Foundation and Machine Shop*

Snippet from a larger photo in E. L. Moore's  Grusom Casket Company, RMC, June '67

If you've been following along you know there're a lot of variations on the AHM Machine Shop kit out there. One of the significant differences between some of the variants is in the foundation and loading dock. Ok, so which one of the variants is the 'real' one?

It's the ones with the stairs outside the front door like those on the original AHM kit, not the ones with the concrete loading dock. Burn's Engineering is a good example of one that has a loading dock, but there are several that do as the kit list at the Moore's Balsa Products shows. Although, the ones with stairs outside the front door also have a junk strewn base, which as you can see in the picture from E. L. Moore's article is a fabrication - the area near the base on the original is junk free.

Since I'm doing a deep dive into authenticity minutiae, I'll point out a couple of other things. The back half of the original is clad in red brick and the front half in yellow - notice in the photo the darker back half. This is deliberate. The yellow brick part is meant to represent a new addition. So, if you're building a Grusom Casket Company kit, or maybe an 'authentic' Machine Shop, consider making the back half red brick and the front yellow. Also, take a look at that front door. It has a classic three-window design common on suburban houses of the '50s and '60s. The kit's door is somewhat more standard. Ok, now that we're nitpicking, the upper portion of the front facade is somewhat different from that of the kit, but that is almost impossible to fix without a complete overhaul, so I'll overlook that. And one more thing if those weren't enough: the skylights only extend over the red brick half and not over the newer yellow brick portion. Ok, I'm done. For now :-)

*Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is another we tried to read, but didn't even get through the first book. I bought Foundation in the '70s and the other three at a secondhand book store in the '90s (?) for 50 cents each. I had high hopes I'd try the series again. And, yes, I've tried the first volume twice again, and each time couldn't get through it - it seemed rather dull. Well, just as E. L. Moore was saving television for his old age, maybe that's what I'm saving the Foundation series for.