From Scalextric to E. L. Moore

The E. L. Moore eBook is in the final stages of development - ok, well, the manuscript is almost done, and I'm revising it like crazy.

Early on in the book I talk about how I 'discovered' E. L. Moore by way of a youthful slot car obsession. A friend and I played with Eldon cars and Scalextric track in the summer of '73, and I went all out making buildings for our layout. In my search for building models I stumbled across the work of E. L. Moore, and the rest is history :-) 

A couple of weeks ago I started to wonder if a small Scalextric course for 1/32 scale cars could be built these days. By "small" I had in mind something around 2m x 1m that could be built on a thick foam base.  

PaperClip 7 using Scalextric Classic track

I looked around for a planning tool and came across RailModeller Express for the Mac. It has templates for Scalextic track, and only cost 99¢ at Apple's App Store for a version that can handle up to 50 pieces of track, which seemed like plenty for the little layout I had in mind.

I'd been doodling a paperclip shaped layout so that's what I tried to build. 

It turns out there are two types of Scalextric track: Classic and Sport.

Classic was discontinued years ago, but I remember it from childhood, so I tried something with it first. I was able to fit a layout in 2m x 1m without too much effort.

PaperClip7 using Scalextric Sport track

Sport is the current offering, and can be used for digital or analog layouts, whereas Classic was apparently only good for analog. Any layout I'd build would be analog.

A problem I found is Sport doesn’t offer a crossover on a straight section of track, only on an R2 curve! For reasons of geometry this forces all curves in the paperclip to be R2 and makes for a bulkier layout. Lengthwise the course just squeezes into 2m, but widthwise it's a good 20cm or so too wide.

I used 4 crossovers in the Sport version instead of just 2 to try and make the race as fair and equal as possible, but I wonder if it is too difficult. Clearly I need to keep experimenting with this tool.

Yes, RailModeller Express does allow you to design railroad track plans too as its name suggests! The full version of RailModeller doesn't have the 50 piece limit, so you can dream up a huge empire. It's a great tool if the Scalextric part is anything to go by and I'm looking forward to trying model railroad track planning with it.

Beaver and Cub

Back in 2016 I had a go at building the HO scale Piper Cub kit offered by Osborn Model Kits. I was charmed by that little model and several years later bought Osborn's DHC-2 Beaver floatplane kit for the Loonar Module. I found the Beaver to be a challenging build, but it does produce a striking model.

I recently discovered that Osborn produces a float kit for the Cub. I bought one because I'd like the Cub to appear in new Loonar Module photos when I can again take the layout outside for pictures. If the scaling on these models is accurate, the Beaver is quite large in comparison to the Cub. When I bring the Cub up to the dock, there isn't a lot of clearance between it's wing and the deck.

Although the float kit is rather simple, it was tricky to get it attached to the fuselage. I had filled the fuselage's mounting slots when I attached the landing gear, so I had to cut off the tabs on the float's legs and simply Weld Bond on the assembly to the fuselage's bottom. Also, when I built the Cub back in 2016 I didn't attach the wing properly and it had a bit of anhedral. I think the Cub has a flat wing. I snapped off the wing to flatten it, but in the end wound up giving it a bit of dihedral as I thought that gave the model a little jauntier look out on the Loonar Module's lake. 

While I wait for the Loonar Module's Tranquility Lake to unfreeze, I'll leave you with Frank.

A thick slab of Kato Unitram track

I've been spending most of my modelling time working on the E. L. Moore book. When I've needed a mental break, actual model making didn't appeal, but futzing with layout building did.

I sort of scared myself when I saw the last time I posted on this little layout was December third, and here we are in the second half of January. All I can say is that working on the book is sucking back a lot of time, but in between figuring out where to put commas, and usually failing, I have been breathing in styrofoam dust - hmm, which might account for the comma problem.

The next layout job I had to do was drill some holes to snake the wiring through the slab. There were two pairs of holes to drill: one pair for the power leads for each track, and a second pair for the switch machine toggle switches on the inner loop. 

I used a 1" diameter bit held in a brace for this task. I think that brace is quite ancient as I believe it came across to Canada with my grandfather. It's a fine piece of English engineering and I greatly enjoy using it whenever I can, even on a piddly little task like boring holes in foam. 

Ok, there are the four holes, bored all the way through to the bottom of the slab. 

The next thing was to bore four holes in the slab's sides to intersect with those I drilled down from the top. The power feeds are going to pop out the sides for connecting to a power pack, and the switch machine wires are going to connect with side mounted toggle switches.

I used the same 1" diameter bit to bore out these holes.

At this point all the holes are bored out, and I've flipped over the track to test that I can snake the wiring through the holes and run some cars to make sure the track is still functioning. 

At this point the slab's sides are still quite rough. Smoothing them a bit before the track was attached was the next job.

This meant using another ancient tool: my grandfather's wood rasp. It's the same vintage as the brace, and this is a rather trivial job for it. So, with rasp and sanding block I smoothed down the foam sides and got it to more-or-less conform with the track's perimeter. Over there you can see the result. Later, when the track was stuck down, I came back and did some more smoothing to finish it off.

So, I flipped the track upside down again and did the final preparation for sticking it in place.

First was to glue scraps of styrene over the holes that run down the centre of the track for the overhead wiring poles. Since this is an HO-9 layout, those holes won't be used for anything. They'll be filled with putty, and the styrene helps prevent putty from squirting out the bottom.

The next thing was to change the setting on the two switches that are on the street end from their factory setting of 'power routing' to 'non power routing'. I did this to prevent any odd power problems originating from that end of the layout if a visitor absentmindedly started fiddling with the switches, and to allow for layout expansion - a rather unlikely development I admit. Well, if you were going to add a stub loop like this one on a large layout, you'd need to have these switches on non power routing to prevent disruption of movements in the loop. Anyway, if you're going to make such a change, follow the instructions on the card that comes with the switch.

I then used a black Sharpie pen to outline the track on the foam. This was to give me a guide for placing the transfer tape that was used to stick down the track.

Ah, transfer tape, it's a miracle tape as far as I'm concerned. 

To hold the track in place I stuck down transfer tape along the inner and outer edges of the track plan. In the photo its been placed, and all that needs to be done is to peel off the paper backing from the exposed side and place the track on top. This is easier said than done. Flipping the track on the tape and getting it aligned is a tricky maneuver. Sorry, I have no photos or videos of the action, as my hands were occupied getting the track in place.

In the end though I did get the track properly positioned and stuck down.

At this point there was some more work with the rasp and sanding block to finish the slab side smoothing to get a nice edge with the track sides. 

Also, some thin foam - some leftover packing from a desk that was delivered over the Christmas holidays - was stuck down between the tracks to level off the surface. Transfer tape was also used to hold that in place.

Here's what the curved end looks like after rasping and sanding. It's not too bad. Although, here's a tip: don't wear a woolly sweater while smoothing no matter how cold the basement is :-)

There was one more thing to do before painting the slab's sides black. I added a trim strip of 0.020" styrene to cover the gaps between the track and foam. It was attached with transfer tape, and the strip's upper edge was glued to the track's edge with styrene glue. 

Once the glue was dry I primed the sides with gesso, and then painted on two coats of black acrylic paint. 

I'm quite happy with how this is turning out, but I think it's time to get back to the book.

Sittin' and a-Thinkin'

I'm reviewing all my reference material as I work on the manuscript. I found I had overlooked a letter Moore wrote to Hal Carstens in Jan '68 where he mentioned that a book called Sittin' and a-Thinkin', by Ernst Peterson and Glenn Chaffin, was a source of many of his outhouse models. I haven't found a reasonably priced copy yet (no, I won't pay $50US to ship one to Canada as one online seller demands), but I did find a scan of the cover online. The book's cover photo seems very close to that Moorian outhouse model you see on the left. Makes me wonder what else I'll find inside.

A Dilly of a diorama

I finally got the lead out and finished the first diorama. This one is an homage to the industrial strip that ran along one edge of E. L. Moore's old time shortline terminal yard, featured in his article Turn Backward, O Time that appeared in the January 1967 issue of Model Railroader. If you have access to that issue you can see these models on pages 57, 62, and 64. Here we are in January 2023, 56 years later, and I'm still impressed that these little buildings are in such great shape. They let us see that Mr. Moore was a great colourist, something that readers half-a-century ago in that long gone black-and-white world never knew. That yard of his would have been a sight to see. Well, my time machine's buried under a mountain of snow, so we'll never know :-)