It's easy being green

Since I probably used the same type of paint on the body as I used on the interior I decided to soak the body in Super Clean and see what happened. I dropped it in just before dinner and checked on it afterwards. The blue was very loose and some light work with a stiff brush removed most of it, and maybe some of the original green too. 

The photo gives a better idea of the match between the original paint and the Tamiya I plan to use. Close, but not identical. Also, the original paint is likely worn and dulled due to age and having an overcoat of brushed on blue enamel removed. That jar of purple fluid is Super Clean after it had been used to strip the paint from the interior and the body. I started fresh and you can see it's a bit cloudy now, but still good for more work. I'll continue on to see if it can remove the original green. If not, I'll need to buy something more powerful.

Maserati interior cleaned up

I did some work on stripping the paint from the Maserati's interior. Back in the '70s I painted with Testors' enamels, and that's likely what I used on this. I wasn't too sure what was best for removing this paint, so I stuck with what I knew, and let the unit soak in Super Clean. After 10 minutes or so I used a small, stiff brush and a fine metal pick to remove the much loosened paint. Several rounds of this stripped off just about all the old stuff. After reviewing the digital images I see a few paint flecks still stuck on in some odd places, but they shouldn't be hard to remove. The interior looks more-or-less ok now, so I'll move on to cleaning up the body.

Last car at Ocean & Museum

Tom Daniel's Railroad Modeler year

Tom Daniel's M. Bezler & Company from Railroad Modeler Mar '72

I was reading some old Railroad Modeler magazines over the weekend, and came across an interesting kitbash, M. Bezler & Company, by Tom Daniel in the March 1972 issue. As well as a few odds and ends, it's built from our old friend the AHM Grusome Casket Company kit, and Vollmer's Two Story Factory, item #5610.

This wasn't the first article penned by Tom Daniel that I'd seen in my reading, and I started to wonder if this was the same Tom Daniel who designed all those awesome 1/24 scale showcar kits. Vince has got an extensive library on this subject, so I asked him. And he did the logical thing and asked Tom Daniel directly via email. Mr. Daniel replied quickly, and confirmed that he was the author of those articles. I'm a big fan of Tom Daniel's kit designs, and have featured here the T'rantula, Rommel's Rod, Ice 'T', and the Hot Wheels Red Baron - and I've got a 1/24 scale Red Baron kit stashed away in the basement awaiting assembly and a post. I didn't know he had an interest in model railroading too. 

So far I've found 8 articles in Railroad Modeler published over a 1 year period from December 1971 to November 1972. Most appear to deal with improving and modifying kits, as well as kitbashing. Here're the Tom Daniel stories I've found so far:

Dec'71: A Modified Mallet (modifying AHM's 2-8-8-2)

Jan'72: Shortline Combine (shortening AHM's 82' combine)

Feb'72: A Winterized E-8 (making AHM's E-8 diesel ready for winter operations)

Mar'72: M. Bezler & Company (kitbashing AHM Grusome Casket & Vollmer Two Story Factory)

May'72: An Inside Look at Boxcar Details (adding loads to boxcars)

Jun'72: Elephant Eared Berkshire (detailing AHM's Berkshire loco)

Sep'72: up to date depot (converting Life-Like's convenience store kit into a modern station)

Nov'72: Locomotive Riptrack (Diorama from a Kitmaster J3a Hudson & a Hobbytown 0-4-0 tank switcher)

In the story, An Inside Look at Boxcar Details, Mr. Daniel mentions in his younger days, this author unloaded many, many boxcars, and each had its own mystery and intrigue. Working inside one was ALWAYS at one of two extremes...hotter than a steam room or colder than a refrigerator. I always used to wonder at all the states, cities, towns and lonely spurs the average boxcar must visit during its travels.. which to me hints that there is more to his interest in model railroading than meets the eye. I'll keep you posted if more turns up, but for now, where's that Red Baron kit :-)

[4:09pm Update: The first issue of Railroad Modeler was September 1971, but it wasn’t until the March 1972 issue that they included a list of contributors on the index page. And in that list is Tom Daniel, and there he remained up to and including the May 1973 issue. In June 1973 he was gone, and it looks like the contributors list was shaken up a bit. Some old names were gone, some new ones appeared. Maybe there was a staff shake-up? Maybe some veterans had simply moved on? Was Tom Daniel a founding contributor? Questions, questions, questions.]

Redmond Stephens Wright's gigantic N-scale layout

From Two In One Layout; Railroad Modeler July 1974

The July 1974 issue of Railroad Modeler ran a story by Denis Dunning about the N scale layout of R. Stephens Wright who is one of the country's leading portrait artists whose talent does not end with the brush and canvas. I was curious to find out more about Mr. Wright, and found several sites featuring his art (here, here, and here for example). However, I didn't find much biographical information other than basics: he was born on 13 May 1903, attended Harvard, studied and worked in Paris, Chicago, and New York before settling in Pasadena in 1937, and died in Cathedral City, CA, on 5 April 1991. 

Mr. Wright's layout was as equally impressive as his art. Stats include: housed in a 20'x60' room; 12 mainline loops, each with about 5 scale miles of track; 24 power packs; 175 locomotives; 18 stall roundhouse; 1,000 freight and passenger cars. You get the idea: huge and high quality as shown in the article's photos. Apparently Mr. Wright had been into model railroading since the early 1930s, starting as an early adopter of HO, then moving to TT, then to N, and finally, as of the time of the article, to Z. I'm curious to see if I can find out any more about this gentleman and his layout.

From the hotel window across the street

I've been itching to try some photographs now that a bit of overhead is in place. This one is of an eastbound Ocean Boulevard streetcar about to stop at Museum Road as seen from a hotel window across the street. It looks like the car is about to pickup late rush hour riders.

eyeChair

eyeChair: A chair adjusted for viewing a layout at eye-level.

Usage: I pulled up the eyeChair so I could comfortably look down the street to see if the details made sense.

Source: Unknown.

from The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms, 3rd ed., 2019.

Maserati green?

I dropped by the hobby store today and saw they had a can of Tamiya TS-20 Metallic Green. It looks pretty close to the body's original colour - you can see a bit in the wheel well that I managed to overlook way-back-when when I brush painted on the blue. Now, to find some suitable paint stripper.

Louis, Vince, and Earl

E. L. Moore's Kelley's Folly appeared in the Jan '79 issue of RMC

The September and October 1987 issues of Railroad Model Craftsman contained an excellent 2-part series on Louis H. Hertz by Keith Wills in the Collector consist... column. In the first instalment I learned that Hertz wrote his first article for the September 1935 issue of Model Railroader, and that was soon followed by another two for the August and November 1937 issues of the Model Craftsman. Those two were so well received he got a monthly feature in Model Craftsman called Along The Tinplate Track starting in January 1938 that lasted for 124 issues, with a hiatus during WWII. You might ask, so what's so special about that? Ok, well, Mr. Hertz was born on 17 May 1922, which means he was 13 when he published his first article, and 15 when he started his first column. Prior to finding this out I thought he was in E. L. Moore's generation from the 1890s, or maybe no more than 10 years younger. But no, he was a lot younger and a teenager when he got his start. And for completeness, Mr. Hertz died on 28 January 1997.

I mentioned all this to Vince - who has published a lot over the years in various magazines - and he said that he too published his first piece as a teenager. It was a tip that appeared in the January 1979 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. Being the E. L. Moore researcher that I am I should note that Mr. Moore's article, Kelley's Folly: a mill, also appeared in that issue of RMC - august company indeed :-) I'd like to say E. L. Moore first published as a teenager, but his first didn't appear until he was 57. Although, I often wonder if he published anything prior to entering model railroading.

Casualized overhead streetcar wire

I applied the principle of casualization to the overhead wire in the Mortimer Park Loop. In the real world the overhead in a return loop is rather complicated as the wire needs to be held in a good approximation to the track below so the streetcar's trolley pole can smoothly track along the wire without snags or dewirements. I didn't want to spend the time to replicate that. I only wanted the wire to look plausible when I shot eye-level photos. So, from above, the wire looks not curved enough, but from ground level, when the wire isn't the centre of attention, it seems ok. Although I must admit that I'll probably go back and add a couple of tensioning lines to circularize the wire just a tad more.

The overhead poles in the Mortimer Park Loop area are made from bamboo skewers. This is supposed to be an older part of the city, so I wanted mainly wooden poles down here. There are a couple of modern ones too as there would be when replacements to old wooden ones are required. 

After cutting the poles to length they were stained with a thinned mix of black and grey acrylics. The metal band where the wire attaches is a loop of Bare Metal Foil. Holes were drilled into each post through the foil to accept a crosswire.

I used plasticine to temporarily stand-up the posts as I figured out where to place them. I wanted to minimize their number to minimize the work, but I also wanted them to seem plausible from eye-level. As I noted above, I think I need a couple more for pull-outs to circularize the overhead a bit more.

Once I settled on their locations I drilled holes in the layout and friction fit the wooden poles. Hangers were made in the same way as those on Ocean Boulevard, but I was smarter this time when it came to installing them as I did it before the crosswires were added to the poles.The crosswires were then installed in the poles in preparation for gluing on the overhead 'wire', which is actually black thread. The overhead was glued on using the same method applied to Ocean Blvd.

And that's that, for now anyway. That's the view coming out of the loop and entering Ocean Boulevard for a run down to Ocean Park. As I peer through the viewfinder things are starting to develop the look I'm after. Eye-level photos help a lot to figure out what's needed scene-wise because they come close to mimicking how I see things on the street. Overhead views are a bit too abstract and my brain doesn't always click on the elements that aren't right or missing.

Trial fitting the Maserati's chassis & bumper

Rubber cement was used to temporarily hold things together

 After carefully prying out the interior and windows I found the chassis and bumper fit quite well on the body. However, the fit isn't too good with the interior and windows in place. I'll need to think about where to make adjustments, but with the body, interior, and windows undamaged (except for a small crack in the back window) it should be possible to make a reasonable restoration. And I think Tamiya's TS20 Metallic Green spray paint might come close to matching the toy's original colour - which you can see peeking out from the front wheel well.

Five Machine Shops maketh a three-storey factory

Snipped from a larger image in RMC Jul '89

The July 1989 RMC / Dremel Kitbashing Award was won by Thomas W. Rimer for his Kitbashing a multi-story factory project, which made use of 5 Machine Shop kits to build a 3 storey factory. 

One thing you'll notice about this building is that the tell-tale 2-up, 2-down jog in the sidewall window arrangement is absent. Galen noted that it's that arrangement that makes the Machine Shop noticeable in a scene, and he's right. I have to admit that the only reason I didn't skip over this model was that the first sentence of the article called out the AHM Machine Shop. A skillful arrangement of wall panels has eliminated the jog.

It looks like the long Machine Shop only used 4 kits, so this factory with its 5 appears to be the current winner in the most kits used category.

And one more thing, this kitbash also makes use of balsa, so there's Moorian DNA all throughout this model :-)

Model cars and rec-room floors

I tried a lot of things to improve the scans of those Marmora station negatives, but nothing seemed to work. I put them aside and tried scanning the negatives of some old model car shots I found in the same box with the station photos. These ones were shot with an old bellows camera - probably of a late '30s or early '40s vintage - that used 120 roll film. I recall setting things up on the rec-room floor in my parents house and spending lots of time fiddling with a light meter and floor lamps. I processed the negatives, but never made prints - well, I can't find any prints. These digital 'contact prints' are the first I've seen of the shots in a long time. Over on the right is a Tommy Ivo rear-engine dragster kit I was especially proud of because I think I tried to wire the engine. In the middle is a Revell Porsche kit that I still have, and over on the right is some sort of long gone hot rod that I can't recall building. The station negatives don't look too bad to my eye, but the scans are overly grainy. I need to spend some more internet time figuring how to improve them.

With this kind of luck I need to buy a lottery ticket!

Being partially insane I decided to go through every single drawer in my old spare parts cabinet, and by some minor miracle I found the torn-off bumper and grill stashed amongst a pile of old plastic parts for 1/24 scale model cars. Good grief, chassis in a box of old papers, and bumper in a drawer of styrene cast-offs!

Well, the chassis and bumper are a bit twisted, so the fit isn't too good. Maybe some judicious work with pliers and epoxy might do the trick. It'll never be a perfect restoration, but it'll at least have sentimental value. I wonder if I can colour match the body's factory green?

Negatives

I was rooting around in old boxes of junk from days gone by looking for the Maserati's front bumper, but no such luck*. However, I did find some rather abused negatives of the Marmora station environs. I was surprised by the image on the right of some sort of freight car that's been converted to a shed. I'd completely forgotten about that. Also, the centre image is a side of the speeder shed that I hadn't seen in my photo files. I need to find a way to properly scan these negatives as they appear to be in better shape - except for the folds of course - than the grainy images suggest.

*It looks like I tore the front bumper and grill off the chassis, and it's no doubt lost for good. I guess at the time I thought that was some sort of cool customization scheme :-(

Maserati Mistral chassis found!

Hot Wheels Maserati Mistral

The last time I showed this Maserati Mistral Hot Wheels car it was in a pretty sorry state and missing its chassis. While rummaging through stuff from my parent's house I stumbled across a Hot Wheels chassis on which was stamped 'Maserati Mistral'. I dug up the body and attached the two together. Not a bad fit, although the chassis is a bit bent. If I'm lucky enough to find the still missing front grill and bumper I'm going to try my hand at restoring it a la Marty's Matchbox Makeovers. The search continues!

In Perry Mason, Toronto does not play itself

Over the course of the year we've probably watched every episode of the old Perry Mason tv series twice. Looking for fresh stories we're now trying to watch the Perry Mason made-for-tv movies. Trying is the key word here.

The old series ran from 1957 to 1966, and the tv movies debuted in 1985. There were 30 of these movies made up until 1995. Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale reprise their roles as Perry and Della, but everything else is more-or-less new. Including the locales. I've only watched 4 1/8 of these 'movies', but so far the real Los Angeles is nowhere in sight. In the premier, Perry Mason Returns, Toronto stands in for LA, and in the third movie, The Case of the Shooting Star, Toronto plays New York City. Colorado, maybe Denver, seems to be the setting for the other movies, but I'm not sure about that, or where they were shot.

Anyway, other than the pleasure of seeing performances from Burr and Hale in their old roles, these movies leave a lot to be desired. My watching has devolved into seeing if I can spot Toronto locales. I hit a low when I spotted that scene above in The Case of the Shooting Star where a TTC bus drives down a street in NYC! I also recall a scene where I saw streetcar track in a road. I need to go back and see if any TTC streetcars are making cameo appearances in the background :-)

We paused this movie marathon about 1/8th of the way through The Case of the Sinister Spirit. I couldn't take any more, and there were no misplaced buses to raise my own spirits.

Grusom Casket becomes a country store

Snipped from a larger image in June '87 RMC

The winner of the June '87 RMC / Dremel Kitbashing Award was Richard Bower for his kitbash of E. L. Moore's Grusom Casket kit into a country store. Well, it's more of a country store complex made up of a store from the 2-storey part of Grusom's (aka, the Ramsey Journal part of the kit), and a gas station and garage made from the 1-storey part (aka, the Machine Shop). It's a handsome and ingenious bash that turns a single Grusom Casket kit into something completely different. 

E. L. Moore's Machine Shop on The Franklin & South Manchester

Snipped from a much larger photo in the Nov '86 issue of RMC.

There's an excellent photo essay by Steve Sint in the Nov '86 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman on George Sellios' famous Franklin & South Manchester Railroad. Buried off to the corner in one of the photos on page 71 is our old friend the E. L. Moore designed Machine Shop squeezed between two taller buildings. The roof is a little different, but the walls make it clear what building this is. This little building seems to be popping up on some of the largest layouts. Hopefully there're still surprises ahead.

A very long E. L. Moore Machine Shop

Snipped from Massive HO layout with almost a mile of track.

I was watching Toy Man Television's episode on Verryl Fosnight's HO scale layout of the Wyoming Division of the Union Pacific and at around the 4:10 mark I saw this kitbash of the Machine Shop. It's the most extreme bash of the kit I've seen so far, but look at the layout it's on, it's amazing.

I'm a big fan of Toy Man Television and its relaxed vibe: highly recommended.

The Elevator Building is actually...

From RMC Nov '85

 ... the staircase tower in Vollmer's Modern Parking Structure kit #770-3802. Back in May 2019 I made many wild speculations as to the Elevator Building's roots and was dead wrong on all counts. Hilarious!

Full Observation

Full Observation: The art of using one's camera, senses, thoughts, and time to understand a place.

Usage: I brought my lunch as well as my camera to the yard's visitor parking as I intended to fully observe some switching operations.

Source: The idea was presented in the Observations column of the June 1985 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman by C. J. Riley in an essay called Observations about observations. Mr. Riley notes that if you are out taking photographs to record a prototype or place you plan to model you should remember that A camera is good for a permanent record of the facts, but a camera lens can limit one's viewpoint and interfere with the information flow to the brain, and that one should Lay the camera aside now and then and just look, listen, smell, think and absorb what is around you.

Full Observation is not a new concept, but was touched on in the Prototype Junket entry that appeared in the dictionary's 1st edition. Prototype Junket was coined by George Allen in the 8th instalment of his Tuxedo Junction series that appeared in the May 1953 issue of Model Railroader. Mr. Allen notes that one of the key features of a Prototype Junket is to develop your understanding of what it is to railroad: to live railroading you gotta get out into the yards, breathe deeply of the bituminous smoke (or fumes, if you're in dieselized territory), tread the cinders, admire four-wheeled hacks, and watch the grand panorama of a busy switching yard. 

John Olson also hints at full observation in his Researching the rails that appeared in the May 1982 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman: My interest centers mostly on the character of an area, the general layout of rails and typical photos of structures and rolling stock, as opposed to the fellow who wants exact dimensions for historical data or accurate scale drawings.

Diligent application of full observation might help alleviate visual purposelessness and assist a model railroad in saying something. Conrad J. Obregon notes in his essay, Toward a model railroading aesthetic, that appeared in the December 1981 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman that model railroading is an art form, and it is purposeful. It is in this adherence to purpose that model railroaders fail and goes on to say that the majority of the hundreds of model railroads that I have seen, there is little sense of a vision on the part of the builder. Full observation is about developing deeper vision.

Susan Sontag states in her 1964 essay, Against Interpretation, that What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more, and she goes on to note that Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all. In our context of model railroading as an art and medium, too much content - in that context - is manifested as a possible overload in the replication of the camera's permanent record in the models or layout.

Full observation shouldn't be confused with either the concepts of railfanning or observability in physics and computer science.

from The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms, 2nd ed., 1999.

Starting Steinberg

I thought I'd make a start on the easy part of the Steinberg supermarket and begin the facade later.

The box is built from 5mm thick, acid-free foamboard held together with Weldbond glue. The floor is cut from a scrap of matte board. The slightly shorter inner wall is for supporting a removable roof. 

I consider this project to be Moorian in that I'm drawing inspiration from a place I frequented when quite young that's left a positive impression. It isn't the use of balsa to build models of places from 1900 that puts something in the Moorian tradition, but expressing what you must express with fairly readily available materials.

And speaking of photos from car windows....

Photo by Debra; as you can see, my hands are firmly on the wheel.

We took a little westward trip out to the country today, and along the way we saw the body - or should I say fuselage - of an Alstom Citdas Spirit in OTrain colours being hauled east to Ottawa on a flat-bed truck.

It was not so easy taking this picture. Once I realized what was coming our way, we had to find the camera, turn it on, and then Debra had to quickly take a photo. No easy task, but trust me, that's a Spirit body. It turns out that was one of two Spirits-on-a-Flat-Bed we saw, and we also saw an OCTranspo bus being towed west to meet its fate in some garage somewhere. The photo is in the impressionist school, but no model will result :-)

Overhead along Ocean Blvd.

After a considerable amount of trial and error, the lower part of Ocean Boulevard has overhead wiring - well, more correctly, overhead thread as it's all just for looks.

Here's a summary of steps to get it installed:

1. Calm your mind. This isn't a flippant comment, if you're edgy or pre-occupied, don't try any of this. Any time you feel your concentration lagging, take a break. Take plenty of breaks. I worked on this on-and-off for several days, maybe a half-hour or so at a time.

2. Set the height of the cross wires with the gauge. I didn't glue the poles in place, they're just friction fit in holes drilled into the layout. They're quite snug, but this allows for some adjustments to be made.

3. On the cross wires, mark the centre of the track using the gauge and a red Sharpie pen.

4. Slide the wire hangers over the red marks, and glue each hanger in place with a drop of medium thickness super glue. Make sure the hanger's ears are approximately parallel with the road surface.

5. Cut a length of thread and lay it down on the track's centre line.

6. Starting at the centre posts, smear a thin layer of medium thickness superglue on the underside of the hanger ears. Lift the thread up and attach it to the underside of the ears. It should hold itself within 2 or 3 seconds. Once it's attached, give it a light spray of accelerant to speed the bonding process.

7. Once the overhead thread is bonded to the centre hanger, proceed outward down the road using the same procedure. The only difference is that you'll need to pull the thread ever so slightly to tension it as you glue it to the next hanger. 

The thread has very little tension in it, and can't withstand the vertical force exerted by the springs in the PCC's trolley pole. I had to install a safety line to the trolley pole of just the right length so the pole's wheel just nestled onto the overhead thread without too much upward force. This prevented the overhead from being grossly distorted when the trolley pole was engaged.

The overhead is quite spindly and delicate, which gives it more-or-less the right look in HO, but I'm not sure how robust it will be over time. I notice in the lead photo that one of the ears wasn't glued properly and has debonded. Hopefully that's just a teething pain. The next tricky part will be installing overhead in the Mortimer Park Loop.

Selective Impression and E. L. Moore's Cole Mfg. Co.

In the comments to the Selective Impression post Paul noted that E. L. Moore often applied Selective Impression, although Mr. Moore didn't call it that. The comment got me thinking about one of E. L. Moore's unpublished manuscripts, Build a 1900's Foundry, that described how he built a version of the Cole Mfg. Co..

It wasn't so much the article that got me thinking about E. L. Moore and selective impression, but the reference photos he took of the prototype. Many were shot from a distance, some maybe from a vehicle, and others look like he might have taken them while walking around the grounds - he did say in the article he got a guided tour. Whether he made any measurements is unknown. 

I didn't post his reference photos with along with the Cole article as the story was long, and they weren't referenced by it. But, now that we're on the subject of loosely using reference photos to design a model, I thought I should post them. I apologize for the dark shadows that many have. I wasn't able to adjust them enough to make a significant difference, so I've just posted them here as is for completeness. I think this is the most extensive set of reference photos I've seen for an E. L. Moore project.

The large store sign off in the distance is for PIC 'N PAY SHOES, and the Cole's sign in the photo below notes that the entrance to Cole's is off Central Avenue. E. L. Moore mentions in his article that Cole's can be seen from the overhead bridge where the highway rises above the Seaboard tracks. Maybe these clues are enough to locate where this foundry once stood - assuming it was in Charlotte, N.C..

From those cars it looks like these pictures were taken in the 1950's, maybe the mid to late '50s. So, although the Cole manuscript was submitted in June 1967, it looks like E. L. Moore had these photos in his files for awhile before he started to work on the project.

In the upper left, way off in the distance, you can see a water tower that looks a lot like the one in the HOJ POJ Mfg. Co. project. The HOJ POJ project was based on a factory complex in Charlotte, N.C., so maybe the Cole project is too if I can assume the water tower actually was located over at the HOJ POJ prototype site.

In the upper right, to the left of the PIC 'N PAY SHOES sign you can see the sign for another store called ADVANCE.

In the first four paragraphs of the Cole article E. L. Moore outlines how he came up with the model's design - it sounds rather similar to that used by Franke on his feed mill, although this process isn't uncommon amongst model builders.

For some reason the Cole complex reminds me of AHM's Old Time Factory kit. The two don't look all that similar, although both are rather low-slung. Maybe it's simply the words 'old' and 'factory' that alert my E. L. Moore circuitry :-) But, I think there's a Faller kit that has some features similar to E. L. Moore's project. I need to try and find that kit.