[E. L. Moore's Bunn's Feed and Seed plant published in the August 1973 issue of Model Railroader. You can see Cal's Lumberyard in the background.]
I was quite pleased to find these three snapshot sized photos in E. L. Moore's collection. These are the projects that got me hooked on model railroading. Bunn's was the first, and I've written about it at length. I built it back in 2009. Styrene was used extensively on that project, so it wasn't a pure Moorian build.
[E. L. Moore's Jones Chemical Co. published in the March 1974 issue of Model Railroader]
Next was Jones Chemical Co. I recall I was so excited to see a new E. L. Moore project I started building it almost as soon as I got home with the magazine.
The results of that '74 build attempt were mixed, but I tackled it again here in the 21st century.
[On the left is what remains of Jones Chemical Co. that I built way back in '74, and on the right is the version I built in 2009. Back in '74 I had a fixation on a technique I read about in the Nov. '73 issue of Model Railway Constructor about how to model brick and stone walls with scribing and crayons. I figured Jones was as good a place as any to to use it on.]
The results of that '74 build attempt were mixed, but I tackled it again here in the 21st century.
[E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumberyard published in the April 1973 issue of Model Railroader]
When I had finished the Jones build back in '74 I was keen to immediately do another E. L. Moore project, so I went to the public library near our house to see what I could find. I stumbled across Cal's Lumberyard in the April '73 issue of Model Railroader. Magazines weren't lent out, so I photocopied the plans, noted a few things from the article on the copies, and went home to build it. I did a better job than my previous projects, but nothing great. I haven't yet tackled this one in the 21st century, but the century is still young.
I don't have a surviving youthful attempt at Bunn's because my initial build was in 1/32 scale and made from some very flimsy materials. In the summer of '73 I was building a large, temporary 1/32 scale slot car setup with a friend in his mother's garage. He had what seemed like a vast collection of Scalextric track which allowed him to build layouts that took up his entire basement rec-room floor along with some square footage in an adjacent hall and bedroom. The ultimate layout had to be built in the garage as it was summer and our mothers had kicked us out of our houses to get some sunshine.
My friend's much older brother worked on the assembly line at Eldon toys, and instead of tossing any mis-manufactured slot cars in the trash, he snuck them out and brought them home. My friend gave me a couple of the really damaged ones and I set about fixing them. Alas, none survive, but I recall there was a Mustang and Corvette that I raised from the dead that made my friend a little jealous :-)
That summer I was building 1/32 scale grandstands and pitstops and timing buildings from bristol board and balsa, and when I stumbled across E. L. Moore's Bunn's article I tried building it too. I had never seen a publication that featured instructions and plans for building model structures, so this was a revelation. I dove right into the project and I figured I'd use it as a garage for cars. I left a lot off the build, but I did have a go at making an interior complete with car repair facilities and a removable roof. In the end, it was too large to keep around and I salvaged it for parts. That experience was sort of a prod to work in HO as I could spend the effort and didn't have a space problem with the finished models.
[The remains of my 1974 build of Cal's Lumberyard.]
I don't have a surviving youthful attempt at Bunn's because my initial build was in 1/32 scale and made from some very flimsy materials. In the summer of '73 I was building a large, temporary 1/32 scale slot car setup with a friend in his mother's garage. He had what seemed like a vast collection of Scalextric track which allowed him to build layouts that took up his entire basement rec-room floor along with some square footage in an adjacent hall and bedroom. The ultimate layout had to be built in the garage as it was summer and our mothers had kicked us out of our houses to get some sunshine.
That summer I was building 1/32 scale grandstands and pitstops and timing buildings from bristol board and balsa, and when I stumbled across E. L. Moore's Bunn's article I tried building it too. I had never seen a publication that featured instructions and plans for building model structures, so this was a revelation. I dove right into the project and I figured I'd use it as a garage for cars. I left a lot off the build, but I did have a go at making an interior complete with car repair facilities and a removable roof. In the end, it was too large to keep around and I salvaged it for parts. That experience was sort of a prod to work in HO as I could spend the effort and didn't have a space problem with the finished models.
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