Git yer papers here! Paper Mr. Armitage?

Last Friday the Weekly Herald kit I ordered on eBay finally arrived. It's a kit I've long admired, and was glad to find an unopened one in an AHM boxing.

The Weekly Herald, along with its sister the Superior Bakery, and their progenitor the Operating Engine House, are foundational structure kits in model railroading, more so than even the E. L. Moore designed kits. Yes, that's what I said :-) More significant than the E. L. Moore kits.

Those three were part of a collection of styrene structure kits that Revell produced in the late 50's and early '60s. Taken as a whole, the collection was one of the first, maybe even the first, to take commercial styrene structures out of the realm of toys and into that of scale models. And they were developed by the legendary Al Armitage, who through a number of articles in Model Railroader presented the case for styrene as a serious model building material.

I think the introduction of Revell's Operating Engine House and Al Armitage's MR articles are intertwined. Although I can't definitively prove this, there's interesting circumstantial evidence.  

Weekly Herald parts

MR reviewed Revell's newly released engine house in their Nov '59 issue, and in the review they noted, This month's story, "The Case For Styrene" by Alan Armitage, can give you a lot of good ideas for altering styrene kits. The Case for Styrene was actually a two-parter that ran in the Nov and Dec '59 issues, and even though it might not have been the first article that showed how to use styrene and extoll its virtues, it definitely was the most sophisticated. The modelling shown is first rate, but I guess what else could be expected from a gentleman who at that time had been a professional model maker for 13 years and was designing kits at Revell - all according to his mini-bio in MR's Aug. '59 issue included with the article, Diner on Railroad Ave.

And the MR review also noted, Two or more of these kits could also easily be arranged end to end to make a larger building.  And lo-and-behold, in the Sept '60 issue, Mr. Armitage does just that in the article Modifying the Revell Enginehouse. 

Let's fast-forward to 2001. In the January / February 2001 issue of the Narrow Gauge & Shortline Gazette, Mr. Armitage writes about the origin of the Weekly Herald in The Modelmaker's Notebook column, and in the March / April 2001 issue does the same for the Superior Bakery. Basically, he notes that when he was working at Revell, soon after the Operating Engine House was released, he was asked to come up with variations on the kit. The first one was the Weekly Herald, and that was soon followed by the Superior Bakery. I find it interesting that in those two articles he never states he designed the Operating Engine House, but he is noted as its designer in his obituary that appeared in MR's Dec 2001 issue. Maybe Mr. Armitage was just being modest. 

Like AHM's E. L. Moore designed kits, the Weekly Herald, along with the Superior Bakery, have been distributed by many companies (Revell, AHM, and Con-Cor, and there might be more), and have gone through many boxings. There're also N-scale versions, and both the HO and N versions have been used as a source of kitbashing material. Art Curren's Hardly Abel Mfg. Co. comes to mind, and there was a wild one by Robert Schleicher called Build A Four-Story Factory that required 2 Weekly Heralds and 2 Superior Bakeries- yes, 4 of these classic kits (!).

My kit was advertised as never-been-opened, and it did appear to be in its original shrink-wrap when it arrived. All the parts are present and accounted for with the only issue being that one decal sheet was pressed against some windows for too long and partially bonded to the clear plastic. I plan to build the kit and add it to the layout, but I'll likely modify it a little to make it fit into the overall scene. Stay tuned in the fall for exciting updates :-)