Green coaches

I took apart the EVRR coaches and gave them a shot of light green paint. Disassembly was a mixed bag. The chassis and trucks popped off with some careful prying, but it turned out there was an inner floor that was glued to the side walls and held a clear plastic window box in place. That took a great deal of careful sawing and slicing and filing to get out. After removal, the coaches were then washed with warm water and dish soap. Tamiya white fine surface primer was used as a base coat, and then a few light coats of Tamiya AS-23 Light Green (Luftwaffe) was sprayed on. I don't know what colours E. L. Moore used on his coaches, but since green was his favourite, that seemed like a good choice.

Railways and snow

Vince forwarded me this link to some online scans of Meccano Magazine. Here in Ottawa the snow is almost gone, but this picture from the March 1928 edition still caught my eye. A model of this would make for some easy scenery :-)

Was Robert E. Gilbert REG?

[Robert E. Gilbert's Small Town Warehouse from the April '57 issue of Model Railroader [1] and REG's "bizarre landscape with tiny people and weird shapes." sourced from The Outer Space Art of Robert E. Gilbert.]

I recently read that E. L. Moore started in HO model railroading in 1953, so I thought I'd read through model railroading magazines published from 1952 to March 1955, the month E. L. Moore's first article appeared, to see if there were any obvious stories or photographs that might have influenced Mr. Moore. On one side trip I stumbled across a biographical note on the prolific model railroad writer, Robert E. Gilbert, in the July 1959 issue of Model Railroader. Here's a snippet:

His first article in MR appeared in the Apr. '57 issue, and since then he has written 22 articles for MR and Model Trains. He's also written a number of science fiction stories, and a detective story, plus "how to" articles for an art magazine. He's also sold a number of drawings and paintings.

In model railroading, his primary interest is structures - and he has a 5 x 10 ft. layout still in its earliest stages of construction in his family home overlooking the Southern Ry. station in Jonesboro, Tenn.

So, you're thinking, ok, interesting fellow, but what's up? Well, he had 5 stories reprinted in Kalmbach's 1958 Easy-to-Build Model Railroad Structures. When I got into the hobby back in the '70s I was crazy about that book and more-or-less memorized it. I particularly liked his section tool house project and built a stone (!) version. The bio released a load of nostalgia in my brain, so I looked around the internet to see what else I could find. Nothing more on Robert E. Gilbert, model railroader, but some intriguing stuff on a Robert E. Gilbert, science fiction author and much published artist in science fiction fan magazines. That second Robert E. Gilbert signed his works REG. His art is way out and you can see a good selection at the Artisans website. There are also a couple of good posts about REG at kentmcdanielwrites here and here.

There seems to be some common points in the biographies of these two gentlemen - other than name - that make me wonder if they're the same person. 

REG was active from the 1950s to the 1970s in science fiction fan art. Robert E. Gilbert was active in the model railroad press in the late '50s and into the '60s [2]. The eras overlap.

REG was a native Tennessean and was thought to have died in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Robert E. Gilbert is noted to have lived in Jonesboro, Tenn.

REG was an artist; drawings and paintings. Robert E. Gilbert was noted to have "sold a number of drawings and paintings".

REG published 3 science fiction stories: A Thought for Tomorrow in the Nov. '52 issue of Galaxy, The Rocks and Rills in the Sept. '53 issue of If Worlds of Science Fiction, and Stopover Planet (initial publication place and date appears to be unknown). Robert E. Gilbert was noted to have "written a number of science fiction stories".

There's nothing conclusive here. And the online material about REG doesn't mention anything about model railroading. But, there seems to be some strong circumstantial evidence that Robert E. Gilbert, model railroader, and REG are one and the same [3] - but maybe I'm just the last to know :-)

Digressions

[1] I chose that example of Robert E. Gilbert's work only because the signs above the doors read: N. E. Moore.

[2] One of the most interesting of Robert E. Gilbert's articles is A changeable railroad in the June '62 issue of Model Railroader. In it he explains how to build a small layout where it's easy to change the location of buildings and scenic elements because nothing, and that includes the scenic material, is glued down. It's well thought out, and the drawings and staged photos are excellent. And it reminded me of the Sand Table described in my grandmother's manual training text book. I don't know when Robert E. Gilbert went to grade school, but maybe that's where he got the idea.

[3] If they are the same person, then this statement at Artisans is fascinating: "One of the most striking things about Gilbert's work is the strong sense of the alien. Landscapes are strange and unexpected." Yet, his model railroad work is the complete opposite. I'd say it had a strong sense of the real. 

EVRR yoga master

[That's the new full-size EVRR tack plan on the left, in the centre is my old attempt to layout my first cut at an EVRR trackplan on a 2' x3' panel, and on the right is the track plan it's based on.]

I spent sometime making a full-size sketch of the new EVRR track plan. I took the tracing and scanned and enlarged it to 2' x 3' with my Mac, but when it came time to print, I didn't have software on my ancient machine that would print a multi-page poster. Adobe Reader came to the rescue. After downloading an old version it easily printed out sheets that could be taped together to make a full-size plan.

The yoga part came when I cut-and-taped it together on the floor. Maybe model railroading and yoga is an unexplored thing :-)

A number of curves are going to need to be circularized a bit when it comes time to lay track - especially that upper right corner that goes through the mountain. It's going to be a little tricky to revise my initial attempt to draw the plan on the panel. I might need to spray the panel with white acrylic and fill in some of the old lake with cork so I have a fairly good surface to work with.

Streetcar test track and the search for a happy minimum

I was reading on wikipedia that the TTC streetcar system has a minimum turn radius of 36', which translates into about a 5" radius curve in HO scale. My previous layout had minimum 15" radius curves; far too large for a convincing representation of the street. I laid down a lumpy loop of track - almost an oval at one end - of 5" radius to run some tests with my fleet.

It turned out only one end was more-or-less circular and the other was a bit too oval, but it worked out to be a fairly ok 5" radius test track. Only the Bachmann Birney single truck tram could handle that tight curve. None of the PCCs could.

I was crazy when I built that loop. I figured on all members of the fleet successfully negotiating the 5" radius curve. I got a little smarter when I had to do tests with 6" and 7" radius turns. I drew a guide on my cork board and temporarily thumbtacked down a strip of track. It turned out to be a good approach: a 6" radius curve was also too tight, but 7" worked just fine. To be a little more specific: the Bachmann Peter Witt could handle a 6" radius curve, but the Bowser and Con-Cor PCCs couldn't, although they could handle a 7" radius turn. It looks like 7" will be the minimum radius for curves on the new layout.