From the Time Machine's Glovebox: Post #2

With this year being 30 Squares’ 10^th anniversary, I thought that once each week throughout 2019 I’d try posting something from the previous decade.

The second post here at 30 Squares – from 17 March 2009 - sort of set the direction for everything to come: How I built E.L. Moore's "Bunn's Feed & Seed Plant". It turned out that E. L. Moore’s original model of Bunn’s Feed & Seed still existed. I got to see it in September 2015, and I posted some photos of it the same month. Earlier, in March 2015, the original manuscript and cover letter that Mr. Moore used to sell the article to Model Railroader was found. I learned that the article contained a classic E. L. Moore background story that was cut from the published version.

The R-100 airship in N scale?

We also paid a visit over the holidays to the Aviation and Space Museum out in the east end. I'm not going to give a trip report on all the interesting airplanes you'll see out there, but I will mention one particular curiosity: their model of the R-100 airship that flew to Canada from England and back again in 1930. In HO scale, the model would measure a whooping 8.3' - a little longer than the entire Alta Vista TC layout! - and in N-scale a more manageable 4.5'. The model seems closer to 4.5' than 8.3', so I'm putting my money on its scale being closer to N than HO. When we got home I hunted around for Nevil Shute's old autobiography called Slide Rule. The book has a few fascinating chapters about his time as chief 'calculator' on the R-100's construction team, and some insight into the disastrous crash of the R-100's sister ship, the R-101, where 48 of the 54 people onboard were killed.

Out-of-Service: Gone for coffee and a paper

I think that little roof over the side door needs a light. It's too dark there at night to make anyone feel safe.

Waiting for the evening bus

Toronto Street Railway horsecar #16

The renovated science and technology museum reopened in the later part of 2017. We've been meaning to go, but have always found an excuse not to. We made some time to visit over the Christmas holidays and were pleasantly surprised. I've known that they have a few massive steam locomotives on permanent display, but was surprised to find horsecar #16 from the old Toronto Street Railway* tucked away in a back corner as part of a special exhibit. Mike Filey, in his book Not A One-Horse Town: 125 Years of Toronto Streetcars that was published in 1986, notes that #16 was built in 1874 by the John Stephenson Company in New York City and was the only surviving horsecar of the 262 built for the TSR. He also mentions: In recent years, it was sent to the Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa. Hopefully it will return home someday. The hope remains unfulfilled 32 years later.

*The Toronto Street Railway was a ancestor of the Toronto Transit Commission that operated a horse-drawn streetcar system from 1861 to 1891.