It's a small, small zoo!

The Elsie City Zoo is a small model zoo 2 foot wide and 4 foot long.

It's built in HO scale. HO is a scale of 1 foot on the model being 87 feet in the world I'm creating. So I had to build my zoo in a space 174 feet by 348 feet. It's not much space for a zoo!

My zoo has a Zoo Train. The Zoo Train runs on tracks that would be 30" apart if it were real. Since it's shrunk down 1/87th real size, it runs on tracks 0.3" wide. That, by happy chance, is the same width as N gauge tracks. So I can use some N gauge parts in my Zoo Train.

My zoo is part of the Elsies group. We call the zoo and the other bits of railroad 'modules', and each build one or two modules. We all agree on certain standards that let us connect our modules to each other. So a train can start on one person's module and travel to the next module. We get together at each other's homes and at public events and run our tiny trains.

The zoo has a wooden frame. The top of the zoo is styrofoam. Since we travel around and have to take our modules with us, we like it when they're light! The zoo travels in it's own specially made box on wheels. I get funny looks when I'm pulling the zoo behind me, because the zoo box is painted in tiger stripes!

It took me about a year to make the zoo, working in my spare time. I'm constantly adding things to the zoo.

Sometimes people ask how I made various parts of the zoo.

This building is the Botanical Conservatory. It's used to keep a wide variety of plants.

The Botanical Conservatory was made by printing white lines (and a silver sign) on an ALPS MD-1000 printer. The printing was done on a combination of overhead transparency film and clear sheet styrene. The OH transparency film is easier to work with, and takes the ALPS printing better, but the styrene worked better for the flat ends of the main building. Inside the building is braced with styrene strips. I built up the roof trusses before installing them. After putting a styrene strip 'skeleton' on each part, I very carefully 'rolled' the building up onto the end pieces. The roof vent covers a seam between two pieces of acetate.

This is a picture of the right hand end of the zoo. Where the grass changes color is the end of my module. The building on the left edge of this picture is the ticket office.

The rear part is just a shed, nothing fancy. The front fascia is actually made of styrofoam. I cut the "molded" letters and curved front from a block of styrofoam using a computer controlled milling machine.

This is the computer model I built of the front of the building before I milled it.

This link will get you a more-or-less complete list of all the animals available in HO, as an excel spreadsheet.