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."
I think this design was based on an MR article from a cover story by another author.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I'd have to look into that.
DeleteFound it. MR, April 57. Built with a small angle in its footprint, but also with a lean. https://www.trains.com/mrr/magazine/archive-access/model-railroader-april-1957/
DeleteThanks! I'll take a look.
DeleteAh, the article in question is 'Small-Town Warehouse' by Robert E. Gilbert. I had briefly written about it here: https://30squaresofontario.blogspot.com/2017/04/was-robert-e-gilbert-reg.html
DeleteREG's model is different than Moore's, and doesn't appear to have the propped up leaning walls (please see the drawing on page 29).
ELM may have been inspired by REG's model (it can't be ruled out), if for no other reason than REG's model has signs announcing the building belongs to an "N. E. Moore" and maybe that got his attention. I can imagine ELM maybe riffing on REG's design as the building masses are roughly similar, but on the other hand that could be a standard feature of the real world counterparts of these models.
ELM's Central Warehouse appeared in 'Turn Backward, O Time' in the Jan '67 MR, and no mention was made of the Central Warehouse's heritage. However, as we saw with Dilly Manufacturing that appeared in the same article:
https://30squaresofontario.blogspot.com/2020/09/summarizing-eight-ball-loco-works-dilly.html
Maybe Central Warehouse also had a complicated lineage.
Argh, I pushed Publish instead of return :-(
DeleteTo continue,
I can't rule out that ELM might have built a variation on REG's model given the air of similarity between the two, but I can't definitively say one derives from the other given the many differences and lack of mention of a direct link between the two.