Coaches & cars for the EVRR

Attention Kmart shoppers! Follow the flashing blue light to the model railroad department where for the next 15 minutes you can buy a 3-pack of 1890’s N-scale coaches for the low, low Kmart price of just $9.99. Painted in Tamiya Luftwaffe Light Green, they’ll brighten up any model railroad in your home. Hurry over now! At this price they won’t last long. Have a great day and thank-you for shopping at Kmart!

[EVRR coaches by E. L. Moore]

No, as much as I wish, I didn't pick up these coaches at Alternative Universe Kmart, they came from a swap meet I attended last year. I bought them in March, painted them in April and then they sat neglected on my workbench for the rest of the year. But, on-and-off since the Christmas holidays I've been finishing them. I didn't want a year to lapse and still not have them done. I'm cutting it close, but they're now more-or-less ready to roll.

I scratched my head over what to do about couplers for a longtime. The coaches came with old Rapido-style ones and my loco has modern knuckle-couplers. I bought the coaches anyway as 1890's coaches have been hard to find, and the seller gave me a lower price because of the Rapidos. I decided not to refit all the couplers on the rolling stock to one type, mainly because of cost. I figured I'd replace a few on some cars so I could build trains and leave it at that. You can see on the upper chassis, one Rapido has been replaced so it'll couple to the loco. I did the same thing with the caboose chassis in the lower right.

[Bachmann's old time 4-wheeler straight out-of-the-box.]

The caboose is an old Bachmann item I bought this past summer at George's Trains from their resale stock. It's outfitted with Rapido couplers out-of-the-box and is rather toy-like, but with a bit of painting it makes an ok impression.

[On the EVRR you can get a sense of how small the caboose is.]

A 4-wheel caboose construction article was one of E. L. Moore's earliest publications. I sometimes wonder if a 4-wheeler was a right-of-passage for mid-20th century model railroad writers. Mr. Moore's was The Little Red Caboose that appeared in the December '61 issue of Model Trains. Bill Schopp also did one. 

William (Bill) Schopp's first publication of the many - likely numbering in the many 100s or into a 1,000 or so - he made over the course of his career was A Four Wheel Crummy for HO Railway that appeared in the July 1937 issue of The Model Craftsman. That issue, like just about all issues from the '30s, is eye-popping in its use of illustrations.

In the same issue is this Ideal Workshop spread. The depth and detail and optimism in that article is great.

I didn't shoot many photos during painting, but as you can see the coach roofs were sprayed flat black and some light washes of thinned flat black and smoke were used on the bodies for highlighting and weathering.

The road names were decals I printed with my computer. I'm not completely happy with the results as the transfer film was a bit thick and I couldn't get it to completely conform to the scoring in the coach walls. It turns out my friend Paul Zimmerman had a much better approach.

[EVRR coach #2 - photo courtesy Paul Zimmerman]

Paul built a gorgeous EVRR-based layout in the 90's and also kitbashed a few most-excellent coaches to ride its rails. He solved the road name problem with paper banners. I'll let him fill you in on what he did.

[EVRR coach #5 - photo courtesy Paul Zimmerman. 

Notice how in both of these models the weathering is subtle and effectively blends the piece in with the overall scene - not too much, not too little, just enough to suggest that it belongs.]

These are my N scale cars that I built in the 1990s.  They're by Bachmann, but kitbashed shorter and lighter.  The "decals" are rub-on white letters over black posterboard - then sized down on a copy machine, cut and darkened the edges.  Today, it'd be even easier on a computer and printer.

There's a third (not pictured); it came with the oldie train set that got this all started.  But I have some steep grades on the EVRR and I fit the third car OVER a Bachmann trolley mechanism!*  It didn't fit exactly; it bowed outward a little. Anyway, I wanted to share my cheapie method for the decals.  The long name is a strip, Elmer's Glued on; the number is on a "wooden plaque" (tiny bit of the paper).  Cheap!  Plus, they hide the cut marks on the kitbash. 

*I've got to see that trolley conversion!

Each of my coaches had a clear plastic block inside that provided the windows. They had to be removed in preparation for painting and were destroyed getting them out. For new windows I decided to simply smear Microscale's Micro Kristal Klear as per the instructions on the bottle inside the window frames.

The resulting windows are quite clear, but are wavy. I think that might produce a nice lighting effect once I find some lights small enough to stuff inside - I've simply friction fit the bodies over the chassis so they can be slid off for light installation. The picture up there shows that there are bubbles in the rightmost windows of one coach. That was easily fixed by slicing out the windows with a sharp, new X-Acto knife blade and applying Kristal Klear again.

The cars aren't too bad looking, but they aren't finescale items by any stretch of the imagination. I'd say they're impressionized and need a little more weathering once I've given them a few runs on the layout.

I have to admit I like the functionality of the Rapido couplers. It's true, they don't look prototypical, but the various types of knuckle couplers on the rolling stock I've accumulated so far have varying degrees of functionality: from works beautifully to decouples as soon as the train starts to won't couple at all. Rapidos work all the time.

The relatively harsh light emphasizes the need for further weathering.

Last summer I bought some resale box cars to start building out the fleet.

I wasn't picky about road names and couplers. I was more concerned about getting cars that were about the right era and were small enough to handle the EVRR's tight curves. The couplers on these are knuckle-couplers, but of a lower quality than those on the loco. Some have a tendency to decouple when the train's in motion.

I also bought a couple of resale freight cars from a later era - that's one on the left. They had body-mounted couplers, and that combined with the extra length, prevented them from negotiating the EVRR's tight curves.

[An N-scale mixed train on E. L. Moore's Eskale & Hontee RR]

All this is to say is that when I try to build up mixed trains I'll need to be careful about couplers and car lengths for smooth running.

Installing new streetcar track at College & Spadina

I was wandering through youtube looking for Spadina streetcar and bus stuff and found this video on the construction of the TTC’s streetcar track at the intersection of College & Spadina. All that complex track one normally finds at a major intersection only took 3 weeks to install! Here’s the description the poster attached to the video:

The TTC and City of Toronto rebuilt the intersection of College and Spadina in three weeks. Here's a look at how we did it in just over 2 minutes!

It looks like one gigantic train set :-)

More geologic shaping at the EVRR's Rocky Ridge

[The upper ridge has been roughed in and still needs a lot of shaping. The lower ridge has been cut back a bit near where the tunnel portals will be installed.]

I decided to go with a small ridge behind the upper level track, shorter than the Rocky Ridge depot. The ridge won't be extended behind the depot so as not to make it appear artificially boxed in by a wall of rock. The ridge was kept because I realized that E. L. Moore had used it as a visual device to help make the transition from the layout to the background painting.

Albert Jackson and David Day's The Modelmaker's Handbook from 1981 has a rather nice illustration of the technique of using flats like the Rocky Ridge to make the transition from the layout to the background.

I bought my copy of their book from an online used book seller a couple years back for, I think, less than $10. It's a great compendium of model building techniques and includes chapters on vehicles, figures, dioramas, model railroads, engines and radio control models. It's the excellent and extensive use of illustrations - supplemented by many b&w and colour photos - that make this book outstanding. An inside page credits the illustrations to Robin Harris, photographs to David Strickland, art editing to Pauline Faulks, and art direction to Debbie Mackinnon.

It seems that most of the old model making books I buy online are castoffs from public libraries. On the one hand, I find the mass divestiture of library holdings troubling because I recall many happy hours spent finding and reading books like these and others at the public library near my parent's house, but I realize times have changed and people aren't interested in this subject or in book-based libraries. All I can say is all knowledge isn't available on the internet even though it may seem that way, and for what's there, handling the information on a laptop, tablet or phone gives a very different impression of the material than when seen, held and read in an actual, physical book. 

Streetniks

After embedding the Shuffle Demon's Spadina Bus video along with the Rapido New Look bus notes, I went looking for the Shuffle Demon's lp in my vinyl collection. Yeap, it was there. On the back it suggests the Spadina Bus video was recorded at the corner of Queen & Spadina on 25 April 1986. Punch those coordinates into your time machine for your next trip :-)

A look at Rapido's Deluxe TTC 'New Look' Bus

Maybe you’re thinking, I thought you were a streetcar guy and had no truck with buses. Well, I am a streetcar guy, but the TTC, which my new streetcar layout is heavily influenced by, is a transportation system where buses play a role along with streetcars and the subway*. In the period I draw heavily from, the TTC in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, I rode them all and when I saw Rapido’s HO rendition of the classic TTC bus from that era I figured I needed one somewhere on the layout so I could tell my story properly – well, I bought one after my usual humming-and-hawing and gnashing of teeth about price and so on and so forth :-)

Let me get the obvious out of the way: it’s an excellent model and I’m glad I bought one.

[The bus model on the right is of one that preceded the New Look. I don't know who manufactured that model, but it's level of precision is a step below.]

The fidelity of the model is phenomenal. I don’t have any other new look buses to compare it to – its box proclaims it’s the first ever 'accurate' New Look produced in HO, maybe there were others, I don't know the history - but you can get a sense of its exactness when placed side-by-side with some other buses.

The bus holds its own in comparison to Bowser's TTC PCC, which is a quite fine item.

Inside the box there's a bag of extra parts, mud guards, decals for route boards, a magnetic wand for triggering the reed switch that controls the lights and some papers with some explanation and an exploded diagram.

I've got to give them bonus points with the parts bag because it lets you use the model as a prop on your layout in a variety of ways. I especially like the inclusion of advertising card frames that can be mounted to the outside. All these buses seemed to have advertising cards mounted on the outside, so those frames increase it's prop value. It would be nice if Bowser had included the same with their streetcars.

The front wheels are posable. Another nice touch that makes it useful as a prop.

And the body shell can be easily pried off. Very nice detail on the inside, but much cleaner than I remember the real things to be. It looks like it will be quite easy to add passengers and a driver. It would be a little weird to have this out on the streets of the Alta Vista TC without people inside. Lots of scenes come to mind, but there’s one I would like to model: the classic situation where the driver has pulled over to the curb to dash into a shop to grab a Sun and a coffee leaving the bus idling, front door open, passengers glaring out the windows at the indignity of waiting while he refuels. No doubt some, like me, were wondering if they could slide into the driver’s seat and make off with the bus. Well, the doors don't open, but that would be asking for too much.

Never seen the real TTC New Look bus in action? No worries, 30 Squares has got you covered. I leave you with the legendary Shuffle Demons circa 1986 (and yes, route boards for 77B are included with model, but you're on your own to find HO Shuffle Demons)

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*What about the subway aspect on the layout? For that I’m going to have one or two street-level subway entrances to suggest the subway’s existence, but there won’t be any subway trains.

Fine print: I don’t have any association with Rapido, and I bought and paid for this model with my own cash.The only person I owe a debt to is my wife who went out of her way to pick it up when she was in Toronto.