Scenes from a working day

Before the day gets going.

Clearing away windfall.

A quiet time for a few test loops.

What the drone saw.

We'll have your money today. I promise.

Sunday swim

My first attempt at digitally replacing a background with a photograph. I gave this a try because I realized the lack of trees in the distance was giving me a problem. More practice, more practice.

Some backyard railroad drama

I took Paul's advice and tried placing the layout up high and shooting up into the sky. I had some backlighting issues, but things are looking better. Clearly more practice is needed.

Shaping light

I'm posting these pictures of scenes from the Loonar Module not necessarily because I think they're great in some way, but because, along with some others (here, here, here, here and here), they record something about the nature of the light I'm trying to capture. Although the trees and shrubbery and rocks are not high fidelity modelling, their colour and structure seem to filter and reflect and shape sunlight in just the right way that reminds me of this sort of forest and lake scenery in this part of the world. 

When I look at the layout through the camera in July sunlight I'm starting to see what I'm after, which I only see in rough approximations indoors. I'm thinking lighting is one of the most neglected aspects of layout construction, but it has the potential to improvement a layout far beyond what more detail might do. 

I've got aways to go lighting wise, but I feel I'm heading in the right direction for the character I want to capture.

That's all the canoes they gave me

Workin' on the Railroad

Last three birches

I finished three more birch trees, bringing the total to six on the layout. The first three were placed in a group over by the road. I've planted the two biggest ones of the new three on the other side of the layout: one by the shed, and the other on the slope near the rock face.

Those two biggest ones are on the right and left in the above armature photo. The smallest tree - in the centre of the photo - was planted over by the road, on the side opposite the original three. 

Birch trees seem weird to me. In the wild they're scraggly and grow in odd shapes. I hope that comes across with these three.

Here's the littlest one over by the road. And that birch log on the road? That's the piece scooped up from the workshop floor after shortening an armature to make this tree. I didn't want that piece to go to waste :-)

The layout now has 25 trees: 19 pines and cedars, and 6 birches. There isn't room for more, although I might try to finish this maple tree armature and squeeze it in near the causeway. This would let me try out another bark making technique that seems appropriate for maples.

The layout is nearing the finish line. I see many small landscaping issues I need to fix up, but I'm thinking major work is done. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have the various odds and ends cleaned up, and can start planning a ribbon cutting ceremony!

Birches near the track bend

From above

Blue skies

A couple of weeks ago I submitted some photos of the Loonar Module's de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver to Max's Models for his Canadian Group Build video. I was pleased to see my photos were included, and that one up there was one of them. I shot it the same day I was outside taking the ones of lake water. This is the blurb I wrote to accompany the photos:

This is my build up of Osborn Model Kits’ 1/87 scale DHC-2 Beaver. It’s a laser cut wood kit that I built last winter. The prototype was manufactured by de Havilland Canada, and many were used by the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. My paint scheme and markings are reminiscent of those flown by Lands and Forests, but aren’t 100% accurate. This little plane now resides on my model railroad.

I like that picture, but the sky's colour isn't right. It's the wrong shade of blue for a sunny day in southern Ontario. Now, over on the right, that's a classic sunny, summer Ontario sky blue - at least as far as my camera can capture it.

These days I'm starting to gain an appreciation for layout lighting. In most photos I see, and have taken, the lighting is poor, and doesn't properly convey the essence of the scenes being recorded.

For my outside photos I can make improvements by changing my backdrop, trying different orientations with respect to the sun, and taking pictures in various natural light conditions, but I'm not sure what I'll do when the weather forces me back inside. Well, today's the first day of summer, so I'm not going to worry about that problem until the snow flies again.

Birch grove

Last week I spent some time finishing off the three birch trees that have been languishing on my workbench. 

I discussed armature construction in a previous post, but once that was completed I was a bit puzzled on how to finish them. After trying a few things, and discarding some bad ideas, I finally settled on this approach:

1. Each armature had two coats of white glue painted on to help hold the branches and limbs in place. The nice thing about white glue is the armatures are still fairly flexible when dry, so more adjusting can be done if necessary.

2. A piece of grey duct tape was cut into 2mm wide strips, and these strips were wound over the trunks and major limbs. I made sure the strips didn't overlap, but left no gaps. Once applied I made sure the strips were fully stuck in place.

3. The taped armatures were then painted with two coats of white acrylic paint. 

4. The end branches were loosely painted with brown and grey acrylic paints.

5. The birches' distinctive black trunk slashes and bruises were then painted on with flat black acrylic paint.

6. When the trunks were dry they were painted with loose washes of Tamiya X-19 Smoke acrylic paint.

7. Stringy tufts were teased from a piece of Woodland Scenics Green Poly Fiber for the foliage bulk. These tufts were slid onto the branch ends and then fluffed out. The poly fiber tufts on the rightmost tree are way too dense and had to be thinned out - more on this further down in this post.

8. I then sifted out some fine material from a bag of Scenic Express's Summer Lawn Flock & Turf. The tufts were soaked with Mod Podge Ultra Matte spray, and the fine flocking was lightly sprinkled on. The key word is lightly. Unfortunately I got a bit of flocking on some trunk sections and I need to take a little more time to remove it - it looks like some weird moss.

9. When completely dry the leaf canopies were trimmed with scissors to get rid of stray strands and clumps.

I thought the resulting trees didn't look too bad, but the one on the right was still weird. I didn't want to discard it, so eventually I did two modifications:

1. I pulled the poly fiber off and discarded about 3/4 of it. What was left I teased out into something more stringy and see-through before reinstalling. And ....

... 2) I cut off most of the trunk so that the tree was now one of those examples you see that have a short main trunk where two trunks branch off. 

You hear of film on the cutting room floor, well there's a trunk on the workshop floor :-)

There's the modified tree. It's still a bit odd, especially the canopy, which got a little more fluffing and trimming later, but it's looking much better.

Individually, these birches aren't super detailed, and I still need to work on canopy shaping, but on the layout, placed together in a grove, and photographed in sunlight, I'm quite happy with them. I plan to build maybe two or three more for placement elsewhere on the layout to balance out the composition. Hopefully on those I can work out the canopy and trunk moss issues.

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 :-)

Rare photo of DoLF CF-046 as seen from chase plane

While sorting through the archives of the Department of Lands and Forests railway I came across this rare photo of the Horten Go229 flying wing the group obtained in 1946 when DoLF was still part of the Department of Lands, Forests and Skies. This 1965 overhead photo of a low altitude pass was taken from the chase plane escorting the newly refurbished and freshly painted CF-046 back to its home base at Lake Timothy. It's thought the photo was shot somewhere over the area where NASA was training its astronauts in lunar surface operations. Normally all one sees of this rare bird is its distinctive shadow skimming across the landscape.

Crossing Rockface bridge

I like the idea that this little layout could be used to test N scale, HO-9, and O-9 equipment on its loop. Continuing on with test photos, I tried this one of the EVRR N scale loco crossing the trestle. I can see a number of places where the trees and waterside vegetation need improvement, but the colour and shading are looking ok.

I've been cagey and have tried to leave out views of the water from the photos as I haven't poured it yet. There's still some work to do on the shoreline, so no pouring until that's done.

Meeting the Plane

It's been the sunniest and mildest day so far this year, so staying in the house is a nonstarter. I took the Loonar Module outside for some test photos as a layout can look quite different in the light of day through the lens of a digital camera. I see quite a few things that need correction, but this is a test layout, so that's to be expected.

Overall, things are shaping up as I had hoped, although the vegetation density needs to increase a lot to fully get the feeling I'm after. Well, it looks like there're some questions about the fuel supply, so I bet get going and see what the problem is :-)

Scarboro Square Beauty, Move-In Ready

Deoralow Mk II: 32 ft by 20 ft -- built ’67 -- 2 bdrm, 1 bath, kitchen/dining/parlour -- built-in Food-o-Mat -- 2-level finished basement with laundry, workshop & rumpus room -- new reactor ’72 -- parking for 2 -- snow auto-melt system -- jetpack docking with plug-in charger -- walk to schools, grocery, churches, streetcars, theatre -- amuse the kids with vintage ’54 robo-gardener -- priced to sell at $56,998 -- CDN Faux Realty # 416-HAHAHA-EH