Safe Landing

“Leslie, look over there”, prompted Cathy as she pointed to the sky just above a distant dune.

“I don’t see anything,” replied Leslie lifting her binoculars and scanning the horizon,“ it’s still a bit too soon. He’d call if he was approaching.”

Leslie lowered her binoculars and turned to Cathy, “Try to remember to call me Donna, not Leslie. It won’t become automatic for either of us if we don’t use it all the time.”

“Sorry.”

“Andy should be within range of our walkie-talkies in a few minutes,” continued Donna glancing at her watch.

Sunrise was still a few minutes away and there was an onshore breeze blowing across the beach. The distant trackmobile’s idling diesel was still faintly discernible above the screeches of circling seagulls and the white-noise of waves washing up on the beach.

“Do you think this wind will slow him down?”

“No, I re-checked the power system this morning and he has plenty. The wind should be a good test of its control capabilities.”

The sun was just peeking above the horizon. 

“There he is,” reported Cathy.

A black blob had appeared in the previously vacant spot in the air above the dunes.

Donna took another look through her binoculars and nodded confirmation. Cathy went on the walkie-talkie, “Andy, we see you.”

“I hear you,” came the faint, staticy reply.

“How’s your steering?”

“Excellent. Bit of a cross-wind. I’m holding course without much trouble. I’d rate it an eight.“

The black blob started to take on features. A big cylindrical gas-bag. A lengthwise beam slung below. Several propellers on struts sticking out at strange angles from the beam.  Andy Dumont was strapped into a seat right in the middle of this aerodynamic confusion.

The speed was good. Surprisingly so for a blimp.

“Do you see the flat car?” Cathy asked the radio.

“Yes.” The static was gone.

The blimp started to turn inland and head for the flat car.

“I’m going to get the grapple ready,” announced Cathy, who then ran for the train.

“Ok,” replied Andy from the radio.

“Ok,” replied Donna from behind her binoculars, still tracking Andy’s flight path.

The landing flat car was coupled to the trackmobile in the tall-grass siding on the other side of the dune ridge where the surfers usually parked. 

Cathy deployed the flat car’s grappling mast.

Andy was on a perfect approach. The flat car was broadside to the wind and the blimp was on a steady descent in line with it. It was unfazed by the ocean breezes. 

Donna lowered her binoculars and ran over to the flat car to watch the landing up close.

Andy got the blimp positioned over the grapple, stopped, lowered the landing cable and the grapple did what the grapple was supposed to do: grab the cable and pull the blimp down. Propellers slowed. The blimp wobbled a little. There was a soft bounce when it hit the deck.

“Come fly with me, let’s fly!” sang Andy in a pathetic Sinatra imitation as he unstrapped himself from the cockpit, jumped from the flat car’s deck, and bestowed a kiss on both members of the ground crew.

“

Whatever you installed in her, it did the trick. Perfect control. Lots of power. Like riding on rails!” Andy was ecstatic.

“Don’t run off and join the comedy club circuit just yet. Pull the gas release and let’s get out of here.”

Andy did as he was told. A big seam opened up on the top of the gas bag and let loose all the hydrogen. In a few seconds it was just a big sheet draped over the car. Within minutes all three had it tucked in place and were ready to leave.

Cathy got into the trackmobile’s cab and put it in gear.

Andy had climbed onto the flat car.

Donna started to enter the trackmobile’s passenger door.

“Let’s look at the flight recorder!” called Andy, waving Donna to come back. She stepped down from the cab and motioned Cathy to start the train.

The trackmobile slowly started to pull forward. Donna stepped onto a flat car rung as it passed by. 

Andy grabbed her free hand and helped her up onto the deck. 

From up there she was rewarded with a panoramic view of the ocean and dunes and birds and tall grasses. All glorious in the glow of the rising sun. Maybe this was the place to stop running.

The next instalment can be found here.

Incident at Stop 23

I was on my way to another interview with someone who might have had recent contact with the elusive Dr. Leslie Warden. This slogging was starting to wear on me, but I’d been warned that this was mostly what the job was about.

The streetcar was getting close to my stop. I got up and walked to the centre doors. We started to glide into the stop and I stepped down onto the pneumatic stair so I’d get off quick once we pulled in. It looked like I was the only one getting off here. Didn’t look like many were going to get on either even though there was another car coming up behind us. 

I was rudely awakened from my hamster-wheel thoughts by a loud, watery bang and the floor lurching forward. I stumbled backward, but grabbed a pole and didn’t fall. Passengers screamed. Water streamed over the back windows from other streetcar’s front water bumpers.

The doors sprung open and all the lights came on as our car’s emergency systems kicked in.

The driver swiveled around and yelled, “Is anyone hurt?” He got out of his seat and started to carefully walk down the aisle, inspecting as he went.

I had a death grip on the pole and stared out the back window in disbelief. How did that idiot ever pass his driver’s test? It didn’t take long to find out, he probably wasn’t wearing that goalie mask. 

The front door of the guilty car had sprung open and a man wearing a hooded jacket and a goalie mask jumped out, followed by a second man in a similar get-up. 

“Driver, close the door after me, and everyone get down on the floor,” I yelled as I ran outside.

I pulled my out my gun and lead with it.

The first goalie was running towards me waving his own gun, but the stars were aligned for me for once, and he slipped on the water slicked cobblestones, fell backwards and hit his head hard on the ground. The gun bounced from his hand. I ran up and kicked it away. 

The second goalie had run to the back of our car and was frantically pulling on the power pole release cable. Apparently our car wasn’t well maintained and it wouldn’t let go.

“Stop,” I commanded using my best “I’m-the-man-obey-me” voice.

I carefully started to approach him with my gun stiff armed in front of me. 

He stopped alright, and started to reach into his jacket.

I didn’t wait to see if it was a water pistol. I fired.

Lucky for both of us I’m still a terrible shot. I hit an arm. I had aimed for his heart.

He fell to the cobbles. He howled and sobbed and cursed and cradled his shattered elbow. Before he could regain his composure I used my handcuffs to shackle his ankle to our car’s rear bumper. 

The other goalie hadn’t stirred since hitting the ground. That wasn’t good.

Our driver couldn’t help himself, left our car, and ran back towards me to see what was going on. 

“Call the police and ambulance,” I commanded again.

The shot goalie had passed out.

I reached down and pulled off his mask. It was McFarland, the constable who had helped arrest Little Miss Ray-Gun at the coffee shop. What the hell was going on here?

I swung around to pull the mask off the other one, but there was a pool of blood forming behind his head. I let him be.

The driver was frozen in his tracks, staring at what was soon to be a corpse if he didn’t make the call.

“Get. The. Police.”

“I’ve switched on the emergency transponder,” was his flat reply.

I stood up to survey the scene. Passengers were peaking out the windows. Several would-be passengers at the stop were cautiously walking this way to see what the commotion was about. One of them seemed to have a bad sense of direction and started to run away. 

That was interesting. 

I decided to run after him. 

The next instalment can be found here.

AMT Amtronic, Google, Noir, Adjusting and me

Throughout the year the Amtronic Ranch post has frequently shown up in the 30 Squares of Ontario most-accessed-posts-of-the-week list. For awhile I thought that it was simply another case of stats server spammers at work, but the Google search terms stats show that Googlers will often select the Amtronic Ranch post when it is presented in search results for ‘AMT Amtronic’ or variations on that phrase. I was surprised at how many search queries Google appears to get on Amtronic – I know I shouldn’t be surprised given the scope and reach of Google and the internet, but it does seem like a rather obscure word.

Anyway, I had recently bought a Model Power HO-scale Porsche Boxster Cabrio for the layout and its profile reminded me of the ‘roof’ shape of the Amtronic Ranch, so I tried to take a picture showing what I thought was the similarity – with so-so results. That’s the lead photo on this post.

Around about the same time I bought the little Porsche I came across this video about the ‘Urban Outlaw’ and his big Porsche quest,

And while I’m on the cars and customizing track, the Amtronic Ranch was built from the left over parts from this build I did 7 or 8 years ago. It used the front end of the AMT Amtronic and the back end of the AMT L’il Gasser.

I still have an unopened AMT Amtronic kit that I’m thinking of building box stock in January as a short break from train stuff. It’s a rather interesting kit, and from what I can tell from browsing the internet, full of building challenges. Well, I now have 2 kits. I bought a second - shown at the bottom of the photo below - at Udisco in Montreal on the weekend. I had heard about this legendary store for quite sometime, but this was the first time I had the chance to visit.

I made the road trip to Montreal with a friend and his son. Udisco is the Tardis of hobby stores: it appears rather modest on the outside, but it's huge on the inside: trains, plastic kits, plus lots of other interesting stuff.

 [Udisco's store front on Decarie Boulevard]

 [There's lot's of parking under some custom graffiti - that's the side wall of Udisco.]

[It's basically rows and rows of shelves like this lined with kits and hobby goodies - not to be missed.]

This long, not-so-train-oriented ramble is a bit of a break from getting the layout back into good running order before bringing it out of the basement and into the living room for the Christmas season. There’s been lots of work on cleaning and adjusting and fiddling that isn’t too exciting, but hopefully it’ll all come together in a couple of weeks for some fun times. 

Also, I thought I’d post the remaining parts of the streetcar noir series that I wrote earlier in the fall each day next week to bring it to an end for this year. That series of posts was my attempt to see if I could meet Debra’s challenge of trying to write a story instead of my usual stuff (questionable results), write a story that had lots of train stuff built in (all fictional as it turns out), use storytelling to come up with new model building ideas (remains to be seen, but it’s been fun to try), and try out making different types of photos (I did get one I was rather happy with and it became the blog title photo). Maybe I’ll pick this up again in the new year if my interest goes that way again.

350

“And this is the Birney time-machine conversion we did for Back to the Future,” explained Rob as he pointed to the next photo on the wall.

“That one was tough. A full, customized stainless steel body complete with gull-wing doors. It required huge gas-struts to lift those things. In the end we had to substitute fiberglass doors to make them lighter,” elaborated Bob.

Rob and Bob, the identical twin brothers of Birney Brothers Custom Trams, were giving me a tour of the wall of fame at their corporate office. Little did they know that a ‘Mr. Fusion’ device was closer to reality than they might imagine.

“And this is the Birney Pacer we did for Duane’s World.” Rob had moved on to the next photo.

“Mother hated the Pacer.”

“Mother and Father nearly got a divorce over it.”

Divorced over a Pacer? Jess would never have divorced me over a Pacer. She was more sensible. She divorced me because I neglected her.

“Father thought his design was highly advanced. Mother had other words for it.”

“We were quite young then and didn’t realize Mother knew those kinds of words.”

“She eventually destroyed all the Pacer’s plans and files.”

“We had to build the prop tram completely from old photos and memories.”

The brothers sighed in unison and moved onto the next picture.

“Is that who I think it is?” I asked squinting at an image of a leather jacketed man in the photo.

“Yeap, it’s Steve…,” started Rob.

“…McQueen,” finished Bob.

“And who’s that woman he’s laughing with.” As if I didn’t know.

“It’s Leslie.”

“Leslie Warden.”

Steve and Leslie were laughing and sharing a joke beside a jet-black 350 Boss Birney.

“We built the 350 for Bullitt. That was the tram that made our company.”

“No looking back after that.”

“Once the movie hit the theatres, orders for 350s poured in.”

Rob was getting wistful. “We built it in our original garage out in the desert. It was actually an old airplane hanger. We had a test track where the airstrip once was and it had a great view of the mountains in the distance when we had the hanger doors opened. Mr. McQueen came out and worked with us for two weeks when we were tuning up the motor and getting everything adjusted. Great guy. Very skilled.”

“How does Warden fit into all this?” I asked, barely disturbing Rob’s reverie.

“He showed up with her one morning. She worked on the motor for a couple of days. Did something to it that made it go like stink. Whatever it was she took it with her when she left. “

Now Bob was getting all dreamy-eyed. His memories were kicking in. “You remember that day we rolled the 350 out of the hanger and put her on the track and Steve took her out for the first test run?”

“Yeah. He pushed it to the limit.  I nearly had heart failure watching it.”

“What happened to the 350?” I wondered out loud.

“We heard that Mr. McQueen got it after the movie was made.”

“He said he was interested in getting a tram from us for running at Le Mans, but nothing came of it,” piped up Bob.

“You’re right! I almost forgot. That would have been great,” opined Rob.

“Yeap, it would have,” sighed Bob.

The next instalment can be found here.

Seen on Queen Street

I was in downtown Toronto on the weekend, and naturally my inner nerd had to snap a few TTC streetcar pictures. The one above was taken in the skywalk that connects The Bay to The Eaton Centre above Queen Street. This picture looks to the east down Queen St.

The picture below was taken along Dundas.

These old things are going to become rare as these new ones start entering regular service in 2014.