The king of the streetcar drag racers

Of all the extreme sports out there, streetcar drag racing isn’t the most extreme, but it must be one of the oddest. Especially the PCC Leap Year Winter Invitational, held every February 29th in that balmiest of southern cities: New Toronto. Crazy rich guys from all over North America rent private boxcars to ship their souped-up rail-burners to the Agincourt car barns, and then spend every waking hour from Valentine’s Day on primping them for the big day. The city has to throw extra thorium on the pile to crank out all that extra electricity for these guys. But, it brings lots of tourists, and their bucks, into the city at one of the dreariest times of the year, so more power to ‘em.

And after four weeks of training up north, two months behind a desk, and four months as a field grunt learning the ropes, not to mention trauma counseling and a divorce, this is where the agency sent me on my first solo investigation, to meet with the purported craziest of the streeters: Ron, “The Street Rat”, Fairbanks. Apparently, my bosses think Mr. Rat has some information concerning the whereabouts of a missing scientist we’re looking for. 

One might think streetcar drag racing was dead easy, and dead boring. They’d be dead wrong. Yeah, there isn’t any steering involved since the track takes care of that for you, but the trick is to finesse the application of all that power so that you don’t jump the track, or your power pole hops the wire. Track jumping – always a tricky problem to clear up after it happens – noisy wheel grinding, driver theatrics, smoke, exploding motors, high speeds and even wheelies – if you call lifting the front end 4 or 5 centimetres off the track a wheelie - draws the crowds. 

What draws the streeters is the money: millions for winning; millions on the line in endorsement contracts afterwards. All the street transit companies in North America want the fastest streeter to endorse their system and their cars. It’s that old saying, “If it wins on Sunday, it’s ridden on Monday.” Of all the streeters, Mr. Rat is also the fastest of the fast.

Mr. Rat was no ordinary streeter, he traveled in style in his own private team train: extra-long box car for the racer, a converted standard issue one for its equipment, an office car, a private quarters car, and a sleeper for team members. 

I knocked on the office car door and entered. I was greeted by a platinum blonde straight from central casting.

“I’m Ed Bryce. I have an appointment with Mr. Fairbanks,”

“Please have a seat. Mr. Fairbanks will be with you shortly.” She typed something into a terminal. I shuffled through some of the magazines on offer and took a seat, but before I could get past the cover I was ushered in.

“Mr. Fairbanks will see you now,” cooed the blonde holding open the inner office door.

I walked in and someone who looked every inch the prosperous banker offered me his hand in greeting. I shook it. 

“Please have a seat Mr. Bryce” said the banker as he motioned me to a chair. 

“It’s good to meet you Mr. Fairbanks”

I sat down.

“You look confused?”

“Well, this isn’t quite what I was expecting,” I replied looking around the tastefully appointed office.

“Not ‘ratty’ enough for you?”

I was still hopelessly transparent.

“The Street Rat is just a persona I put on to entertain my fans. I owe it to them. If it wasn’t for them I’d still be down in Texas on my daddy’s ranch chasing after stray cattle. They want a street rat and I give them THE STREET RAT.”

Made sense.

“Your request said you were looking for a Dr. Leslie Warden. How can I help you?” said Fairbanks in a let’s-get-down-to-business tone.

“We’ve obtained some reports that she was either currently working for you, or had been working for you sometime during the last year. Is she here?”

“No. I hired her last July, did her job, and then left in August.”

“What job was that?”

“She had gotten in touch with my team and said she had a device that could shorten our race times by several tenths of a second. That may not seem like much to you, but in this business it means the difference between consistently winning and going home empty-handed. We’re always looking for an edge, and she didn’t seem like a crank, so we brought her on to see what she could do.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Far better than I had expected. She spent a week installing a little gray box on the forward stage of our motor, and after a couple weeks of testing it did what she promised. One might say it did it too well. We started winning more than usual, and that subjected us to more than the usual levels of scrutiny by race inspectors to see if we were violating the rules of our class.”

“Did they find anything?”

“No. They’re idiots. They concentrate on all the big flashy motor parts and overlook all the little boxes attached to the motor.”

“Can I see what she installed?”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“I can request a warrant from my supervisor, who’ll ask the deputy-minister for one. It’ll be here around five. But, that warrant will impound everything you have parked here until Easter. A dozen techs will come down and comb through everything. There won’t be any racing for your team on the 29^th. However, you could just show me what you’ve got, and we’ll no doubt be able to reach a more amicable arrangement.” I had at least learned something during my apprenticeship.

“Ok, ok. Let’s go take a look.”

---

The racer had already been unloaded and taken into a secure area in the car barn. Fairbanks picked up a gadget from a workbench and pushed a button. The front part of the PCC’s body started to rise. Hydraulic jacks were tilting it up and exposing all the car’s inner workings. It wasn’t like any streetcar I’d ever seen. Its guts were massive chromed cylinders and spheres studded with all sorts of small boxes sewn together with a tightly crisscrossed network of wires and tubes. It looked like some sort of Area 51 refugee. 

“Where’s the box?”

“Right over here.” Fairbanks walked over to the massive engine and pointed to a small gray box tucked beside a larger blue one. It had a lot of thin wires going into it along with a single, inch diameter one. The box looked like the standard issue lab cover used on these things. It had a small inspection door on top. I needed to open it and look inside to confirm it was the device.

“Have you ever opened it?” I asked.

“Hell no! She told us not to. And don’t you try. It cost me a hundred grand and I’m not tampering with the goose that lays the golden eggs. She left us with interface specs, diagnostics and a troubleshooting guide. As long as we follow that stuff, it seems to work fine. I don’t care what’s inside it as long as we keep winning.”

“I need a small Robertson screwdriver.”

Fairbanks gave me a nasty look, but got me the tool anyway, “Here.”

I unscrewed the inspection cover. I could see the glowing blue vortex behind the glass window. This was it. Another early fusion prototype. I re-secured the inspection door, stood up, and walked with Fairbanks back towards the car barn’s door. Fairbanks punched the control button to lower the body.

“I’ll need to send a tech down here to have a look. Normally we’d immediately re-claim it, but…”

“Re-claim it? I paid good money for it!” gagged Fairbanks,

“It’s stolen government property.” I continued with my plan, “but, we might benefit from instrumenting and observing it while it’s in use. I propose…” My proposal was rudely interrupted by a thunderous explosion and a psychedelic light show of Hendrixian proportions. Both of us fell to our hands and knees. I turned to the racer. Black smoke was billowing from a ragged hole in the body. Water spewed from ceiling sprinklers. Foam gushed from wall nozzles. Sirens howled.

I turned back to Fairbanks. He had his hands over his ears and was shouting at me. I couldn’t hear a word he said, but I could read his lips very clearly, “I told you not to open it!”

The next instalment can be found here.

Tsunami sound on the Bowser PCC TTC Streetcar

This is Bowser’s HO-scale PCC TTC streetcar equipped with their Tsunami sound. I don’t think the sound comes across all that well with my modest camera, but in person, it’s quite good.

Also, the platform at the Cedar Heights stop is a bit too high. It’s more suited to passenger cars than streetcars.

Light Ray Blues, Last Chapter

By the time I walked up my driveway it was deep twilight. The sun goes down pretty early this time of year. There were no lights on in the house. I fumbled for my key and opened the front door.

“Jess, I’m home!” 

No answer. 

I flipped on the entryway light and kicked my shoes under the bench. Hers weren’t there. 

“Jess!”

More silence.

I opened the closet. Her shoes weren’t in there either. In fact, all her shoes were gone, and her coats too.

I walked down to our bedroom. All her clothes were gone from the closet. The dresser drawers were empty. The bathroom was stripped. 

What I feared was true.

I wandered through the living room, powder room, and study. No signs. Her electronics tools and sculpture equipment were gone from the studio. She’d been planning this for awhile if all that was gone. I stopped in the kitchen. There were no messages or notes anywhere. I guess she didn't need any. The silence said it all.

I was tired. I got a half-empty bottle of Scotch and a glass from a cabinet, went out to the living room, and sank into the couch. I was too tired to call and search and pled tonight. I had to think. And remember.

The ringing phone woke me up. 

I’d fallen asleep on the couch. The red numbers on the clock across the room were screaming five-forty-five am. The house was dark and indifferent.

I answered with a groggy hello.

It was Adams. Didn’t that guy sleep? 

“We have a ticket waiting for you at Idlewild station for a nine am train. Pack a bag for a week’s stay. We need you to begin work today.” 

The ungodly hour and hangover were slapping my brain around and my sense of humour was huddled crying in a corner, “Just hold it. What’s going on?”

“Sorry.” Adams actually did sound sorry. “Things have been happening quite fast. We apprehended the barista last night. She is the assassin.”

“How do you know for sure?” My brain was starting to slap back. “I was just following a hunch. I have no proof.”

“In retrospect, proving who she is was not that difficult once you had found her. Both the constables were wearing wrist bracelets that were not jewelry, but were passive radiation collectors. When a person fires one of those early prototypes a unique radiation signature is left on their hand. The constables went into the store and ordered some coffee. When she handed it to them, they reached for their coffees with their braceleted hands allowing for a sample from her hand to be taken while both people were transferring the cup. Constable McFarland took the bracelets in for processing, and Constable Logan stayed on surveillance. Constable McFarland later returned with the good news, and when the store closed, they arrested her.”

“Where is she now?” Maybe she was a guest in my old room.

Seemed like Adams was reading my mind, “We could not keep her here. Unlike yourself, she was not a cooperative guest. She is being transported to an office a few hours north. We need you there too.”

“I don’t know anything.” My brain was squirming to its feet.

“We only need you on it for a few hours. After that you are off the investigation and will begin your training.”

My brain was wobbling a bit, but it was getting feisty, “I have some personal business to take care of this morning. I’ll be at the station for a noon train. I need a first-class ticket with deluxe meal service. I’ll need my own office at your place and I’ll need some time to complete my personal business.”

“Of course. A driver will meet you at your destination. Anything else?”

“I may need something else, but it’s only six am and I can’t think straight yet.” I paused a moment. “It all seems too easy.”

Adams continued. “We were lucky, or more precisely, you were lucky, and she was overconfident. She was convinced that no one had seen her and felt she could just continue on with her life as if nothing had happened. If she had kept on running and had abandoned her old life we probably would never have caught her. I told you they are probably amateurs.”

“And you guys just waited around until the coffee shop closed to arrest her. Why didn’t you storm the place when you knew?”

“You should be starting to understand that we try to operate as discretely as possible and sometimes assume risk to maintain a low profile,” explained Adams. I could hear Darth rising, but he was quickly tamped down. “That is enough for now. We will see you later this afternoon.”

“Ok.” We hung up.

And that was that. My first investigation was done. It was profitable for the powers that be. They had a lead to their precious missing ray-guns, er, ‘directed energy weapons’. But it came at great cost. A man was killed. My wife left me. Not to mention its success was due in no small part to plain good luck. It turns out this was an easy one.

The next instalment can be found here.

Roads, Sidewalks and Spam-bots

Last week a friend of mine asked if I had any posts about building roads. I had a couple on how I used styrene to build roads and other paved areas. But the question made me realize that I didn’t have ‘Roads’ as a label, so I went and attached one to suitable posts. 

The other thing this question brought up was that earlier this year a Blogger stats server spam-bot kept on pinging an old post called ‘New Sidewalks’ in a feeble attempt to lure me into one of their traps by way of their fake interest in the post. The only way I could get the annoyance to stop was to delete the post. After that I never saw another link in the stats from that spam-bot - although no doubt I’ve jinksed things by even discussing it :-)

That old post had some road building stuff so I thought I’d throw caution to the wind and re-post it. So, here it is, in its entirety, originally posted on 11 January 2010, admired by spam-bots around the world, ‘New Sidewalks’,

I was able to devote one day over the Christmas break to layout building. I thought I'd accomplish a lot, but I was only able to get the new Y-shaped diesel 'parking lot' - hopefully, the subject of another post - and some sidewalks installed. I plan to use sidewalks as a design element to tie the various parts of the layout together -which is weird in someways since this is a model train layout.

The sidewalks are cut from 0.080 inch sheet styrene, painted with thinned, loose coats of Tamyia light gray, Tamyia medium gray and flat black. They are glued in place with gap-filling super glue. The road surfaces were made by first gluing foam core to the train table's plywood base and then gluing a heavy weight piece of watercolour paper on top - I thought that was a good way to create the illusion of a textured, paved surface. Core roadbed strips were used as edging along the sides of the foam core and provided the base for the sidewalks. Results of this road building technique were mixed. In the future I'd simply use styrene sheet for the road surface. It's easier to work with, and will probably look just the same after painting. The road doesn't look too bad, but it is far more pristine than most roads I've driven over in Ontario!

A little more about Stella's

In my last post about Stella's I lead with a picture of the front of the building in it's position on the layout. It was a bit blocked by a foreground building, so I thought I'd take a picture of the building by itself.

 The picture above shows Stella's during gluing of the styrene pieces used to trim the windows and corners.

I found that there was a lot of static electricity build-up that attracted dust and dirt to the structure. Before final assembly I washed it with soap and water and let it dry on the sideboard - the liquid refreshment came later :-)

I'm fiddling around with ideas for a sign. I have some blank CDs with labels that make them look like old 45 rpm records. These might make for something interesting.

Here is a cut CD trial fit to Stella's It'll overhand the track, allowing streetcars to pass underneath. I'll keep playing with this one for awhile.