Announcement of E. L. Moore's Three Store Fronts and a Shop kits

Over the last few days for some unknown reason I've been thinking about an old issue of Model Railroader from the 1970s with cabooses on the cover - I think of it as the psychedelic caboose issue :-)

And for some other unknown reason I recall exactly the details of where and when I bought it, what kind of a day it was, and reading it for the first time. Although, all I could recall about its content was the cover and an article called Wayside warehouse* because I eventually built that model. Last night I decided to dig up the issue and see what was inside.

As well as the warehouse construction article there is also quite a good article on how to build models with Strathmore by Jimmy Gavelock, which I guess makes sense as the warehouse in the construction article is made from that material.

The surprising find was a notice in the Trade Topics section for the old AHM kits of E. L. Moore's Three Store Fronts and a Shop project. Given this MR is the June 1974 issue, the kits were most likely released earlier in 1974. This then brackets the period when the Original 9 AHM E. L. Moore designed kits were released: the first was the Brewery in 1968, and last were the two Three Store Fronts and a Shop kits in 1974 (this of course all assumes the larger the AHM kit#, the later it was released).

The Trade Topics notice makes no mention that these kits are based on an E. L. Moore project, likely because that project appeared in RMC as did all the other Moore designed kits. The review also 'bland-ifies' these colourful kits. You can see for yourself some of their baroque glory in my one-and-only stab at an unboxing video I did many years ago:

*I still have that wayside warehouse model I built from the article somewhere around the house. I think I recall the box it's in, and given that it's raining like crazy today, I'll go on safari to find it :-)

Are any model railroaders working on Ottawa's Woe-Train?

Back in the fall of 2019 I had plans to write extensively about Ottawa's then brand new Light Rail Transit system, the OTrain. I even got press credentials to ride on the inaugural run.

Although that press event was pulled off without a hitch as they say, from then on it was one LRT problem after another right up until now. The problems kept coming so fast and were so serious that I stopped writing about the LRT because I didn't want the blog to become dominated by that terrible system. 

If you want to read about the LRT's entire tale of woe, Sarah Trick of TVO wrote an excellent summary, Ottawa's colossal LRT debacle: A brief-ish history, and there's an equally good one by Brett Popplewell at The Walrus, Ottawa's Transit Gong Show, from February of this year. If you think you can stomach all the details, you can find the final report of the public inquiry here.

So, why am I writing about the LRT today? Well, I had a gallows humour chuckle at the most recent problem noted in the CBC report, Axle bearings on Ottawa LRT might need to be redesigned. It seems like this might be the result of certain too sharp curves that were laid too flat (track issues were reported in, LRT inquiry commissioner still concerned about wheel and track problems). Are there any model railroaders on their team? Any model railroader with the slightest experience has learned - usually the hard way - that you can't run long trains with long cars on tight radius track. You get binding and jamming and derailments. And you need generous easements too. Often the only way to improve operations and resolve frustrations is to rip up the track and start fresh, maybe with a new layout - easy for a model railroad, impossible for the real thing.

If you're a longtime reader here you may recall I wrote about a fictional HO-scale layout of the entire transit system of New Toronto in my 2013 pulp novella, Light Ray Blues. It was run by the University of New Toronto's Lone Trainmen, and you can read about it here. That fictional layout's purpose was to physically simulate operations and root out potential problems like the ones we're seeing with Ottawa's LRT. If anyone from the LRT is reading this, I can give you the number of the Lone Trainmen :-)

The E. L. Moore eBook is a Non-thing

I’m reading Byung-Chul Han’s recent book, Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld. It’s fascinating, and has a lot to say about model building if read in a certain frame of mind. Although, before I got deep into that line of thought I was stopped dead early on by Han’s comments on eBooks:

For Benjamin, a book has a fate insofar as it is a thing, a possession. It carries material marks that give it a history. An e-book is not a thing, but information; it has an altogether different status of being. Even if we have it at our disposal, it is not a possession. It is something to which we have access. An e-book reduces a book to informational value. The book has no age, place, craft or owner. It lacks the auratic distance from which an individual fate could speak to us. 

A couple of things to note before we move on. First, the italics are Han’s. Also, the sentence, “The book has no age, place, craft or owner” I think has been mistranslated from the original’s German, and should instead read, “The e-book has no age, place, craft or owner”. I think that makes more sense in the overall context of the discussion.

There’s more to his thoughts on the eBook, but that snippet seems to capture the gist of it. 

Overall I agree with his position on the eBook. It is a degraded form of book. I would have preferred the E. L. Moore book to appear as a paperback instead of exclusively as an eBook, but ultimately the form of delivery was determined by money: a physical book would have cost too much and have severely limited its reach.

My first move in the early days of putting the book together was to see if any of the model railroad publishers would be interested in it. None were. That wasn’t surprising and I don’t fault them for their position. E. L. Moore was born in the 19th century, died in 1979, and his heyday as a model maker was from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, so the audience that would recall him and his work is limited. Also, his approach to model making and model railroading has been long out of fashion, so this further reduces the potential set of buyers. Publishers are businesses, and there’d be little money to be made from the book.

I looked into print-on-demand options, but given the number of colour images and page count, the cover price was hitting $100. At those prices even I wouldn’t buy my own book :-) And there was no way I could afford to print copies on spec. What about a kickstarter type thing? I’m not interested in begging.

In the end it was an eBook or nothing. Nothing was not an option because I wanted to preserve the core of the E. L. Moore research in a more permanent form than a blog, whose existence is at the whims of a giant corporation. At least an eBook is easy to circulate, as long as it’s not DRMed of course. And it’ll eventually be on file at Library and Archives Canada.

Maybe the aura only exists in the depths of the E. L. Moore Archive?

So, yes, the E. L. Moore eBook will never have the auratic attributes Han and Walter Benjamin identify with physical books. But, not all physical books do. Most live ignominious lives and end up in landfills, or are pulped. It’s only a rare few that pass from reader to reader over the ages, collecting the artifacts of use, age, and love. Those are indeed beautiful and significant. With the eBook I’ve settled on its ability to circulate as its good, which I think is important. 

It might not have the potential for an aura that a physical book does, but the E. L. Moore eBook can readily circulate, which may ease the process of finding simpatico readers in this day and age. Given the world’s high inflation and ubiquitous electronic devices, hopefully the eBook format is less prone to biblio-sclerosis, and is effective at getting the E. L. Moore word out.

Really? Can it ‘get the E. L. Moore word out’ and cajole readers into taking Moore seriously by learning about him, and trying out his methods and approaches for themselves? I’d like to think so, but I’m growing more skeptical. One reason, which dawned on me while reading Han’s book, is the disconnect between how Moore made his models and created his articles (real, hand-made, physical processes) and how I created the eBook (mostly virtual, digital processes). There’s some sort of conceptual leap from the digital to the physical required on the part of the reader that might be impossible to enact in our interneted world. More on this later. 

I must say though, Han’s book packs a lot of ideas into very few pages. 

I got excited there for a minute ...

 ... but no, it wasn't some sort of new space hopper sighting in Montréal.

Although this ape and the black loading door with a bulbous pseudo star field painted on induced a 2001: A Space Odyssey reaction in me. Wishful thinking. 

The search continues.

Buckminster Fuller and the Honda Civic

I was going through some files and came across these pages I had torn out of an old issue of Scientific American. The pages don't tell me which issue, but they appear to be from 1978. I wouldn't mind owning some sort of modernized, electro-ized, retro-themed Civic hatchback ... or a geodesic dome :-)

A rare sunny day

Took the Jimmy off the shelf for a beauty shot

An afternoon of reading and taking photographs in the backyard. This past winter has been the darkest in the last 83 years, so I'm taking maximum advantage of every sunny day. And so are the purple flowers that are popping up in the lawn.

E. L. Moore book notice in April '23 Interchange

A notice for the E. L. Moore eBook appears on page 14 of the April 2023 issue of the Ottawa Valley Associated Railroaders' newsletter, The Interchange. Today the OVAR newsletter, tomorrow the New York Times bestseller list :-) Oh, wait, it's not for sale, it's free :-)

A kit of E. L. Moore's Central Warehouse?

I continue to rummage through old issues of the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette, and last night I stumbled across this new product review in the Mar / Apr '92 issue for a model which looks very much like E. L. Moore's Central Warehouse. You may recall that almost 3 years ago I wrote about a more recent kitification of the Central Warehouse. 

In the book I didn't write about the craftsman-style kits of E. L. Moore designs that have appeared over the years. In many ways, these kits have nothing to do with Moore, other than continue to demonstrate his ongoing influence. Some kits state they're based on his designs, most don't. I'm not sure if any of these kits are licensed by the magazines where the projects first appeared. I suspect most are bootlegs.

Whenever I see kits based on E. L. Moore projects they always make me laugh given that the man himself had this to say about kits: 

"Fact is, I hate like poison to put a kit together."

Thoughts while building the Insectary

Over the last week or so I've been working on the Insectary. It turned out to be a rather pleasant little project and the resulting model seems rather striking. 

If you compare these photos of the model to the real thing you'll see I've taken a few liberties and made some changes to several details, but I've stuck pretty closely to the overall design. I took this approach because I wanted to build this from odds-and-ends I had on hand in my scrapbox and avoid buying new materials. Although, I had to relent on the windows. I didn't have any suitable moldings, and I didn't want to scratchbuild 25 window frames (!), so purchasing something suitable was the only way to proceed.  After some guesswork regarding window dimensions, I ended up buying Tichy Train Group item #8062, 24" x 56" 2/2 double hung window moldings. Now the windows on the prototype aren't double hung, but appear to be hinged at their tops which allows them to swing open at the bottom, so yet another deviation. 

Verticals are 0.125" x 0.125" styrene strips 

Now that the E. L. Moore book is done I've been feeling a bit adrift blog-wise. The ELM project has been 'officially' going on since 2013, and 'unofficially' it traces back to the second post I made in March 2009 on building Bunn's Feed & Seed. I have simultaneous feelings that the long era of ELM posts is over and not over as there are still many unanswered questions. For the most part though I feel the posts are over, and there's an ELM shaped void in the blog :-)

The blog's stats show the ELM posts to be by far the most popular, followed by posts on other famous mid 20th century model railroaders. Strangely, before I got into serious ELM posts, the most popular posts were those in the first series of the Streetcar Noir pulp, Light Ray Blues. For awhile it had quite a lot of views from Japan for some unknown reason. The second and third series did ok, but not as well as the first. Posts about my own projects rank well below ELM, legendary model railroaders, and novellas. In a surprising twist, the most popular post on my own work was actually a rather banal photo of my old LOL layout I posted on Instagram. There's a message in all this for me :-)

Shingles are strips cut from 220 grit sandpaper

I'm thinking the posts are going to become more random than usual - I've been told some consider the blog chaotic, so maybe no one will notice :-) - as I settle into some other groove. Frankly I'm not even sure if blogging is the way to go these days given the dominance of video when it comes to how-to build scale models material. I have no desire to make videos, so blog retirement is a possibility - although I have said that before and gotten right back on the saddle after a few days of retirement :-) 

The roof is removable; it's made from 0.060" thick styrene scraps

Building the Insectary was a nice diversion from turgid blogging thoughts: it was a bit tricky construction-wise, but small in size so I didn't have to wait days to see significant progress.

The foundation is also made from 0.060" styrene sheet

Anyway, so much for navel gazing.

I have a lot of leftover window frames. They come in 12 packs, and I needed 25, so I've 11 for the scrapbox. I can see them being used for some other buildings that are near the Insectary. The windows will give the collection a family feeling, so they won't go to waste. 

The interior is simple, just a counter that runs around the perimeter with some cupboards underneath. I popped over to Ikea to see what they had in stock, but they were sorely lacking in anything in HO scale :-) So, out came the 0.020" thick styrene sheet, and in a bit I had some counter space. Once the layout is further along I'll add some sort of interior action - genetic insect experiments gone awry ?

For this picture I put the camera lens right up against an end window and hoped for the best. Yeah, there's some messy paint work near the eaves, but that isn't visible from normal viewing angles. I'll have to clean that up when I add some interior detail.

Well, that's it for now. I wonder if the farm has an Arachnidary?

A little more on Hugh Boutell

Image sourced Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette, Nov / Dec '92

At the OVAR swap meet a couple of Sundays ago I bought a small collection of back issues of the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette - 50 more-or-less random issues from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s for $3. I've been spending some pleasant evenings leafing through their pages, seeing the sights. I was quite happy to find an article in the Nov / Dec '92 issue called The Influence of Hugh Boutell by Bob Brown, the magazine's longtime editor and publisher. You may recall I wrote a little about Boutell awhile back on his use of Pretty Village cardboard cutout buildings on his layout. Although the NGSLG didn't answer all my questions about Boutell's use of structures, it did answer a few other ones.

The NGSLG article showed a high resolution version of the photo that appeared in the August '34 issue of Popular Science - that's the one I've shown above. It allowed me to get a better view of the buildings, and the image strengthens my opinion that they are Pretty Village items, which I've noted in the image with red boxes

Second, it's mentioned that the layout in the photo is 1-1/4 inch gauge. His pioneering OO layout (which I erroneously thought was HO), was built much earlier between 1925 and 1929.

Mr. Brown ends the article by noting he acquired Boutell's structures along with his other models in 1979. That's a long time ago now, but I wonder if he still has them?

Central becomes Centennial

In our last episode I reported on fence post installation. Since then the fencing - using the classic screen door mesh method - has been installed, a corn field - using Walthers corn - has been planted, streetcar stops have been installed, a cattle path to the pasture has been added, road markings and stops at the cattle and pedestrian crossings have been created, and an entry sign has been put up near the main road.

Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm is the inspiration for this layout. It's nowhere near an exact replica, so I felt a renaming was in order. The real Central Experimental Farm became the Centennial Experimental Farm with the fictional farm's core story being its streetcar service was reinstated as a 1967 Centennial project.

For the eagle-eyed there are a few TTC inspired touches I'll leave for the reader to identify :-)