The Centennial Experimental Farm's Biodome*

In 1966 NASA, the Canadian National Science Research Establishment, and the Centennial Experimental Farm agreed to build a biodome test facility on the farm's grounds to simulate growing exotic tropical plants on the Moon. It was believed that if these plants could thrive throughout an Ottawa winter, the Moon would pose no difficulties. If successful, lunar construction of such a facility was slated to begin with NASA's Apollo 30 mission. 

Funding ran out in 1970, and the project was scrubbed from Apollo 30's manifest. However, the facility was revived in 1977 in anticipation of the creation of the ExoBioLab facility for the then in development Space Transportation System. 

*Hopefully I don't need to say this is all made up nonsense, but in case you were wondering, it's all made up nonsense.

Ramsey's Garage alias the Star Journal Building

Here at 30Squares Labs we continue to experiment with the compound N₂HO^c. For the laymen out there, N₂HO^c refers to structures resulting from converting N scale kits to casualized HO scale models. You may remember the previous project that successfully synthesized the 30Squares HQ (aka the Eldon Building) from Walthers' N scale Backshop kit.

Ok, ok, enough with the nonsense.

Back in March I bought this kit at a local swap meet. Since then its been sitting on the floor near my drafting table. While I was cleaning up after finishing Cal's Lumberyard I opened the box and wandered through the parts.

After a few minutes of handling I had a sense this little building would make an interesting HO scale garage. Well, it would be a casualized HO scale garage since, strictly speaking, this kit had nothing to do with HO scale.

The kit is an N scale version of the HO scale Ramsey Journal Building kit, which is based on E. L. Moore's project of the same name that appeared in the December 1967 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. The HO scale plastic kit of his project was first released by AHM (kit #5819) in the late 1960s. Over the years it was repackaged and re-released by a number of companies. I don't know when the N scale version was released, or if Model Power was the first to release it - I suspect not, but there's some research to be done on the history of this little model.

The kit was likely first released in the mid 70s or early 80s by the look of the parts. Even though the box wasn't sealed it appeared that all the parts were present. 

To build a credible version of the Ramsey Journal Building - or the 'Star Journal Building' as this thing is called, likely to avoid a copyright infringement legal entanglement - you'd have to apply generous amounts of TLC during construction.

The parts are rather crude by today's standards, not to mention their garish colours.

To make matters a bit worse, the walls have serious sink holes near the chimneys that need to be filled and re-scribed. For my garage I cut off the chimneys as they'd be out of scale, but I still had to fill those dimples.

The walls' inside surfaces are clean, but because I was going to open up the building I had to grind off all the mold release pins and assembly numbers.

I'm not going to walk you through a step-by-step build of this project. It's dead simple to make, and no doubt you'll know how to do it by simply studying the photos.

What I am going to do is focus on its design so if you're interested in doing your own N to HO conversions, you'll get a sense of the trade-offs required, and the properties of kits that might be suitable for such modifications.

First off, I should note I have my biases when tackling these sort of projects. I like a building that lets in lots of light, and that affords unobstructed views into and through it. Those were the primary drivers on the modified Cal's Lumberyard project, Cal's Cabbage Co., the McGregor Park Library, the Insectary, and what attracted me to Walthers Backshop kit. I applied that bias to this project. The kit has lots of windows that can let in a lot of light, a façade that can accommodate a big open door, and a flat roof for a big skylight, so it seemed to have the right characteristics for the kind of building I like.

One question that is often raised is, doesn't the size of the bricks give away the game? N scale bricks are far too small on an HO scale model. Yes, that's true, but there appears to be variation in brick sizes across kits, especially old ones.

The photo on the left compares the bricks on our garage to those on the Walthers Backshop kit. Both are allegedly N scale. Given that in HO a standard brick measures about 0.7mm high by 2.3mm long, the Model Power ones on the right of the photo are quite close to true HO, and the Walthers bricks in the centre of the photo are close to true N scale. Those bricks to the far left in the picture are sheet styrene panels I added to close up some openings in the Backshop. To confuse matters, the sticker on the sheet said they were "1:100 scale, HO scale". Well, they are close to 1:87.1, true HO scale. 

Since the bricks on the Backshop are too small for HO I chose not to detail them with mortar and weathering. To me the important feature of the building is its huge windows, and not its brickwork, so I chose not to call out the bricks and spoil the illusion. However, on the garage, given the bricks were about normal size for HO, and the exterior of the building was quite plain without either the clock tower or stock façade, I detailed the brickwork to provide more visual interest. It's all a choice about what you want the model to say.

Here's another comparison: Ramsey's Garage on the right and the Park Square building on the left. Park Square was built using the HO scale Ramsey Journal Building as its shell.

The Park Square's bricks are huge and seem more like blocks than bricks. In other words, the bricks on the HO scale Ramsey Journal Building kit are very oversize for HO scale.

One last comparison: our garage on the right and Moore's Balsa Products on the left, which is just my renamed build of the E. L. Moore designed HO scale AHM Machine Shop kit.

The bricks on the machine shop are much more HO-like than those on the Ramsey Journal Building. 

The message here is, don't be too swayed by the claims to HO or N scale as far as brickwork is concerned. Size it up for yourself.

And then there're windows.

Each window is a bit small for HO, but they're passable. Which is a good thing, because there were two other problems that had to be dealt with.

The first issue was each window had to be cut from the strips they were molded into so I could create individual frames. This isn't a problem for a box stock build because no one can see inside. Once de-stripped, I cut each window down from 8 panes to 4 by removing mullions with an X-acto knife. Ok, well, actually I removed the mullions first, and then removed the frames from the strips. The extra mullions had to go because in the 8 pane window, each pane seemed too small. With just 4 each, the windows seemed more in line with HO scale.

The second problem was the tops of the ground floor windows weren't high enough above grade. This is very apparent when they're compared to the back door I added - the door's a Tichy Train Group item.

What I should have done was add a styrene foundation wall about 18" to 24" tall to boost the structure. Galen recommended that for the Park Square building and it proved to be a significant improvement in the overall design.

Speaking of windows, the largest are part of the skylight.

The kit comes with a rather small skylight, and simply opening up the roof so it would let light inside wasn't going to produce the effect I wanted. I scratchbuilt a larger one from 0.020" thick sheet styrene and some styrene strips. It's that white, triangular structure shown in the photo on the left. Below it is the kit's stock skylight.

Skylights are pretty common on the E. L. Moore plastic kits. On the left is the Park Square build and that's its skylight. It's an HO scale item, but if I was opening up that model for more natural light I'd say it's too small to do much good.

The machine shop - Moore's Balsa Products in this picture - is better skylight-wise. Although If I were to do another I'd replace the kit's roof with a flat one and add some slightly bigger skylights.

The garage's new skylight uses considerably more rooftop real estate, but it still only just peeks above the walls, and it's not too noticeable from the street.

The only other new cosmetic detail was the addition of a pair of trifold doors out front made from slices of 0.020" styrene sheet. They didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped, so let's move on.

On the structural side, I had to add three internal joists made from styrene strips. The walls bowed inward, and since I had discarded the kit's base, I added the joists to get rid of the bow. They did the trick, and although they're merely sketches of actual joists, they make all the right suggestions when viewed from the outside.

Did any of these modifications for light and views work? Well, here's the view inside:

I can see the sign on the back wall of the post office through the garage's backdoor window, and there are some interesting shadows on the garage floor, so I'm happy with these effects, modest as they are.

Since I've been thinking recently about my father's old '49 Mercury I pulled my HO version from storage and used it in the glamour shots. It's an Oxford item.

Hey, if your friends don't hurry up they'll have to walk to school.

Eldon moves in

The 30Squares Media Empire let the lease expire on the HQ, and a new tenant is getting ready to move in.

Looks like they'll have their work cut out for them as it appears the foundation has shifted.

Scrap-building

Archie's garage built from styrene scraps & leftover mouldings

Scrap-building: Scale modelling with common household materials that would normally be put in the garbage.

Usage: Gluing together Archie's garage was a pleasant evening of scrap-building.

Source: A term attributed to Kaustav Chatterjee in the March / April 2015 issue of N-Scale Magazine article, Scrap-Building: Container Handler / Gantry Crane, by Mouli and Kaustav Chatterjee:

Except for a few, all structures on this layout are scratch-built, or 'scrap-built' as Kaustav likes to call them, because all of these structures are built primarily with various types of cardboard and other household materials that generally would find their way to the waste paper bin.

Scrap-building is not synonymous with scratch-building because scrap specifically refers to the main type of materials used, and scratch suggests any 'raw' material could be used. Although, scrap-building and scratch-building both imply the model in question is not being built from kits. 

Scrap-building is a modern term that harkens back to the venerable history of making miniature buildings and structures from cast-off materials. The L. T. Gieringer quote from 1938 presented in Yard [archaic] lists some of the common materials he used to build structures in the days before specialized hobby materials were available. The times change, and what constitutes common household materials does too, but their use to build models continues on.

from The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms, 3rd ed., 2019.

Walls and Windows and CURRENtoons

In the last instalment of the 30Squares HQ build I stopped at the point where I needed to think a bit about how to proceed with the interior.

I thought and thought and thought.

Eventually I settled on a two floor arrangement with an elevator between stories. 

Picking up where I left off, the next step was to glue a styrene ledge on the walls to support the second floor. For this I used 2mm x 4mm Evergreen styrene strip.

The ledge was set 2 scale feet below the second floor window sills. I think this makes the windows a little too close to the floor, but there isn't much room as some space needs to be left for gluing the first floor window frames to the walls. 

Once the ledges were installed, 0.125" square styrene verticals were glued to the inside of the wall pilasters to give some dimensionality to the wall surfaces. Verticals will also be installed on the second floor after the second floor is glued in place. 

One thing to note about the vertical pieces is that the surface that abuts the wall needs to be slightly notched so the vertical will fit into the base when the wall is glued to the ground floor.

The second floor is cut from a sheet of 0.040" styrene. 

The square grid I've penciled on the piece is a projection of the grid formed by the wall pilasters. I used them to help me think about where to place the elevator shaft, which will be a square section column placed in the opening. 

The elevator shaft will only fill the back half of the opening, and will leave a square opening in the floor so that persons on the second floor can see down to the ground floor - and vice versa of course :-) I'll need to add a second floor railing for safety's sake.

At this point I decided to move on to painting the walls.

The insides were painted with Tamiya XF-76, Gray Green.

The floors were painted with Tamiya XF-80, Royal Light Gray.

The outer wall surfaces were painted using a procedure similar to the one I used last summer on the Weekly Herald project.

Although, I did make a couple of modifications to the process. 

First, on the Weekly Herald I primed the walls with a spray of Tamiya's white surface primer, but I didn't do that here. This kit's walls are a light brown colour instead of an acid yellow, so I thought it was ok to work directly on the pieces (recall that I had washed them in the last instalment in order to remove any traces of mould release). 

Second, I mixed the brick colour using Revell Aqua Colour instead of Model Master acrylics. As you may know, I'm trying out new acrylics since Model Master paints have been discontinued.

The brick colour mix I used was Revell's 36137, Reddish brown, and 36162, Mossy green. The green is to dull the brown to a more weathered bricky colour. I mix the paint on my palette to keep the colour loose, and the ratio is about 3 reddish brown to 1 green. Once the base brick layer colour was painted on, some thin washes of gray, reddish brown, and flat black were applied for further weathering. The result isn't superdetailed bricks, but something more impressionistic. 

I haven't trashed my remaining Model Master paints. I used their Aged Concrete Flat for the window sills. I use this paint a lot in my practice and bought what my local hobby store had left. I'm sorry to see it go, but I think I can mix a substitute from Revell's 36189, Beige. Who knows, it might be even better than what I've been using!

Finally, the window frames were sprayed with Krylon Colormaster Hunter Green Satin. I don't know if that product is still available. I had a can on the shelf, and when a 10C day presented itself, I gave the window frames a spray. The thought of brush painting them all seemed a little too masochistic. 

Speaking of windows, the kit comes with clear pieces that have moulded on window mullions. These are good pieces, but I thought the mullions were a little too closely spaced for an HO-scale model, and once painted, they would obscure the views inside, which sort of defeats one of the main features of this project. 

I decided to replace the kit's windows with ones cut from some clear plastic sheet I had on hand. I don't recall the plastic's specifications other than its from a huge sheet I bought in 2019 at an art supply in Syracuse, New York, when John, Gail, Debra, and I went to the city's train show that year. Little did we know it would be the last train show for who knows how long. At the time I thought the giant sheet would last the rest of my life. I've used more than half of it, so either the reaper is nearby, or I need to get more - I think it's the later :-)

To each piece of 'glass' I inked in a border with a Sharpie pen. The border helps to neaten the interior, and hide the bond to the window frame. They were glued to the frames with Weld Bond.

The individual window panes seem a little too big for HO-scale, but they afford good views to the inside.

After painting, and then gluing in all the window components, I really wanted to see how this thing looked. So I decided it was time to get hammered!

No, not that, this: I glued the entrance wall to a side wall, and then glued that assembly to the ground floor, using strategically applied hammers to hold the thing while the glue dried. 

Once dry, it was time to glue on the back wall. 

I don't use these old ball-peen hammers for hammering much these days. They're relics from my father and grandfather, but they come in handy at times. Although I wouldn't recommend this technique if animals or small children are running around, as these are precariously balanced.

Left: A stack of '70s CARtoons; Right: A few of today's CARtoons

While glue was drying I popped out to a hobby store I hadn't visited since well before the pandemic began. Restrictions had eased back a bit, and I wanted to get out. I found an AMT '72 GMC Jimmy kit that looked like a full sized restoration of a GMC pickup a friend has underway, but the biggest surprise was seeing the new incarnation of CARtoons on the magazine shelf. 

For awhile in the '70s I bought it and its sister publication, Hotrod Cartoons, almost as frequently as Model Railroader. CARtoons has been modernized - in a good way - but it still strikes a chord. Looking back, I think it's because a lot of its stories have to do with people building cool custom cars from junk and seemingly odd combinations of stuff. I was a plastic car modeller, influenced by CARtoons and Car Model magazines, well before model train stuff grabbed me, so I think that the 'kit-mingling' and 'make stuff from odd components' vibes, which were themes of those publications, followed me into model railroading. Maybe there needs to a CURRENtoons magazine to honour the master of kit-mingling, Art Curren :-)

Anyway, once the glued had dried on the walls and ground floor, I slipped in the second floor to see how it looked. I didn't glue it in place just yet. 

The fit is pretty good. 

I then carefully press fit the fourth wall onto the base. No glue was applied, I just wanted to test the fit and see how things looked. 

I was happy that it fit quite well. The kit is precise and well moulded, so maybe this shouldn't be a surprise. 

Ok, the roof isn't on, the place is filled with light, but the views inside are quite good. There'll be lights installed, so even when the roof's on, you should be able to see inside rather easily.

Although, one thing I realized I could have done better was the arrangement of doors on the back wall.

For awhile I thought the building would house two tenants, so I'd have two delivery doors, one on each side. But, when I changed it to one tenant, I should have placed a single delivery door in the centre, with brick inserts on the sides. And I should have left the door open, or at least made a moveable one. That way a pickup could drive inside and back up right to the elevator in the centre of the building. That would have added the potential for some interesting scenes. Oh well, maybe on the next one :-)

You can see the doors and associated openings are big enough to drive in automobiles or pickups, so there's potential for a variety of businesses to be supported by other minglings of this kit. 

That's it for now.

Next up: detailing the interior.

Breaking ground for the new 30 Squares World Domination HQ

I've been intrigued by Walthers N-scale Backshop kit (Walthers part #933-3227), and their N-scale Car Shop (Walthers part #933-3228), for sometime. I liked all those large windows, and it seemed that either of the kits could be converted into some sort of small HO-scale building. Maybe an old light industrial building that had been saved from the wrecking ball and turned into shops or offices. Maybe a headquarters for the 30 Squares World Domination Media Empire :-)

I looked online for one of those kits, and they all seemed to have high shipping costs. Luckily when the pandemic restrictions eased back a bit I was able to pay a visit to my local hobby shop, and lo-and-behold, I found a Backshop kit on the shelf. It wasn't a bad price, and the only shipping costs were those associated with me driving it back home.

Once I got it home and studied the parts for awhile it was clear something in HO could be built from it. The bricks might seem a little small, but with some careful painting they won't look too bad.

The first step in construction was to wash all the parts. I've been watching videos at QuickKits, and over there Owen recommends washing with mild dish soap and a dash of vinegar. So, that's what I did. I used a plastic storage box as a wash basin.

After some mild scrubbing and rinsing, the sprues were set out on the kitchen counter to dry.

There aren't a lot of parts in this kit, but they are all nicely moulded. The only pieces missing from the photo are the clear plastic inserts that are supplied for the windows.

The first bit of actual construction was to figure out what the entrance was going to look like. I had some ideas going into this, but they were much refined by what I could find in my spares box.

The doors are cut from an HO-scale Walthers 24-Seven Quick Mart kit (Walthers part #933-3477). I bought that kit years ago and started it. I intended it to be a Macs Milk store, but put it aside before it was even close to being done. I figured I was never going to finish it, so I cut the doors from its facade. 

The centre window is a Grandt Line O-scale item I bought years ago. I don't know the part number, but you can see it just fits in the opening.

That door unit on the far left is a moulding that I rejected as looking a little too rustic for this project.

If you were building this kit box-stock as a backshop, the ground level openings are where the rolling stock goes in. Walthers provides brick inserts for them if for some reason you don't want openings, and you just want to close them up. 

These inserts are excellent, and came in quite handy. Instead of building custom inserts, all I had to do was cut openings in the ones the kit provided. 

In this photo all the doors, windows, and brick inserts have been installed in the front and back walls.

The other great thing about the kit not shown on the box top picture is that it comes with 6 roll-down door mouldings if you want to model your kit with closed doors. I used a couple on the back wall, and glued an unmodified brick insert in the centre opening.

The base needs a little bit of modification, but nothing serious. The slots for the rails were filled with putty - I used Deluxe Materials Perfect Plastic Putty - and sanded it to conform to the base when dry. 

I'll likely add a step or two to the front wall, so even these puttied up openings might be concealed by the steps.

The inspection pit openings needed to be covered over.

A new floor was cut from a piece of 0.020" styrene sheet. That thickness brings the floor up to the level of the wall alignment tabs that are moulded on to the base's sides.

I did a bit of an experiment in bonding the floor to the base. I was concerned that styrene glue would put warps and puckers into the floor's surface, so I used 3M transfer tape to hold the two together. The photo shows the tape attached to the base awaiting removal of the carrier paper.

Since one will be able to see inside, I filled the interior side wall pilaster indentations with strips of 0.040" styrene to bring them flush with the wall surface.

These were glued in place with Deluxe Materials Plastic Glue. With the cancelation of Rustoleum's Model Master paints, I'm trying non-Rustoleum products in case all their model building materials are being discontinued. This Deluxe Materials glue seems good. This is the first project I've used it on.

Here's a finished side wall with the upper edge from the kit glued on.

So far, so good.

Once the walls and floor were finished, I temporarily tilted up three walls to start thinking about how I was going to build and detail the interior. And that's where I'm at now: thinking.