From Christmas display to HO layout

Snipped from MR August 1965

I was doing some reading about one time Model Railroader associate editor, and friend of E. L. Moore,  Bill Rau and came across an interesting structure construction article of his published in the August '65 issue of MR, Crosby's Mill and other structures. As part of the story he discusses how one of the models, the titular Crosby's Mill*, a grain elevator, started life as an item for a Christmas display in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and then describes how he later made use of it for an O gauge layout, and then recycled it again for an HO gauge setup:

The basic structure was built more than 35 years ago (JDL: probably in the later 1920s). It was one item of a set of structures I bought in Woolworth's for use on a Christmas display even before I turned to scale model railroading in 1930. The group included three village houses, a school, a drugstore, a grocery store, a station, and the sole industrial structure, a printed-side grain elevator. The models went together with tabs and slots and they could easily be set up and taken down.

When I set up the O gauge Buffalo, Allegheny & Pittsburgh RR. in my home in the early thirties, the grain elevator was installed as background scenery. Sometime during its life on the O gauge pike I cut off the tabs and slots and cemented the parts together, at the same time adding internal bracing of 1/16" thick photo mounting stock.

Came then marriage, a family, and a shift to HO gauge. A check revealed that the old elevator was close enough to HO scale to remain presentable on the new HO BA&PRy layout.

He then goes into the details of converting the Woolworth's Christmas item into a credible HO scale model grain elevator using 1930s modelling methods. Overall I found the article an interesting direct link from Christmas yards and gardens to scale model railroading. And there it was buried away in what from a casual reading of the magazine's table of contents would lead one the think was just another 1960s vintage construction article. It's always amazing to me how much history is stashed away in rather ordinary places.

*You might be asking, is Crosby's Mill named after E. L. Moore's friend Bart Crosby? It's possible. Both Bill Rau and Bart Crosby were high profile model railroaders from Pennsylvania, and both had equally high profile careers in the model railroading magazine business: Rau at MR, and Crosby at Model Trains, which  MR's parent company bought in the mid to late '50s. So maybe Crosby of Crosby's Mill fame is Bart Crosby.