So sorry to hear E. L. that you're not feeling well. Your card arrived as I was working on your "Cannonball and Safety Powder Works" article for our April issue. I think it is one of your best. Please do send me your latest (and I certainly hope it's not your last) article "Stuckem Glue Works".
A letter from Russ Larson, Managing Editor of Model Railroader, to E. L. Moore dated 7 January 1977.
E. L. Moore's Stuckem Glue Works was published in the October 1977 issue of Model Railroader. I don't have a copy of that card Mr. Larson refers to, but the sense I get from the letters and cards I've seen from that late '70s period is that Mr. Moore was not in good health and was making frequent references that this-and-that build might be his last. He may have suggested to Mr. Larson that Stuckem was it.
I have no idea what a real glue factory looks like, but I always loved the lines of this building. In the original article, the drawings were done with pencil rubbings over brick paper to give an indication where the siding should be placed. On another MR article, someone did a similar drawing using a red colored pencil rubbing over textured brick- to show what siding to use. That's what hatched my idea to use colored pencils over cream-colored paper and actually use it AS the brick paper on the model. MR bought my article on that subject and I've never built another brick building without that technique. They planted the seed; I took it to the next practical level.
ReplyDeleteTo me the drawings that appeared in the hobby magazines in the pre-computer era were better than today's. Better from a stylist perspective. Things like pencil rubbings of brick paper were nice touches.
DeleteFrom some correspondences it seems that from sometime in the late '60s on, ELM's submitted drawings were traced over, or sometimes redrawn, before publication. Drawings from that era could be difficult to attribute authorship.