Highrise test article

I spent some time making a little test article to try out some possible construction methods for the high rises. To get started I tried making the main pieces of the Thomson building's facade as it was the simplest of the bunch.

The verticals are cut from mat board with my Logan mat cutter, and the horizontals are sliced from acid-free black construction paper with a ruler and knife. They're all stuck down with transfer tape on a scrap of clear acrylic sheet. 

Later the verticals were lightly painted with some aged concrete colour, but on the model they'll need to be painted before being put in place. Also, I think I'll need to use a black or smoked acrylic base instead of clear to get the right window colour.  

Speaking of clear, one thing that's crystal clear is that I need to be extra careful when using a scriber to mark the acrylic sheet as it was easy to slip and scratch the windows.

Sam the Record Man's Weather Beacon

I was digging through the family history archives today and found this 45 wrapper from Sam the Record Man. I recall when you bought a 45 there, they heat sealed it in one of these plastic sleeves to indicate that you've paid for it, and to prevent you from slipping another unpaid record inside on your way out.

What got my attention though is the picture of the old Sam's facade on the Yonge St flagship store in the wrapper's bottom right - this sign predates his famous spinning record facade. The caption below it states:

Watch Sam's Weather Beacon for latest forecasts. Green - clear; Red - cloudy; Flashing Red - rain; Flashing White - snow; Running up - warm; Running down - cooler ; Steady - no change. 

That would make for one interesting model sign. I need to find some more information.

Don't fear the S word

Streetcar that is :-)

I was born and raised in Toronto and remember that at the time it had just two types of electric rail transit* for getting around: streetcars and the subway. The streetcars weren't called trams, trollies, or traction. My parents and neighbours called them streetcars, and sometimes just cars when giving directions: "... then take the insert-street-name-here car to ....". I don't recall streetcars being referred to as trams or trollies. And certainly not as traction.

I only came across traction as a descriptor in the model railroad magazines, and thought it was weird. Still do. I realize it refers to the type of electric motor that's used, and makes perfect technical sense. But, my teenage self kept thinking, any vehicle that runs around on wheels has to have traction or it wouldn't go anywhere. It's basically a self-propelled passenger car that snakes through the streets, hence streetcar. I was thinking along the lines of describing what I saw instead of what was under-the-hood. Loosely speaking, streetcar might not exclude anything not electrically powered, but traction doesn't seem to describe how people use the vehicle. I guess one just uses the term one thinks best. For me, that's streetcar. 

Traction not spoken here :-)
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*Ok, ok, there were trolley buses too, but they didn't ride on rails, and the trolley in trolley bus wrecks my rant :-) I didn't ride or like them that much, so obviously I'm biased.

Cleaning 101

Above the OTrain LRTs at Tunney's Pasture prior to the inaugural ride

On New Year's eve 2 OTrains lost electrical power and stopped dead. Subsequent investigation found the problem was due to a build up of dirt on the pantograph - which the CBC report refers to as the accordion-like apparatus - that makes contact with the overhead wire. Clearly, there seems to be a lack of model railroaders on staff at the city because they'd be well aware that dirt is the bane of all electrically powered rail vehicles no matter how big or small :-)

Roof top view of a TTC Flexity Outlook streetcar - I was surprised by how much equipment is exposed

Office buildings

Lines are a bit hard to see - try looking at the large view

There are a few '70s-style office buildings in Toronto that I'm rather partial to looking at, and I'm having a go at drawing up compressed variations of them for the OPL. I started with the Thomson Building on Queen W and the Canadian Press building on King. It's the strong geometrical patterns on their facades that gets my attention - I have no idea if they're any good to work in.

It may seem rather easy to draw up the facades, just get the dimensions and some photos and there you go. The problem is that even in HO scale these would each be a few feet tall and overwhelm the layout. 

After some thought I realized I need to establish some sort of vertical scale for the layout which boils down to:

1. The size relationships between the models reflects that of the prototypes even though the models themselves are much smaller than their real life counterparts. This means: the TD Centre , the tallest building on the layout, will be much taller than the Thomson Building, which is much taller than the Canadian Press building, which is taller than A&A, which is on the order of the Imperial Six, which are both in that middling height range that is currently the layout's norm.

2. The proportions of the buildings need to remain close to that of the prototypes even though this may result in fewer floors and narrower frontage than the prototype.

3. My TD Centre mockup is too short at 2' tall, and needs to be taller. It seems ok in N, but not HO. A true-to-scale TD Centre would be around 8' tall in HO, which is about the length of the entire layout! A model in the 3' to 4' range is laughable on its own, but in the context of the other compressed buildings - compressed in accordance with rule 1 - it'll look quite tall while still being short.

As I work on drawings of these buildings I'm struck by the idea that while buildings and street lengths have to be compressed, the streetcars and people are to-scale reproductions. Also, I find that roads and sidewalk widths, as well as building spacing, can't be overly compressed or things start to look too train-set like - over-compression of these negative spaces is always a scene-killer to me. That needs to be its own post: how the size, shape, and use of negative space is one of the most neglected aspects of layout design.