Annals of the Lands & Forests Railway: The Personal Flying Sub

In 1966 the Department of Lands & Forests contracted the Allen Irwin Company to build a personal size, single operator Flying Submarine. Given that Ontario was estimated to have over 250,000 lakes, 1/5 of the world’s fresh water, and an area 1.5x the size of Texas, it was thought a fleet of flying observation subs was a prudent investment. The 1966 purchase was to be the first of many; however, a strange series of events in late 1967 put an end to that plan*.  

The Department took delivery in the spring of 1967. The inaugural trip saw the sub stop at several ports of call in Ontario, one being the Loonar Railway Testing Facility, before heading to Expo ’67 in July. This is the only surviving photo** - taken by a passing canoeist - of the visit to that remote railway test facility.

Lands & Forests Flying Sub #8 is Moebius' little Flying Sub kit built more-or-less box-stock. The only changes I made were to leave out the interior and add my own decals.

The internet tells me this model of the fictional Flying Sub that appeared on the old tv show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, is around 1/128 scale. That's too large for N-scale, and too small for HO. However, if it was indeed for a single HO submariner, and that person was small and skinny enough to squeeze through the hatches, then this vehicle sizes out to maybe about right for a personal-sized submarine. Just maybe.....

The hull was brush painted with loose applications of yellow, grey, and black acrylics. I didn't want that pristine yellow of the tv show's vehicle. 

I built this model during the darkest part of winter as a break from layout construction. At that time I had no idea what its story would be; it was only meant to be fun. It was only after I had printed up the decals for the loco that I thought about incorporating the Flying Sub into the scene.

*Within Lands & Forests a group of upstarts were plotting to create a new department called Skies & Waters, and the acquisition of the Flying Submarine by the old guard L&F executives was the last straw for the S&W gang. The S&W faction felt L&F was getting too big, and couldn’t properly administer lands, forests, skies, and waters. The S&W faction felt that splitting L&F in two would allow better focus on the emerging concerns of air and water pollution. And as is common in organizations where there are too many executive strivers and not enough executive seats to be strived for, the S&W faction felt a new department was just the ticket to provide them. So, a vehicle that could command both the skies and waters with equal ease was just too much for the S&W gang to bear. And to add insult to injury none of the S&W faction had any input on the Flying Sub acquisition, so it was de facto bad. Memos were drawn up, white papers circulated, cabinet ministers were wined and dined, lobbyists schmoozed, contractors courted, many nights of long knives were endured, and old favours were called in. When the ink had dried and the paper cuts healed, the Flying Submarine purchase was but a hazy memory, and a bright , shiny new bureaucracy was birthed to end off 1967.

**All official photographs were destroyed by Skies & Waters.

Lake water

A week or so after applying 'water' to the Loonar Module's lake bed I took the layout outside to see how it looked in sunlight, and to take a few pictures.

The water was made by first applying two coats of Golden gloss medium to the lake bed to seal it. Then a layer of Golden semi-gloss soft gel was sponged on to give the surface a slightly wavy texture. This was left to dry for a day. I wasn't happy with the reflectivity of the gel, so I went ahead and applied two glazes of gloss medium on top. Next time I'll simply use some gloss soft gel.

In natural light, and when viewed from the correct angle, the water surface looks rather convincing. Although, the bright late afternoon sun caused the water's surface to soften a little. After 15 minutes the airplane's floats were settled into the lake, and some considerable prying was required to unstick them when it came time to pack up.

If it stops raining long enough, I'm looking forward to taking more outdoor layout photos this summer :-)

First test run of the HOe scale canoe car

First test run of the canoe car. I can see it has got a wicked backward tilt that I’m going to need to shim out. But, I’m glad to see it doesn’t track too badly, and it goes through the switch without derailing even though the loco shows just a little hesitation.

A canoe car in HOe

Canoe car #7 straight from the paint shop and ready for a test run

Last winter Dave told me about a special canoe carrying freight car the Ontario Northland operated. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have something like it for the layout. To get started I looked around the workshop and found a set of trucks I had liberated from an N-scale freight car a long time ago and enough suitable styrene leftovers and scraps for an HOe version.

The overall size and shape were established by playing with the parts and pieces until an idea gelled. The only firm requirement was the car had to accommodate a stack of three canoes, and run on my test track. Once I had the basic shape figured out, I then established some dimensions so I could move onto cutting styrene. The only 'plan' was that scrap of notes to help me remember some key dimensions and component shapes.

I'm not going to go into a detailed, step-by-step how-to, just show some photos of the car after construction, but before painting.

The car is made up of three sub-assemblies: a flat car, two tall bulkheads, and a rack for the canoes.

Dimensions? It's 21' long x 5 3/4' wide. The end bulkheads stand 9' tall from the deck.

The flat car is just a rectangular frame of 0.080" x 0.080" strip styrene, with the top and sides cut from 0.020" sheet styrene. The support structures for the trucks and couplers are built up from scraps of styrene strip stock. One of the reasons I'm not a YouTube presenter is that I don't have a tried-and-true recipe for a lot of the things I do and just muddle through as best I can. I've never built a complete piece of rolling stock of my own design before, so I just winged it, which doesn't make for an authoritative video.

However, if you're looking for some construction guidance I'd recommend reading Freelanced Narrow Gauge Flatcar by legendary modeller Doug Leffler that appeared in the June 1972 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. Although the article doesn't deal specifically with a car like the canoe car, it inspired me to jump in and build because it made the basic structure of a flat car model understandable, so I felt confident I could successfully build one. Because of its concise focus on structure and basic principles I consider the article a classic. It's too bad RMC doesn't collect up articles like this one into some sort of reprint collection. Hmm, it might not sell that well as the collection I have in mind would focus on the basics of construction and other fundamentals instead of the minutiae of detail, airbrushing . . . wait, stop, I see I'm heading for an off-ramp, so let's get back on the highway before it's too late :-)

I forgot to mention that I glued some weights to the bottom of the flat car to give it a bit better tracking. Years ago I bought a strip of self-adhesive 7g weights at George's Trains for just this purpose. I cut one off the strip, then chopped it into 4 pieces, and stuck each to the underside of the flat car's deck. Somewhere in the workshop is a scale, and I need to use it to see how much the finished car weighs.

The couplers on this car are weird. I don't own any Minitrains brand cars, so the couplers on the canoe car are guesswork. No doubt at sometime in the future I'll need to replace them with something else.

On one end I've added a post (a piece of 18 gauge wire) at the coupler position and at the other end ...

... the coupler is a loop of 30 gauge wire, which allows the car to couple to the locomotive.

Those end bulkheads are crazy tall. I can just imagine how much the full size ones would weigh if they were made of steel. The cars would have to be speed limited in corners to prevent them from toppling over. And the aerodynamic drag! Would there be weird vortex threads shed from the bulkheads buffeting the canoes, loosening their tie downs, and tossing them overboard? Maybe I need an HO scale wind tunnel to find out :-)

One important thing that doesn't come across in the photos was how pleasurable this car was to build. It didn't drag on and on as my projects usually do, but was done in three sessions, and each induced mental flow. That's not something that often happens for me these days, so that was a bonus.

Although I like the colour of the Ontario Northland car, I wanted to keep the family feeling in my rolling stock and sprayed it with some Krylon yellow so my canoe car would match the Loonar Module's locomotive. The car needs a few more markings and some light weathering, but for the time being I'm declaring it done.

Ramsey's Park Square: Finished!

In the previous instalment I had finished the base layer painting. That layer didn't look too bad, so I thought, why not do a little concentrated work and finish the thing. So I did :-)

The biggest job seemed to be adding mortar lines to the brickwork. I haven't settled on a preferred technique and have used a wide variety over the years. I think the oddest was rubbing on toothpaste, although it did produce pretty convincing results along with adding a minty fresh smell to the project! This time I rubbed in some white, fine modelling paste from Liquitex. The procedure was simple enough: rub a dab into some mortar joints, then rub off the excess that got on the brick surface. I must have had dirty fingers when I applied the paste as the bricks came out with an aged tone. Maybe I need to market my finger oils as a high quality weathering compound :-)

The window frames were sprayed with a leftover can of Krylon green paint. It turns out none of the window frames fit properly in the wall openings. I didn't have the patience to file and fiddle with each frame and opening to get a perfect fit, but just pressed and squeezed each until it wedged in its opening and then applied glue. 

The draperies are printed paper items leftover from the Kibri apartment project.

Eventually I'm going to add a staircase below the door on the back wall. I admit I've copped out on this detail, but what I'm interested in with this model is the front facade that'll be seen from the street. In the meantime, for safety's sake, maybe I better add a danger sign to the door as that first step is a lulu :-)

Why are those windows bricked up? Won't the apartments be dungeon-like on that side? Well, yes, but maybe they just need the right tenant :-) Ok, well, this wall came from a Grusom Casket Co. kit, and not from its ancestor, the Ramsey Journal Building, so there's the reason. I was just making due with the parts I had on hand, and I didn't have either a complete Ramsey Journal or Grusom Casket kit in my stash. 

The roof is quite simple. The skylight is from the kit, and the air conditioner is from a collection of Walthers rooftop detail accessories. Other than adding some pigeons, and maybe some droppings, to the upper ledge of the facade, that is that. It's not the most detailed of models, but I like the concept, and I think it'll add a little unique character to the layout.