The Electric Highway

An old idea gets new life in Sweden. There's an interesting history of trolley buses and trolley trucks at Low Tech Magazine.

Index to the E. L. Moore files excerpts

Over the last 8 or so months I’ve been reading and scanning a stack of E. L. Moore’s manuscripts and letters that were generously loaned to me by a collector. There were 1,189 pages, and as the lead photo of my reading copy shows, the scans more-or-less fill 3, 3” binders. This material covers the years,

June 1961 to December 1963

February 1964 to January 1968

June 1968 to July 1976

January 1977 to July 1978

As you can see there are gaps in the record, and material prior to mid-1961 and after mid-1978 is missing. Given that Mr. Moore died in August 1979, there might not be much material for the post July '78 period, but there could be extensive material missing for the pre-1961 era given that his first published article was in 1955. As well, there could be missing items from the time periods shown in the list, but frankly, it's amazing that anything has survived all these years, and I'm very glad to have been able to see it.

From my reading of the surviving collection, I suspect there could be up to an equal amount of manuscripts and correspondence in addition to this material. It might be still out there somewhere; it might be lost; I have no idea. However, I've been alerted that there is a small collection of E. L. Moore original photographs in existence, and if all goes well I hope to see them before the end of the summer. I'm keeping my fingers crossed :-) My plan is to assemble all the E. L. Moore material I can find and put together some sort of book or digital collection. 

Anyway, since I’ve come to the end of the collection I thought I’d create an index of the excerpt posts I’ve made along the way,

E. L. Moore's Autobiography

Emma's = 2 x Ma's

One last like

It was right in front of my eyes!

E. L. Moore dug Thatcher's Inlet

E. L. Moore's January 1970

Train Wreck & Golden Quill Mining Co.

What would E. L. Moore do?

E. L. Moore reconnects with Bill Rau

Bill Rau and MR's 1,000th issue

Pud has Putty Knives

E. L. Moore on constructing the Enskale Hoentee

Canal boat hull templates

E. L. Moore's Court House

Canal boats by E. L. Moore

Stuckem Glue Works

Burning, Man

Prospect & Upper Ridge Railroad, PURR

Keeping time with the Ceresota Method

E. L. Moore in Good Old Days

E. L. Moore gets suggestions from Hal Carstens

E. L. Moore on getting older

E. L. Moore on the trials and tribulations of kits and kitbashing

I do my talking with a typewriter

E. L. Moore, The Almost Clinician 

E. L. Moore and the preamble to the RMC Paper Mill Controversy 

E. L. Moore on Brevity

Speculations on E. L. Moore, Folk Art and The Pulps

E. L. Moore and The Frank Ellison Style

E. L. Moore and The Drugstore Eyeglasses

E. L. Moore and The Schoolmarm

E. L. Moore and Tomcat Troubles

E. L. Moore and his Union Pacific Windmill

Fella from up Canada way ....

E. L. Moore and the Influence of Bill Schopp

E. L. Moore: The almost household name in N-scale model railroading

E. L. Moore on reading

Clear the Tracks!

HOJPOJ Reno: Cover letter and manuscript

E. L. Moore's Ode to Emmett

E. L. Moore, TV star

E. L. Moore on selfies

End of the 1900 era shortline terminal letters

The 1900 era shortline terminal project gets accepted

E. L. Moore pitches the 1900 Shortline Engine Facility

Andy replies; Hal inspires; E. L. proposes

E. L. Moore's "Great Handcar Getaway"

An E. L. Moore letter from 50 years ago today

The E. L. Moore Files: The Buddha, The Bookery and The Man Cave

The E. L. Moore Files: Characters or People or Both?

The E. L. Moore Files: Jones Chemical Co.

The E. L. Moore Files: Grandpa Bunn's Feed and Seed

The E. L. Moore Files: Ma's Place and the files of E. L. Moore

I do plan to post further excerpts as I go back, re-read stuff and make connections I didn't see on the first reading.

[Last updated 10 October 2017]

A little more Ottawandering

Through some online wandering I came across this trailer for Ottawander. It gives a 60 second look at the show's visual style. Over at SoundCloud you'll find a number of sets from Ottawander by the Orienteers. Here's one simply called wandering,

E. L. Moore on getting older

[E. L. Moore's North Conway Station]

My goddamned legs are going to remain numb but I can get around pretty well . . .  worse is my numb finger tips . . .  I gotta watch the keys pretty close and still make mistakes . . . but I manage.

Why the hell do I have to spend all the time I do on those cussed drawings (except in the interests of accuracy) when you have them done over anyway. Still it ain’t really work, just tedious, since I can sit in my easy chair and do them. But damit I gotta move around a lot to photograph the stuff and printing the pictures is a helluva strain on the gut. I type a couple of pages then go lie down a while, then type a couple more but they eventually all get typed. It’s much more fun writing in longhand in bed. But hell, I got no complaints, much, I eat well, got plenty of leisure, lots of books and don’t get up until I get damned good and ready . . .  except to feed my cats. When they get hungry they won’t let me sleep.

E. L. Moore, age 79, in the cover letter to Kelley’s Folly, to Tony Koester, then editor of Railroad Model Craftsman, dated 26 May 1977.

Legs never going to get any better but I get around pretty well -- numbness in finger tips is more bothersome, causing me to watch my keys : ... no more touch typewriting. But I got no real complaints -- old age would [sic] be so bad if one didn’t keep on getting older. Lots of oldsters complain of poverty, loneliness and being bored . . . .  I ain’t got none of those bothering me . . .  and I’ve got good and constant company and bedmates -- my cats. So what the hell!

E. L. Moore, in a letter to then editor of Model Railroader, Russ Larson, dated 29 May 1977.

Just a brief note, E. L., to let you know that some cantankerous old buzzard is sending me nasty notes under your name. After all these years of hard work I’ve finally become editor and I still don’t get no respect.

By the way, I’d like to buy both articles: “The Village Store” and “Butz Milling and Feed Co.” The snow scene of the village store would be a nice addition to one of our winter issues.

Keep in touch. Your postcards help brighten our day.

Extract from a letter Russ Larson wrote to E. L. Moore dated 30 August 1977. It looks like E. L. Moore was sending Russ Larson letters with some harsh words intermingled with the usual Moore-isms. I haven’t seen the whole exchange, just some surviving pieces so I don’t know what caused this or when it started. I suspect it might have been the usual annoyances and frustrations a writer encounters magnified by ill health. Russ Larson handled it with charm and professionalism, and things cranked back a few notches as time went on. And Mr. Larson kept buying submissions from E. L. Moore.

Me, I been feeling right pert until I read of that Greek bastard, 98 years old, who, it was reported, ran 42 miles in less than eight hours. Hell’s bells, I’d do well to walk eight miles in 42 hours. Says he gave up sex at 85 . . .  I assume he ran out of women. Just to read of him congeals my blood and makes me want to bury my head in the sand to my toes. Only thing is I’ve always wanted to go back to the land but I don’t want it writ on my tombstone “When I said I wanted to go back to the land I didn’t mean this deep.”

Extracted from a E. L. Moore wrote to Russ Larson dated 1 September 1977.

This is not -- and I repeat -- is not something an inexperienced modeler should tackle. It is, in fact, the largest and most complicated structure I’ve ever built, and except that was done as a favor for a friend, one Fred Kelley, a no good Irishman, I would never have attempted it at all. Yet it turned out to be fun, and a challenge, and hard work all rolled into one.

The opening paragraph to E. L. Moore’s unpublished manuscript for The North Conway Depot submitted to Model Railroader on 6 January 1978. Russ Larson accepted it. It’s interesting that during a period when he admittedly wasn’t at his best healthwise, he still produced what he thought was his largest and most complex model building.

And now the doc says I gotta cut my sex life in half. “Which half?” I asks, “thinking or talking about it.”

Extracted from a letter E. L. Moore wrote to Russ Larson dated 12 January 1978.

One of these could be me -- two old codgers sitting on a park bench -- one says: “E. L. remember in years past how we useta set on this very bench and watch all them gals goin’ by in their fancy dresses?”

“Yep, I remember.”

“You remember how we useta look at their purty round bottoms as they went by?”

“Yup -- I recollect. What I can’t remember is why?”

Another extract from that 12 January 1978 letter.

E. L. Moore died on 12 August 1979.

Go ahead, soak up the sun, I dare you :-)

A few days ago I was wandering through the grocery store looking for oatmeal, Muzak lulling me into a stupor. Then Sheryl Crow’s Soak Up the Sun came on. Now, I like to think of myself as a sophisticated music snob, no fluffy pop for me thank you very much, but I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard her. I mindlessly stared at some gluten-free cardboard thing masquerading as food while my brain went into automatic and shot life affirming goodness all throughout my neocortex. I was instantly happy. Snob or not, I can’t argue with that.

So, I buy my stupid oatmeal, go home and go straight to youTube. Ah. 

Then I look it up on Wikipedia and find this,

The lyrics describe first the singer's experience of exclusion from revolutionary leftist organizing, then the alienation she experiences as a laborer in a capitalist, consumer culture. The singer then cynically suggests mental illness may be responsible for humanity's continued participation in these dysfunctional systems.

Good grief. Here I am thinking it’s merely some naive, new agey, hippy, surfy*, feel good song about trying to be happy in the moment with what you’ve got, but it’s actually trying to subvert our entire capitalist culture ;-) But, forget about Groucho Marx for a minute, here’s all I need to know,

I don't have digital

...

I'm gonna soak up the sun

Got my 45 on

So I can rock on

And where can you get those 45s? Stella’s Used Records and Starlight Yoga Studio of course. It’s been in a forlorn, unusable, unloved, neglected condition for years (!) now. While I’m fixing stuff up, I figured I should fix it up too. Maybe by the end of the summer it'll be in business.

Ok, I’m a sluggard, but I went ahead and built the most important part of any record store: the record bins and cash desk. They need some more work, but at least the basics are done.

Excuse me comrade while I look for my sunscreen.

---

*Let me say that surfers do know one thing that has model railroading potential: build surfboards. 

Go to Google and search on: how to build a wooden surfboard. You’ll see something like these images.

Maybe there is something there for the layout builder to learn from.

E. L. Moore on the trials and tribulations of kits and kitbashing

[A 'kit-visioning' of the Model Power Speedy Andrew's kit, which is itself based on the Model Power Ma's Place kit, which is based on  E. L. Moore's Ma's Place build]

That kit-bashed chair company thing was good, too. I know one shouldn’t knock anything one hasn’t tried, but it has always seemed to me kit-bashing was more work and more expensive than to build from scratch. Fact is, I hate like poison to put a kit together. Seems I have a helluva time following instructions.

From a letter dated 6 September 1977 E. L. Moore wrote to Russ Larson, then editor of Model Railroader, thanking him for mailing a free copy of the October 1977 issue of the magazine.

That chair company kitbash E. L. Moore was complementing was David Petty’s N-scale The Shakey Chair Co.. Although that kitbash might seem un-notable in today’s world of plenty, in ’77 kitbashes in N-scale, especially quality ones like that in the article, were still quite novel. 

The article kicks off with a Moorian-style story about the origins and fate of the Shakey Chair Co. - shades of E.L. Moore’s own spin on the subject, The Cract & Dentit Manufacturing Co., that appeared in the December ’72 issue of Model Railroader under the title The chair and desk factory? Even if you didn’t build the project, the article has some timeless advice about buildings and placement. Mr. Petty argues that it’s important to tailor a building to its setting and have it make sense in its context, not just plunk something down anywhere no matter how well built or detailed it is.

-- fact is I hate like hell to put a kit together. Friend Crosby sent me four -- I finally put the Haunted House together for him but sent him back the others -- to hell with them -- too much like work to suit me. But does you good in that you try to make your own directions more logical and plain.

Extract from a letter E. L. Moore wrote to Hal Carstens on 3 July 1967. Seems like he thought the only benefit from trying to assemble a kit was learning the goods and bads of instruction writing.

And to wrap up, here’s an interesting, but purely coincidental, E. L. Moore - David Petty connection. In the August ’80 issue of Model Railroader, Art Curren, in an introduction to an article on the basics of kitbashing, mentions an earlier kitbash he did of the plastic kit version of E. L. Moore’s Ma’s Place called Petty’s Garage & Grocery, named after David Petty.

Ottawander

Yesterday afternoon Debra told me about a movie she read about at the CBC website: Ottawander. There was a special, one-time screening at the Mayfair at 9:30, and why wasn't I going? If you're a longtime reader here at 30Squares, you know I'm partial to staging urban night photos on my layout, so it was right up my alley. I went.

Actually, Ottawander is a new local tv series available on Bell Fibe - I have Rogers, so the Mayfair screening was all I was going to see unless I switch - whose episodes are 40 minute nighttime wanders through various Ottawa streets with an ultra- high-res digital camera taking in all the sights. So far, only the first episode has been shot, and that's what the Mayfair was screening. 

The Ottawander crew's initial outing was a low-speed ramble along the hard luck Sparks Street pedestrian mall at around 9pm on an evening in late April. The photography is gorgeous. Pop-ups and superimposed old photos are inserted at various points along the way to explain facts and events that happened in the locations being shot. At this showing the band providing the soundtrack, the space-folk group the Orienteers, performed live. You might think of this a 21st century silent movie experience: ultra-high-res digital movie, dialog-less with integrated text, and an excellent live band providing music, all staged in a 1930s era movie house. 

At the post-screening Q&A it was noted that Ottawander was meant for ambient viewing at home or a party, but it does holdup for viewing in one sitting. I would have liked to have seen more regularly inserted pop-ups to provide a little more information about what I was seeing and to help keep the movie flowing. Although from the ones provided I did learn where Pierre Trudeau watched The Godfather in '72, where D'Arcy McGee was assassinated, and where Britain stashed all their gold reserves during World War II. This was a most enjoyable episode and I'm looking forward to seeing more in the Ottawander series.

Garner's Sin Sniper is not crummy

“I see,” said the inspector, his voice modulating once again. “What’s your trade, Dightwood?”

“I’m a folk singer.”

“Before that?”

“I was a CNR brakeman in Moncton.”

“How’d you lose that job?”

“I quit when my marriage broke up. I decided to come up this way.”

“Was your hair down to your shoulders when you were riding a CNR crummy?”

Dightwood smiled at the inspector’s use of the word “crummy” for caboose. “No, Sir. The long hair is just part of my act.”

Contrary to that exchange between Inspector McDumont and a long-haired, hippy folk singer suspect, The Sin Sniper has nothing to do with trains and such, although the gritty realism of the novel no doubt has some roots in the author’s years hoboing across Canada and the US during The Depression. It’s the story of an investigation by the Toronto Police into the shooting of five women in downtown’s Moss Park area over a week in late March of 1965. It’s a tough tale and not for the fainthearted.

Lurid cover aside, the novel is a straight ahead police procedural, but what makes it unique is its strength of characterization of Moss Park, its inhabitants, the police, and mid-60's Toronto in general. And the Toronto characterization is quite good: the further I read, the more it sent a traceroute to all those deep memories I have of that long ago city I thought were purged from my mind. I guess one couldn’t expect anything less from a literary heavy hitter like Hugh Garner.

I do my talking with a typewriter

Writer's Block - A Supercut from Ben Watts on Vimeo.

Like my work, which I do on the seat of my pants, that’s the way I do my talking -- with a typewriter in front of me.

E. L. Moore to George R. Johnson from a letter dated 22 January 1968.

I wonder if E. L. Moore ever had the problem shown in this video? 

I pity the poor damned writer who says he can’t wait for “inspiration” but has to dog it regular hours every day. Me, I just write what I damned please and when I damned please and that’s the way I like it.

Well, maybe not :-)

E. L. Moore, The Almost Clinician

Awhile back I noted that Kalmbach Publishing had invited E. L. Moore to write a beginner’s book on how to build N-scale model railroads. He turned it down. Around the same time he was invited to give a clinic at the NMRA Mid-Eastern Region’s May ’68 convention in Hampton, Virginia on how he built model buildings. He turned that one down too.

It all started with a handwritten letter from Mr. George R. Johnson,

MID-EASTERN REGION

NATIONAL MODEL RAILROAD ASSOCIATION

Office of the Vice-President

6516 Haystack Rd.

Alexandria, Va. 22310

Jan 15, 1968

M. E. L. Moore

Dear Mr Moore:

The Mid Eastern Region will hold its semi annual convention May 17, 18 & 19th at Hampton, Va.

This is an invitation for you to present a clinic. From your articles in the R.M.C. your favorite modeling [illegible] are buildings and scenery. We would be pleased if you would consider acceptance.

The clinics will be presented on Sunday morning. At this time, we are planning giving each one two times lasting about 50 minutes time. You can use your choice of [illegible] slides [illegible] chalk & blackboard or what have you.

On Saturday will be a trip to Ft Eustis, Va to [illegible] and a town of C & O’s Hampton Roads ship terminal.

Hope to hear from you after your consideration.

Sincerely

signed George R. Johnson

In today’s world he could have Skyped the whole thing, or had someone record a digital video, but back then the only option was going to the convention, and that's why he  turned it down. If I ever get my time machine working, I’ll bring my trusty little Canon and post the videos here when I get back ;-)

22 January ’68

George R. Johnson,

6516 Haystack Rd.,

Alexandria, Va.

Dear Mr. Johnson . . . .

Thanks for the invite, but the answer will have to be “no”. I’m just not cut out for public speaking, clinics, or what have you, and I’m too damned old to begin now. Like my work, which I do on the seat of my pants, that’s the way I do my talking -- with a typewriter in front of me. And besides that I detest crowds and traveling.

Lest you think me anti-social, glad to have any of you fellows, anyone at all, stop in to see me should you be passing through Charlotte, I enjoy gabbing and listening. I’m always home of an evening, in and out during the day.

Any one phoning shouldn’t be discouraged if the response is “Kelley’s Pool Hall”, or “Mamie’s Pink Poodle Parlor”. It’ll probably be me since no one else lives here.

So that’s the way it is . . . 

signed E. L. Moore

E. L. Moore

525 Oakland Ave., Apt 3

Charlotte, N. C.

In '71 E. L. Moore appeared on tv, on the Carolina Camera show, so he got some fame. I've contacted the station that owns the show several times to investigate its availability, but no response. 

One more from the car show

I took this picture earlier in the year when I staged the car show scene along Ocean Boulevard. There were some problems with The Noir and the Fortran building, so I didn't post it. As I'm making repairs to buildings and things, I've been going through old pictures, and when I saw this one again, I was struck by its energy and feeling. Although those buildings still have problems, the picture does sort of get across a sense of what the layout looks like in my mind.

E. L. Moore and the preamble to the RMC Paper Mill controversy

[The RMC Paper Company was one of the models I was lucky to see at last year's meet-up.]

You may recall that soon after the publication of E. L. Moore's RMC Paper Company in the April '74 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, a 'controversy' erupted in RMC's letters column about the viability of such a small paper plant. I wrote about it in E. L. Moore and The Great Selective Compression Controversy of '74.

It turns out well before Mr. Moore submitted the article to RMC in November '73, he wrote a long letter in September '73 to then RMC editor Tony Koester, pitching the project and touching on the size issue that later became a problem.

September 23, 1973

Hi Tony . . . . . . 

Yours of the 19th concerning paper shortage. What paper shortage? Congressional Record and transcripts of Watergate Merry-Go-Round are not seemingly suffering.

About paper mills -- just what would constitute a logical mill model? I doubt there has ever been a paper mill in existence that could logically be scaled down small enough for anything but a club pike. They're much like cotton mills . . .  all big.

After World War 1 I worked briefly in a ten acre edition of one. And here, with a favorable (?) wind we're able to smell the huge sprawling Bowater plant forty miles away.

Paper mills look a lot like cotton mills -- usually built of brick, tall smoke stacks, and lotsa windows none of which you can see out of. They are largely distinguished from cotton mills by their smell, although ecological advances may have, in many cases, eliminated much of the odor by now. Paraphrasing a popular TV commercial: "They do a lot more than just smell bad -- they also eat the finish off your car."

And the smell seems to be such that it is even filtered down to many of the publications one finds on the newstands today. You say some of the weaker magazines are in real trouble. Well, it is one man's opinion (mine) that fifty percent of the present crop could be eliminated and a pronounced clearing of pollution would result.

So I wouldn't guarantee a model I might offer would be logical. But like all paper mills I've seen it would be built of brick, have lotsa windows and tall smoke stacks (what more can you ask?) and would be small enough (which in itself is illogical) to fit most pikes. 8 x 8 inches, to be exact, could be built for less than four bucks and in about two weeks of evenings.

Enclosed is a sample product from the mill in question if and when it is finished. Try it!

On the other hand, the by-products or outer bark of rhubarb logs would possibly solve the paper shortage -- had you have a rhubarb plant all ready to go.

NOW FOR THE KICK-OFF! The plant from enclosed drawings is already built . . .  except for the rear that would have to go around the stacks in order to make it a reasonable facsimile of a paper mill -- my version. As it stand it is . . . . of all things, the city incinerator and I've been wondering what to use it for.

signed E. L. Moore

E. L. Moore
525 Oakland Ave., Apt 3
Charlotte, N. C. 28204

Repairs to the FORTRAN building

All buildings need some maintenance now and then; even little ones. I noticed the FORTRAN building had developed a gap where the right wall attaches to the front. I clamped it back together and carefully swabbed on some liquid glue for plastics. Once dry, some Micro Krystal Klear was smoothed over the bonded edges and then painted. That did the trick. While I was in a maintenance mode I added a roof over the front doors. I'd hate to have to stand out front in the rain and not have some protection :-)

E. L. Moore’s Legacy in the 21st Century: The Spumoni Club Coach

You’re right, I’ve already written a short series on this lost E. L. Moore project. However, the manuscript was divided into pieces and my own construction story was interleaved in order to provide a modern take on building the old project. For indexing the Coach project amongst the other posts in the E. L. Moore’s Legacy in the 21st Century series, I thought I’d repost the Spumoni Club Coach manuscript in its entirety much like The Combination Houses and Shades of Buffalo Bill posts.

But, fear not, this post isn’t all old news. I did a little digging about the Spumoni Club Coach prototype, the private car of the Grasse River Railroad that appeared in Beebe and Clegg’s Mixed Train Daily I discussed in Part 1 of the series. Turns out that it wasn’t a coach at all, but a self-powered vehicle that used a Flyer Model 31 automobile engine for get-up-and-go. Yes, that’s right, it was a self-propelled vehicle, not a coach that needed to be pulled! It was custom built for the railroad by Roy L.Sykes, one of the founders. It was called the ‘Rolliam’. You can read about it here at the Rail City Museum site, and here at Gino’s Rail Page and Museum.

To get things started, here are the 5 posts that discussed how I went about building a version of the Spumoni Club Coach:

Lunch, ruler and wheels

Body and soul and cheese

Going on a diet

Done like dinner

E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach Photos

And here’s the original manuscript restored to its non-chopped-up form:

SPUMONI CLUB COACH

BY

E. L. Moore

I'll admit Spumoni Club Special sounds a lot like a three decker sandwich. Fact is, back in the days when Ma Spumoni presided over the Red Eye Saloon, she did put out just such a sandwich. Pork, beef and chicken, with pickle, all for 15 cents. But them days are gone forever. The Club Coach was really the old man’s idea -- Pa Spumoni’s. He wanted a mobile retreat where the boys could get together for a little friendly game and some celebrating now and again. The middle of Skunk Hollow Trestle seemed the ideal spot, but apparently Ma set Pistachio, Jr on their trail and dogged them down.

Now if you think this coach is a modeler’s wild dream, then just you take a gander at page 298 of MIXED TRAIN DAILY. However, the interior of Pa Spumoni’s coach is probably a bit more sumptious than that of the Grasse River club car. Photograph (A) pretty well shows the necessary parts of the coach ready for assembling. The only commercial parts used are a T-25 Central Valley old time passenger truck with an 8’ wheelbase, and one from a set Selley’s #335 work car steps. Any truck with a similar length wheelbase will do. A few scraps of balsa, about five inches of 1/16” thick commercial sheathing, and you’re in business. Instead of regular sheathing I sanded down some 1/16” corrugated wood roofing to get the effect of very narrow sheathing (I had hoped!) And then, of course the floor, a piece 1’ thick by 8’ by 19’ long. A slice from a souvenir or advertising yardstick makes ideal flooring. The roof is removable and fits down over the sides.

Beginning with the floor, center the truck and fasten it on with a screw, then lay it aside and tackle the sides and ends. The sides are 8 3/4' high by 20' long, and the ends are 8 3/4' high by 8' wide (presuming you're using 8' wide flooring). Since there are quite a few windows it would be wise to take the precaution of cementing a piece of thin stripwood above and below the window areas to prevent splitting while cutting out the openings (see Photograph A, inside of coach. At the same time another piece of stripwood should be cemented all around just 1' from the bottom edge for purpose of providing a ledge, simplifying matters when you come to assembling ends and sides around the floor. The window openings are 2' x 3' except one which corresponds to the door and is 3' x 3' and the end windows are also 3' x 3'. Each opening is then fitted with an inner sash of 1/32" square stripwood cemented in so as to be flush with the inside surface. Then, after painting, a single strip of acetate will serve for the row of openings.

The door isn't cut all the way through. The wood was shaved down to a smooth surface and a simulated door worked in with pencil and knife. It's the type of door which might have been salvaged from a bus, opening as it does, in the middle. Six inch wide trim (1/32 x 1/16" for HO) sanded down to a more refined thinness, is added to the sides and ends as shown. One piece of 1/32 x 1/16" stripwood forms a window ledge all around.

When assembled around the 8' x 19' floor, it should present a coach with a finished body size of 9' x 20'. For a removable roof you'll need a piece of balsa 9" thick (3/32" for HO) by 10 1/2' x 21 1/2'. Round the top of this by sanding, then taking a sheet of 1/32" balsa measuring 11 1/2' x 22 1/2', cement it over the rounded length to form the top of the roof. When you paint this, press a tissue against the wet paint, then follow up with a second coat, this giving the effect of a canvas covering. Now, as seen in Photograph A and in the drawing a 15" strip of sheathing is cemented to the under side of the roof leaving a 9 1/2 x 20 1/2' center clearance so as to fit down over the coach sides.

Bumpers and couplers of your choice can now be added to the ends, also the door step and door grab irons. I painted the outside and roof of my coach a light green and added a trim of yellow.

The inside of the Spumoni coach is even more colorful than the outside. Light green walls, a velvety green carpet and upholstered coach seats in bright red. Full width seats were installed at each end, then four 3' wide seats were arranged in the middle. Uncle Charley, who provided that jug of mountain dew, is snoozing in his own special chair. The coach seats are easily built of balsa, shaped and joined as shown in the drawing, bent pins used for arm rests, then upholstered with tissue and painted. Lastly, a card table is done in green, was set in place.

And that is the Spumoni Club Special . . . OBG. The OBG? I'm not certain, but I think it means ON BURNT GRAVY.

Well, I’ve got a little NWSL Stanton Drive power truck sitting on the shelf I’ve been saving to build a model of Thaddeus Lowe’s personal trolley, but maybe it should go to retrofitting the Spumoni Club Coach - the Spumonified version might be called a 'Rolloni' :-)

[Update 1 September 2016: Added a link to the post about the lost photographs that accompanied the manuscript.]