Weekly Herald: Basic Structure

After finishing off the Canadian Press complex I thought I'd try and do a speed build on the Weekly Herald as I did on Cal's Coastal Cafe earlier in the summer. I made a start, but no such luck on the speed thing :-(

I figured I'd start by building up the basic structure and then spray it with white primer in preparation for detail painting.

Assembly was slow because there was a lot of sanding and filing and fitting required to get the pieces to glue together nice and square and even. The mouldings are not the most precise, and there seemed to be a considerable amount of flash on the parts. It reminded me of the time I had building the old Revell Gran Turismo kit. Back in the '70s I loved many of the old Revell automobile kits, but although the designs were great, half the time they had twisted bodies as well as parts that weren't too sharp and had lots of flash. They seemed to require a lot of work to make a presentable model. Although this Weekly Herald is an AHM boxing, it's a reboxing of the Revell original, and maybe the production processes that plagued the automobile kits were a problem here as well. All speculation of course.

Once the walls were glued into a box, the structure seemed a bit wobbly, so I decided to add a floor and partitions to stiffen it. The floor is cut from 0.080" sheet styrene, and the partitions are 0.060". That elliptical hole near the the front door is me realizing after the floor was glued in that I wasn't going to get the front door to fit properly if the floor was attached to the inside sill. After some cursing, a hole was hacked in. 

I think I see a little snaking in one of the long walls, so maybe I didn't quite pull-off that whole nice and square and even thing, but I'll check, and if it's good it'll be on to priming. Stay tuned!

Recently Updated: Explosion at a grain mill

Reader Christian Cassidy has done some great work and figured out where the exploded grain mill was located that my uncle went out to investigate in the winter of 1944. Scroll down to the bottom of the Explosion at a grain mill post for all the details.

One last facade

I've been doing a bit of work to finish up the facade of the central building in the Canadian Press complex.

Each of the floor drawers were painted with a sea grey, and window shades were cut from sheets of white paper were glued to the front of each drawer. Nothing exciting about those tasks, but necessary.

The main business that I'd been putting off for a long time has been building up the ground-level facade. Delay no more. One rainy morning I downed copious amounts of coffee and got to work.

I laid out a simplified arrangement of windows, doors, and framework on a thin piece of clear sheet plastic. Permanent ink Sharpie pens were used for the black lines, and some El Cheapo permanent ink, no-name pen from China was used for the silver framing. The silver ink wasn't as permanent as advertised, so I sprayed the piece with Testor's Gloss Cote. That fixed the silver smudging problem, but caused ripples in the black lines. Instead of discarding the piece and starting again as I should, I merely tried to strengthen the black lines a little more by relining them and continuing on. The black lines still have a little ripple, but I didn't want to lose my momentum by starting over. Live and learn. 

Acid-free construction paper was used to make the panels, which were stuck onto the plastic with transfer tape. Soloway's Hot Dogs isn't actually at this location, but I loved getting hot dogs at one of their outlets, washed down with a Dr. Brown's Black Cherry, with the guys back in days of yore, so I indulged in a little fantasy. The frame around the leftmost doors, the main Canadian Press sign, and all the doorhandles were cut from styrene.

To the back of the layup, strips of transfer tape were added. It was then just a matter of pressing the taped up piece to the ground floor clear acrylic wall, and presto! 

Construction is now more-or-less finished. I need to work out something for lighting the various floors as it's the lighting of the prototype that attracted me to it in the first place.

Let's fly. On a train!

Forget about malfunctioning LRTs, and let's time travel to Germany in 1902 and board the flying train. 

An upcoming LRT anniversary scarred by a pandemic and operational failure

Non-mask wearing, non-social-distanced inaugural LRT ride on 14 Sept 2019

September 14th marks the first anniversary of the inaugural run of Ottawa's LRT Confederation Line. At this time last year I was happily looking forward to that event. One year later things look very different. 

Almost from the time the system entered regular service it has been plagued by constant malfunctions and extensive service disruptions. As time has gone on, the list of problems has included: train doors that keep getting jammed, failures of onboard and system control computers, frozen switches, brake problems, wheel flat spots, track cracks, pantographs snagging overhead wires, track that won't withstand summer heat, and parts falling off trains. And as of this July, cracks in the wheels has been added to the list; a problem so serious that the federal government's Transportation Safety Board has had to be called in to investigate. In their latest story on the LRT the CBC reports that the promised complement of 15 trains still isn't reliably available during peak periods, and it's not clear when it will be. On top of these technical woes, the pandemic has caused a 70 to 90% reduction in ridership across the entire OCTranspo system, so revenue projections are seriously off, and it's not clear when ridership will again rise to pre-pandemic projection levels. 

Non-mask wearing, non-social-distanced station stop at end of inaugural LRT ride.

As a streetcar aficionado, and with the LRT's Alstom Citadis Spirit being essentially a new streetcar repurposed for LRT use, this has been an eye-opener, and a disappointment. Of course, nowhere near the same level of 'disappointment' experienced by the rider who has to rely on the system to get around the city. I was told there's a study out there somewhere that showed how a bus transitway that used all electric buses was far less economical than an electric LRT. I'll bet that study assumed both systems actually functioned as they should, which is not the case here. The double-whammy of a pandemic and a litany of technical failures have likely wiped out any economic benefits the LRT has over other means of transit for many years to come. Still, I hope the LRT's issues are merely teething pains - albeit ones that might last well into its adolescence :-) - but right now I'm not seeing signs that they are. We'll see what the fall has in store as the schools reopen.