[E. L. Moore's Village Store; J. R. Fisher collection]
E. L. Moore's Village Store appeared in the January 1978 issue of Model Railroader. In the introduction he mentions that the prototype was based on a picture Ron Delli Colli mailed him.
Mr. Moore also mentions that at the time Ron Delli Colli was the cover artist for Looking Back magazine, a favourite of his. That's a 1976 issue with a cover painting by Mr. Delli Colli. That painting is a classic early 1900s scene, and I could easily imagine one of those houses being the inspiration for an E. L. Moore project. It makes me wonder what other covers and pictures from Looking Back became E. L. Moore models.
The Village Store is another of those projects that illustrate that E. L. Moore didn't shy away from colour.
Mr. Moore mentions in his construction articles the colours he used - in this one he states that he mixed a little blue into some white paint - but none of his articles ever featured a colour photo, other than the tribute article that was published in Model Railroader after his death and showed colour photos of a number of his projects.
His use of colour - along with seeing his habit of building even minimal interiors in many projects - was one of the pleasant surprises from this showing of E. L. Moore's work.
However, the roof isn't a surprise by now. On it, he continued to use his balsa engraving technique for roof shingling.
I attempted this HO model in my teen years but I wasn't happy with it. Maybe it's because my version didn't turn out very square. All those add-ons had me creating 3-walls structures that were skewed wrong. It was his Hodpoj Mfg. that finally helped me realize that multiple units were best built independent and attached later. That came in handy when I built his Busy Bee store block. I finally rebuilt the Village Store in N scale and made it into a Christmas Shoppe.
ReplyDeleteELM seems to have a thing for interconnected and interlocking modules as a design strategy. It makes for interesting buildings, and if done right, the model won't have any uninteresting sides.
DeleteI attempted this HO model in my teen years but I wasn't happy with it. Maybe it's because my version didn't turn out very square. All those add-ons had me creating 3-walls structures that were skewed wrong. It was his Hodpoj Mfg. that finally helped me realize that multiple units were best built independent and attached later. That came in handy when I built his Busy Bee store block. I finally rebuilt the Village Store in N scale and made it into a Christmas Shoppe.
ReplyDeleteI made this model about 20 years ago, for an interurban layout I built, to prove I could hand lay workable track(!) It's a lovely subject, an attractive building and a lot of fun to build. Indeed, having sold it later, when the layout was dismantled (and yes, it did work) I've often regretted it. Where's my fretsaw?
ReplyDeleteDo you have a photo of your store model?
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