R100 in Canada and the CNR Connection

R100 in Canada by Barry Countryman
Published by The Boston Mills Press, 1982

There was a long trail of old mental associations that got me thinking again about this book, R100 in Canada. The short version goes something like this: The Dam Busters -> Barnes Wallis -> R100 airship ->R100 in Canada. Ok, the part I didn't make explicit in the chain was that Barnes Wallis was the engineering mastermind who designed the most advanced British airship, the R100, which, as it turns out, was the only rigid airship to fly in Canada during the classic airship period of the early 20th century.

I've known about this book for a long time, but finally broke down and bought a copy last week after coming across a very good deal at an online seller. 

Layout of St. Hubert airport as of August 1930.
The airship mooring tower is in the upper left.
The CNR track is the dark, dashed diagonal line.
The temporary excursion train station is the wavy line above the 'Spur of Railway' label.

The story of the R100's visit to Canada is actually quite exciting and was a huge event, so I'll leave you to read all about it in the book. However, I'll give you a quick summary of the R100's itinerary: it left Cardington airfield in England early in the morning on 29 July 1930; completed mooring at St. Hubert airport near Montreal 78 hours and 49 minutes later on 1 August 1930; in the early evening of 10 August the R100 cast off for a tour of southern Ontario which included flying over or within sight of Ottawa, Smiths Falls, Gananoque, Kingston, Belleville, Peterborough, Oshawa, Hamilton, Niagara Falls, and Toronto; returned to Montreal on 11 August; departed for England on 13 August.

It turns out the Canadian National Railway had a permanent station at St. Hubert airport, and also built separate, temporary stations at the airport and in downtown Montreal to handle the crowds expected to see the R100 when it was berthed in St. Hubert. It was estimated that around 600,000 people visited the airport while the R100 was there (for comparison, the population of Canada in 1930 was 10.2 million), so they certainly correctly predicted the enthusiasm of the public.

From the book I get the impression that the CNR had a big role to play in the visit. One aspect that surprised me was it provided you-are-there radio coverage of the R100's approach and landing:

"The Canadian National Railways Radio Department in Montreal, believing Canadians would not be satisfied with colourless government bulletins from the mooring mast, decided to report as much of the R100 flight as possible, following the airship up the St. Lawrence until she moored in St. Hubert.

For the 15 station coast-to-coast hook-up it hired Andy W. Ryan of the Department of Agriculture in Ottawa and Charles Findlay, a former Royal Navy wireless operator, to man a broadcasting outpost at Laval University in Quebec City; established an observation post on the roof of its downtown Montreal studios in the King's Hall Building at 1231 St. Catherine Street West; and erected a 60-foot-high wooden tower composed of two telephone poles on St. Hubert Airport property between the main entrance and the CNR excursion train station.

From the tower, W. Victor George, a programmer and announcer at CNRM. Montreal, with other duties at CNR Radio headquarters, and Captain John A. Barron would describe the R100's arrival at the mast."

I was also quite surprised to learn that FROG released a 1/500 scale plastic kit of the R100 in 1965, and Barnes Wallis himself (!) consulted on the kit's development. And as a bonus, a model of the mooring mast at St. Hubert is included. Apparently the kit has been re-popped over the years, so if I ever find one for a reasonable price it might show up here.

Test run over the pit track

I spent some time over a few days installing the track in the monolith pit. I was surprised that it was quite a pleasant experience. I'd maybe work on it for a couple hours each day and almost immediately after beginning my mind would enter a flow state. I thought this would be a stressful job given the precision needed to get all the pieces to fit properly, but it turned out to be rather restful.

There are some minor alignment issues with the landscape, but they are easily corrected. After watching the loco climb the grade I think the loco still has enough - as my father would say - 'oomph' to pull a couple of cars.

I think the next task will be to do a little landscape cleanup.

Opening the Railroad Modeler Box, Part 6: N-scale Micro Layout in a Tree

From the article, N Scale Puts on a Show, Railroad Modeler, August 1975.
The caption reads:
"A fanciful N display was this 'city in a tree' built by Barry's Hobbies of Garden Grove, California. It just might be the thing to get N scale out of the garage and into the living room."

I've been falling down on my review of the entire print run of Railroad Modeler, but hopefully I'm getting back in the groove. My excuse is I was trying to get Gemini to produce an index for the 1975 issues, as I did for 1974, but I ran into so many problems I gave up, and my interest in the entire project soured. Apparently I need to take a lesson or two in so-called 'prompt engineering'. 

Anyway, I'm again reading my way through 1975. In the Aug '75 issue, in a report on an N scale show put on by the Belmont Shore Railroad Club of Signal Hill, California, I stumbled across this photo of an N-scale railroad set in a tree. The only words about it are those in the caption, so I don't know if it's technically a micro layout, or anything else about it, but it looks quite close. However, if migrating layout fun to the living room was a goal, it certainly seems sized to fit MCM-7 :-)

The Dam Busters, 1955

An image from the famous take-off scene in The Dam Busters.
Three of the nine Lancaster bombers on their way to Germany's Ruhr Dams on 16 May 1943.

I jokingly referred to the 1955 movie, The Dam Busters, in a post about busting beaver dams near the Havelock yard. I hadn't watched it in decades, so I rented a copy and sat down one blustery afternoon last week and watched again. I wasn't disappointed.

I can't comment on its historical accuracy, but I will say it's a docudrama. I don't know how it would fare with today's audiences as its dialogue is sometimes politically incorrect, the special effects are crude by today's standards, and the pacing is slow compared to modern films.

A Lancaster bomber at the Canadian Aviation & Space Museum circa 2018
Of the 133 airmen on the dam busters raid, 30 were Canadians, half didn't return.

But, that said, the aircraft scenes, the portrayal of the mission, the acting, and the emotional and psychological veracity are compelling. Also, the portrayal of real-life engineering, its ups and downs, its bureaucratic frustrations, and its sometimes exhilarating successes feel real to me as a lapsed aeronautical engineer. I was glad to see the legendary engineer Barnes Wallis portrayed in the movie, and that his role wasn't minimized.

I'd rate it 8.5 to 9 out of 10. 

Paperback version published by Abacus, 2008.

I said I'd write more about books, so here's one with a little Dam Busters spin. 

I read this one by Harry Pearson, Achtung Schweinehund!: A Boy's Own Story of Imaginary Combat, over the winter. It's an account of Pearson's lifelong involvement in the hobby of war gaming, miniature figures, and military models. It's fact filled, fascinating, sympathetic, and endlessly humorous. He has this to say about the movie:

"The Dam Busters starred Richard Todd [JDL: he plays Wing Commander Guy Gibson], a mainstay of British war films. He had also been a mainstay of the British war. The Dublin-born actor had served in the 7th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, taken part in the Normandy Landings and had been a member of the Allied spearhead that cut through German lines to join the airborne troops, commanded by Major Howard, who had captured the Pegasus Bridge. In the film D-Day the Sixth of June Todd played his own commanding officer, while in Darryl F. Zanuck's epic The Longest Day he played the part of Major Howard, with a younger actor taking the role of Richard Todd. In the 1958 film I Was Monty's Double, meanwhile, M. E. Clifton-James, who had indeed been Monty's double, took the parts of Monty and his double, thus playing himself being himself as well as playing the man he had been playing at being. The war had already gone postmodern. Little wonder that a primary school boy [JDL: the author] could get confused between fact and fiction."

The book is full of these sorts of gems. Get it, and watch the film.

Rolling stock for the Community Garden Layout

A people mover of dubious safety and legality

From time-to-time I've been working on two pieces of rolling stock for the community garden layout: a people mover, and a compost gondola.

I should have taken construction photos, but I wasn't in a documentation frame-of-mind while working on these. The people mover is basically a little flat car built from scraps of styrene, balsa, and wire on a Peco N-guage chassis.

The compost car.

Including a compost car in the 'fleet' was a suggestion from Galen. My instantiation is based on an old Atlas N-scale gondola. Not much has been done to it other than repainting, 'lettering', and installing a custom coupling bar and ring.

Both cars use a ring attached to a long bar for coupling to the locomotive. The long bar is necessary because the curves have such a tight radius: 3-1/2" inches. This prevents the car from jamming or flipping as it is pulled around a curve.

They both need a bit more weathering and colour, but at this stage I wanted to make sure they tracked properly when pulled, and have them around for comparison sizing the other layout elements.