typical workday. That's a notable slice of realism in this scene, but the thing that struck me is that he got the spacing of the buildings, parking lots, rail sidings and roads right. Although the buildings have a selective compression feel, the elements in the scene aren't all squished together. The balance and proportions of the overall scene is right. There's even more open field in the centre for further expansion.

Impression-izing Bachmann's N-scale TTC PCC the Jedi way

Which leads us to the moral of this story - don't wait for perfection - just do the best you can NOW, with what is available NOW - that is the real way to progress.

Vane A. Jones, publisher of Traction and Models, dispenses some sage advice in the Office Car column of the September 1970 issue.

Do. Or do not. There is no try. 

Yoda, Grand Jedi Master, The Empire Strikes Back

Awhile back I bought a Bachmann N-scale TTC PCC streetcar. It ran quite well, but I wasn't satisfied with the way it looked. It seemed to ride too high - actual TTC PCCs look more low-slung - and the wheels didn't line up under the openings. I thought I'd have a go at trying to fix those issues.

[The door side of the out-of-the-box model]

And although I'm certainly not worthy to doubt the sage advice of one of cinema's greatest fictional characters, this project was all about trying. Maybe not in the half-hearted way that the Jedi of all Jedi was telling us to avoid, but in the more clear minded Jedi Jones, 'trying as a way to make progress', way. I knew this was new territory for me, and even though I wanted to get it right, this whole thing was likely going to be a learning experience whose lessons might be better applied to the next member of my miniature streetcar fleet.

[This photo of the real McCoy was sourced from John Chuckman's excellent blog, Lost Toronto. I won't try to say what version or iteration of a 1970's TTC PCC this is other than it's this sort of image that my mind says, "that looks right".]

I also realized this wasn't doing to result in a high-fidelity replica of any PCC. For that, a complete from scratch effort with a 3-D printer is likely the way to go. I was going for an impression of correctness, so that when the car went by on the track, it wouldn't trigger thoughts of how terribly deficient it was, but would pass-by without disturbing the force.

Here's what's inside the body shell. The interior is more-or-less completely filled with two chunky blocks of metal, which are screwed together and are used to provide weight and distribute power to the motor from the truck pickups. I had hopes of grinding or cutting down the height of the metal blocks, but no dice, the motor is flush with the block tops. However, those little tabs that hold the shell to the blocks were cut off with a Dremel cutter. I thought that they keep the body too high on the chassis, but once removed, they only drop the shell a little bit, but with them gone, I filled the corresponding slots on the shell so the body looked a little more real.

This is the back end of the body block unit. I cut off those end tabs to try and get the shell to slide further back and help right the wheel / body alignment problem. It helped a bit. What actually needs to be done is the blocks need to be unscrewed, taken apart and about a 1/4 inch needs to be cut off. Yoda would be hanging his head in disgust at this point because I chickened out on that step. I wasn't sure if I could re-assemble it and get it to work again. Even though this one runs well, when I bought it, of the three for sale, this was the only one that ran smoothly. The others hesitated, stuttered and needed prodding to get them to go. I wanted to make sure that at the end of this little expedition in streetcar customizing the patient still ran without issues. I was going to save radical surgery and running-gear tuning for another project. 

Well, after lots of attempts and tries, this is the finished mechanism block before re-installing it in the shell. All side and rear body tabs were cut off, the passenger images were painted over with black, and the trucks were painted with a loose mixture of Model Master Acryl British Crimson and Tamiya acrylic Deep Green. You can see I had a go at cutting back and shortening the back-end of the metal block, but stopped when I realized I should take the thing apart before going farther.

For completeness, this is the other side.

Since I couldn't reduce the height of the metal block housing the drive mechanism, I thought I'd try lowering the body a bit. I glued strips of 0.040 in. x 0.040 in. styrene around the shell's lower perimeter. I was cautious here as I thought if the strips were too big they would wreck the streamlined shape and make the shell too boxy. After making this modification, I think 0.040 in. x 0.060 in. strips instead of the 0.040 x 0.040 would give a better look, but I wouldn't go any further than adding a 0.060 in. wide strip. You can also see in the photo that filler was gooped into the slots for the side body tabs.

I did the same thing to the other side. You can see that if the strip gets too wide the step down from the doors will seem too great, so I think this approach of adding a lowering strip is limited.

The front of the out-of-the-box shell has a section scalloped out. It struck me as too deep, so I filled it as I wrapped the styrene strip around the front.

Wrapping the strip around the back completes the process. I let the strips dry for a couple of days and then proceeded to sand and shape them to get them to conform to the contours of the shell and look blended in. I think I only did a so-so job as I was too cautious. I'm still not confident working in this small scale and need more practice. Although, I was happy on the blending job on the T'rantula as it was the first built-up body shell I've made that looks more-or-less seamless, so I figure with some practice, these N-scale shells should get better.

The final step was to paint the smoothed styrene strips with a mixture of Model Master Acryl British Crimson and Model Master Acryl Stop Light Red and get the colours to blend with the rest of the shell. The windows were glazed with Micro Kristal Klear. Some loose washes of thin flat black and Tamiya Smoke were brushed on for a little weathering. I think the doorless side needs an advertising billboard, the black destination board needs a destination lettered on it, and the trolley pole should be some sort of non-black metallic colour to help with the overall impression, but those should be relatively easy things to add.

At this point, it was time to take the thing for a spin around Tor-N-to to see if it still ran.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Tor-N-to is still more-or-less just a collection of Kato Unitram track pieces I've been playing with. The idea behind Tor-N-to is a work-in-progress from thinking about omni-circulatory layouts, and reading lots of old model railroad magazines. 

At first I was reading that old stuff just for the E. L. Moore articles, but I soon became interested in the other things those old pages had on display. It seems that every so often in the ‘50s and ‘60s articles were written to try and convince readers that trolley systems were good things to model, if not in whole, at least as an adjunct to their main layout. Frankly, as a streetcar enthusiast, even I didn’t find those articles convincing. Their arguments were marginal at best.

My interest in streetcars, especially the TTC, is laced with generous heapings of nostalgia, which is also the driving force behind many mainstream modeller’s pet obsessions. You’re either interested in them, or you’re not. There’s no case to be made based merely on the technical attributes of the prototype or models. People might develop an interest from seeing streetcar layouts in action, from photos, or their own memories, but it’s not a case that can be argued. I grew up riding TTC buses, streetcars and subways in order to get around Toronto. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Toronto had the most extensive and still operational streetcar system in existence in either Canada or the US, and it was used by a wide swath of socio-economic classes. I’m not suggesting it was some golden age of candy, rainbows and unicorns, no, merely that it was, and is, a unique urban transportation experience in North America, and has left me with generally pleasant memories of a certain time and place. That strikes me as a sounder basis for a layout than an argument that trolley systems are more suited to modelling rail transport than other subjects because they can handle tight radii track or really do run on electricity.

Even so, it’s still not possible to build the whole thing. Judicious choices are required. Maybe a particular street or run. For me, I’m looking to replicate some sort of feeling or impression. Some sense of the place. Some things that interest me. Some things that should be idealized. I think streetcar layouts, especially a TTC or Toronto inspired one, are tricky because they involve lots of buildings and urban scenery. And not the usual rundown, wrong-side-of-the-tracks material. We’re talking more every day, commonplace, well maintained stuff that most people would encounter in their day-to-day activities. A Toronto inspired layout  wouldn’t be well served by an over reliance on Walthers, DPM, or Woodland Scenics products, so considerable scratch building and kit bashing might be called for. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that most streetcar layouts might be more oriented to building and structure modellers who like that sort of thing. I think a key distinguishing feature of a model streetcar layout is that it’s place oriented instead of rail vehicle oriented.

Speaking of streetcars, I shy away from the word traction; trolley and tram aren’t too bad, but I’ve never heard TTC streetcars referred to as trolleys or trams, just plain streetcars, and most civilians have no idea what traction is other than a state you’re put into after serious bodily injury :-)

I might go out on a limb and propose that model streetcar layouts are radically different from model railroads. Sure, there are similarities much like there are similarities between automobiles and motorcycles, but it might be more productive to think of model streetcar layouts as being a separate breed instead of a poor relation to model railroads. So, instead of trying, as those old articles did, to convince model railroaders to take up model streetcar systems and argue about what makes them worthy of their attention, maybe it’s better to abandon that approach and think of model streetcar layouts as their own class of thing. I haven’t gone too far yet with this line of thinking, but I think it might be an interesting path to walk along for awhile.

Possibly the term ‘model railroad’ is one place to start. Looking at a phrase and teasing out what it means by interrogating individual words seems like a turn away from pleasant adult conversation into the pit of nerdish quibbling, but such a brief detour might be useful at this point. Today, the mainstream use of ‘model’ in ‘model railroading’ is meant to imply that the thing in question is a small scale representation of an actual railroad, either currently existing or historical. It’s something that captures the detail and sense of a real railroad and can be operated as the real thing might have operated.  This is an excellent goal and many important innovations have been achieved as a consequence of its pursuit. But, sometimes I wonder if it might lead to point where progress is no longer possible. At that point there will be lots of fascinating layouts, incredible feats of technique and creativity, but this might be a point where surprising and delightful developments no longer occur. That path, the path that model railroading is on as presented by today’s model railroading press, might not be completely the right direction to follow for a model streetcar system. For example, the detail and density and energy of the streetcar’s ‘natural’ environment might not be well represented. Maybe some mix of impressionistic plus abstract plus realistic modelling is needed to capture those traits and keep the artifact doable. And a model streetcar system might blend in one of the other meanings of ‘model’; namely, the one that suggests that the artifact is something to be used as an example to follow or imitate. As cities can be crucibles of new ideas, a streetcar layout might represent things that could be as well as things as they are, since cities are often also mixtures of old and new and future side-by-side.

Did the streetcars and subways of the TTC drive and determine many of the unique characteristics of Toronto, or was it the reverse? It’s a point I can’t answer, but it would be key to developing a layout that has the feeling of the city. Can that feeling survive in the current era? I don’t know that one either.

Omni-vagancy is another unique characteristic of a model streetcar layout. This aspect alone makes it fundamentally different from a modern model railroad design. There are likely other unique concepts to these types of layouts - it'll be fun figuring them out.

Model streetcar system? Is that a good name for this new thing? It doesn’t roll off the tongue like model railroad or model railway does. Some thought is needed. Well, lots of thought is needed on this whole idea. For now it’s back to the damp and musty pages of Dagobah in a model railroad galaxy far, far away :-)