Haggling over the rail beetle

No, it doesn't run. It's a static item. This rail beetle consists of the remnants of whatever I could dig out of the vacuum cleaner after the little car got accidentally sucked in during some layout cleaning.

Last stop for barbecue

The fires are out. The tables cleared. The dishes washed. The floors swept. All that’s left is the aroma and the promise of another day.

It's time...

... to move the layout from its place of honour in the workshop where it resided over the Christmas holidays back to its usual place. Hopefully this'll be the first of a few pictures I took while it was all primped for showing off :-)

Bachmann Spectrum Peter Witt streetcar in TTC colours

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

HO scaling Revell's Jupiter “C” launch gantry

I wanted to work on a completely different and relatively straightforward project over the last week so I decided to make a start on the re-issue of Revell’s Jupiter “C” rocket and rail-based gantry kit I bought a few years ago. I discussed it a little in the Launch Pad layout post. According to Mat Irvine’s book Creating Space, it’s a 1: 110 scale kit of the rocket and gantry that put the USA’s first artificial satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit.

For me, as a model railroader of conventional scales, 1:110 is an odd one. For an HO layout, at 1:87, this kit would be a bit too small; for N scale, at 1:160, it’s way too big; but, it’s pretty close to TT, 1:120 scale. Looking at the parts, and comparing them to some figures, I thought I’d replace the kit’s trucks - it looks like the gantry is self-propelled - with some HO ones that would require the gantry to be moved by a diesel engine, and turn the kit into some sort of generic small rocket - maybe some sort of sounding rocket - launching system. Everything else will be box stock. With judiciously chosen figures it might not look too bad in HO.

Anyway, the gantry carriage is built and up on some HO trucks I had in my scrap box. Now, all this thing will do is travel in a straight line back and forth from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad. Not very exciting, but its job is very simple.