Moore's Balsa Products

Cal had come over for breakfast before we headed off to a train show in Scarboro. I was making some coffee. He had settled into the breakfast nook with his paper and had his nose stuck in the classified ads section looking for bargains.

"Well look at this!" Cal folded the newspaper into a rectangle he could hold with one hand while pointing to a little classified with the other.

"Look at what?" I set coffee making aside on the counter and leaned into the nook to take a look at whatever had caught Cal's eye.

"It says here that the machine shop over on Mortimer you designed is for sale. Not a bad price either."

Cal handed me the folded paper with the ad dead centre. Yeap, it was for sale. That was an easy one to design. I just reused half of Grusom Casket that I did a couple years ago. The buyer was happy enough and so was I. I didn't have to do a lot of work on that one. 

I read the fine print. "It says there's an open house this afternoon. We could take the ocean park car down to the loop at Mortimer, and drop in after the show for a look."

"You're thinking of buying it?"

"The business is getting a little too big for the spare room and basement. And Ma's been hinting that balsa dust in the rhubarb pie might not be the healthiest thing."

"I wasn't going to say anything, but now that you mention it, your last one was a bit dry."

Everyone's a critic. "That didn't seem to stop you from eating half of it."

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When I wrote about E. L. Moore's cheap and cheerful plastic kits I had forgotten I had an assembled Machine Shop kit stashed away in my spare-parts box. It was only while looking for parts for Variation No. 3 that I stumbled across it. 

The Machine Shop is half of the Grusom Casket company kit - this little shop is one of the derivative kits, not one of the Original 9. On mine, the base's bottom is stamped with 'POLA-HO' and 'Made in Western Germany'. It looks like this kit had a long history as it was distributed by AHM, Atlas, and Tyco as well as Pola*.
  

I bought this fully constructed model many years ago at a local swap meet. It wasn't in bad condition, and only cost a toonie. I've learned the hard way to be selective about buying old kits that others have already put together. Some are horrible glue-bombs that can't be disassembled for restoration. Those I take a pass on. Others that have only been lightly stuck together with tube glues are better candidates. If they appear more-or-less complete, and aren't expensive, then I'll buy. It's those that I'm likely to have a better chance of successfully restoring, but there are no guarantees. It's only once I have had a chance to clean and examine the model closely, and try some disassembly, that I get a better sense if it can be easily restored. Luckily, my Machine Shop was in good condition; it was just a little ratty looking.

After thinking about this model for awhile I thought it might fit in rather well in the older part of the Ocean Park Loop along Mortimer Street. But, it needed a little modernization because Mortimer Street isn't a slum in the making, but simply a living street where the buildings are a bit older. And of course, since this a Moore design, so there had to be some Moore in the presentation :-)

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We got off the car at the Mortimer loop around 4. The machine shop was a short walk away, on the other side of Ocean boulevard. Things were changing in the city, but this part still had lots of traditional buildings, new ones as well as old. Down here, people could still escape.

Cal brought his camera so we'd have a record about whether we'd have to do any reno work. It turns out the shop wasn't in bad shape, and maybe needed only a little sprucing up. A general cleanup, corner squaring, replacing missing roof stacks, window cleaning, and some work to make the facade a little more attractive to the customers and I'd be in business in no time.

Cal took some pictures. I did some haggling. 

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The first thing was to cut off the old base because this building isn't standing out in some deserted lot with junk strewn all over the place; it's facing a busy street. It might have been a machine shop, or maybe a small appliance repair shop, in an earlier era, but today it has to deal with customers who don't want to be scared away by neglected surroundings and a dreary facade, so some general city-fication was called for.

To remove the base, I cut the corners off with a cutting disk in the Dremel, and then used the cutting disk to slice into the exposed foundation corners as close as I could get to the brick walls without touching them. This weakened the base and allowed for some careful flexing to get it unstuck from the wall bottom. You can see that little glue was used to attach the walls, so that was good. But, you can also see I tore the wall and foundation over in the lower right corner. The tear was small, and since that part was going to be hidden with a planter, I didn't spend time to fix it.

I think the biggest job on this project was adding the new foundation.

The base is a piece of 0.080" styrene cut to the edge of the main perimeter. The foundation pieces on which the pilasters - is that what they're called ? - rest are little pieces of 0.080" that were glued on later, and then ground with the Dremel and files to be flush with the pilaster surfaces.

The planters and entry were built up from styrene pieces and putty.

While working on the base, all the clear plastic pieces that had been glued in as window panes were pried off as they were scratched and dirty. I figured I'd break the window frames if I tried prying them, so they remained. The frames were given a loose wash of flat grey to tone down their plasticky brightness. 

The windows were replaced near the end of project with some 0.010" clear styrene.

The roof had a couple of issues that needed fixing. First, the piece itself had a dozen or so ejector pin marks that had to be ground out and smoothed. Then the missing ventilation stacks were replaced with items from Walther's roof top details kit. I used whatever seemed to look interesting and fit the roof.

After that little bit of reno work, it was on to painting. The shingles were hit with several washes of black, grey, and smoke. Once all basic painting was done, thin grey and smoke washes were sloshed on the entire roof structure to weather it a bit and even out the tones.

I didn't glue the roof in place so that lights could be added later.

Building up the facade was the fun part of this project.

First, as you can see, all that was done on the brick was to float on some, loose, thin grey washes. You could do more detailed brick treatments to the walls, but I just wanted to keep things simple.

The sign is just a balsa sheet with old-school Letraset lettering. I wanted it to look fairly new in keeping with the just-opened-for-business vibe. A street number, porch light, and entryway roof helped with the city-fication. A Moore Green door helped reinforce who designed this little building :-)

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The new place has got a fancy coffee station, and Cal dropped by to help me christen it. I fiddled with the coffee machine while he settled back in a chair with his newspaper and read the classifieds.

"It says here some guy's got a box of oom-pah** records for sale."

I stopped making coffee and looked over Cal's shoulder at the ad. "Not a bad price. Can you circle that one? I'll give him a call later."

"You got a record player here?"

Darn, I knew I forgot something.

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* E. L. Moore's Machine Shop has been sold in a number of different boxes over the years, without buyers knowing Mr. Moore was the designer. Here are a few box-top scans pulled from the internet and my stash.

This is the Grusom Casket company from which the Machine Shop was extracted for its own kit.

And there it is, AHM kit #5839.

At sometime later AHM re-issued the kit in a 'Masterpiece Series' box. The box-top painting has been replaced by a build-up of the model.

At some point in the '70s, Tyco got the molds and sold the kit in their brown-box line.

Things take a turn once Pola started to sell the kit. In this incarnation it's no longer a machine shop, but has become a pickle factory.

It doesn't have anything unique that visually indicates the new business, although, I do like how they've changed the foundation and base to make it more practical. There's also a loading dock and sliding door on the side.

At some point Pola put it in a box that actually said Pickle Factory.

Maybe the Pickle Factory label was simply for the English-speaking markets as this one, which obviously is targeted for the German market, refers to the building as Hengst & Co. Cannery. Maybe cannery and pickle factory are the same in German - I've relied on Google Translate for translation services :-)

The Hengst & Co. Cannery gets a nice blue box.

[Added 31 Jan 2020] It looks like Atlas also marketed the machine shop under the name Johnsons Inc. Chemical Products. The base and loading areas are similar to the Pola releases, and it looks like a water tower has been added to the roof.

[Added 18 February 2020] It's good to see that Walthers now markets the Machine Shop. The box has a rather clinical look compared to its ancestors, but at least it's still on the market.

[Added 12 May 2020] A version marketed by the West German company VAU-PE. What makes it unique are the extensive grounds and out buildings that have been added.

[Added 16 May 2020] Another blue box Pola variation, but this time some sort of benzene processing plant instead of pickles.

[Added 19 May 2020] Another Atlas boxing. Unlike Johnsons Chemicals this one is in red brick, points towards the right, and doesn't have a water tower. Overall it seems quite standard; it just has a different sign.

[Added 26 May 2020] A boxing in the Quick series of Pola kits. From the box-top painting this appears to be a box-stock branding without any additions to make it unique.

[Added 26 May 2020] Not to be left out of the action, our old friend IHC sold a boxing, and much like the Pola Quick version, this doesn't appear to have any unique additions.









I don't know if this is a complete list of all the Machine Shop's boxes and versions. If you're aware of others, please leave a comment.

** Back in the Jones Chemical Co. article in the March '74 issue of Model Railroader, part of the deal Eddie Jones makes with E. L. Moore to build the model was to hand over an oom-pah band record as partial payment - apparently handing over that item caused Mr. Jones some pain :-)

I don't know about oom-pah bands, but when I heard a Townes Van Zandt song called Blue Ridge Mtns. (Smoky Version) on his album Sky Blue that was released earlier this year, I immediately thought it seemed like something that fit in the E. L. Moore canon. You can find the song on the internet, but its embedding is disabled, so I can't include it here. The album has a haunting quality that stopped me in my tracks. Get it if you can. 

And yes, look up in the sky on the Sky Blue cover and you'll see a web of streetcar overhead power lines. Where was the cover shot back in '73? I need to find out.