Violating the laws of time travel

I sneaked the time machine out of the garage early one morning last week and set the controls for 355 Lexington Avenue, N.Y., N.Y., May 1975.

I thought I'd try and disrupt the flow of time.

It only sort of worked. 

There are still a lot of kinks to be worked out with the whole time travel thing.

Loonar furniture?

We recently bought some living room furniture from a friend who is downsizing. After waking up from a test of the couch, I glanced over at the occasional table and had a vision; a Loonar Module vision.

They don't look that bad together, but, for good or ill, the module only resided there for just enough time to realize the vision. A lamp will take back its rightful place.

E. L. Moore eBook now at LARC

Entry for E. L. Moore eBook at Library and Archives Canada

The E. L. Moore eBook is now available online at Library and Archives Canada. 

Gil Mellé's Lost Years: A beginning

With the Malcolm Furlow post I’ve started to think again about some of the lost - or maybe just under appreciated - roots of model railroading. I’ll get back to Furlow, but I’ve been wondering again about Gil Mellé because of something Furlow wrote.

There’s about a 10 year period from 1957 to 1967 where Mellé recorded and released no records, but as readers here know he was becoming a major presence in model railroading. The various biographies I’ve been able to find online don’t go into what he was up to during those years. Maybe there’s something in print. I’m thinking of putting together an integrated timeline that shows his transition from jazz musician to model railroader to musician again. I'll combine whatever I find music-wise with his model railroading publication list.

I noted Malcolm Furlow wrote that he believed going into model railroading was a “natural extension of my music career”. I wonder if Gil Mellé thought the same, or maybe he entered model railroading for different reasons? I wonder if, like Tom Daniel, railroading was an early interest, and Mellé for some similar reasons decided to return to it? Maybe I’ll never find out, but maybe there are some clues out there.

So, timeline. It looks like the last album Mellé recorded and released before his long hiatus from music was Quadrama in 1957. The album is on the Prestige label, # PRLP 7097. On it he plays baritone sax. I don’t own the album, but I’m trying to track down either an LP or CD for a reasonable price. Although, on YouTube I did find this recording of the piece Quadrama, that Wikipedia tells me is the very last track on the Quadrama album.

The last track of the last album before hiatus. Significant? I doubt it, but I don’t know. Here it is for your listening pleasure: 

Lost Adventures of the Train Photographer

In a parallel dimension the train photographer adventures on

A start on armatures for black walnut trees

I've made a start on a pair of armatures to model a pair of black walnut trees near my house.

I found these trees to be a bit trickier to model than the white pines I made for the Loonar Module. These walnut trees have far more fine branches, and I'm still in the process of figuring out how many to include to give a proper impression. At this point I think the armatures still need more. 

My estimates at height suggest these trees are around 65' tall. My tree book says mature specimens can grow from 82' to 98', so the urban ones on which these armatures are based are a little on the short side. 

Those green limbs and trunks are made up from 26 gauge floral wire bundles, and the finer branches (the aluminum ones, which are admittedly hard to see in this picture) are twisted from 30 gauge.

Lazy days of summers gone by

Malcolm Furlow, Photographer/Modeler

Furlow centre spread from A Treasury of Model Railroad Photos

My love affair with model photography began during the summer of 1978. Up until that time I was a professional musician traveling throughout the United States, playing Reno, Tahoe, Vegas, and a host of other, lesser-known watering holes.

As I look back on what seemed a strange transition at the time (becoming a photographer/modeler), I have now come to regard my entry into this creative field as a natural extension of my music career.

From Malcom Furlow’s introduction to his chapter, Performing the art of illusion, in Kalmbach’s 1991 book, A Treasury of Model Railroad Photos.

Furlow’s thought that his move from being a working musician to a photographer/modeler was a perfectly natural career development is quite interesting, but I’ll leave the discussion of the link between model railroading and music to another time as it’s Furlow as photographer I want to take a look at.

In my last attempt to write something on Furlow to mark his passing I detoured onto E. L. Moore street. I guess that happened as my connection to Furlow’s work isn’t that strong. Although he was a prolific and influential modeller, I didn’t build any of his model projects or layouts. When he was at his peak in the model railroading press, I wasn’t active in the hobby, just a sometime reader of magazines. 

What I did appreciate at the time, and continued to appreciate over the years, was his skill as a photographer. He was that rare breed who could create a miniature scene, light it, and then capture it on film in such a way that you believed it was real and you were there, in it and a part of it. I think the majority of model railroaders aren’t able to photographically capture the excitement they feel about their layouts. It’s only a few who can, and those photos energize and change their own work as well as inspire others to improve theirs too. This is a group that includes John Allen, John Ahern, E. L. Moore, Dave Frary, John Olson, Paul Scoles, Ben King, and many others whose use of photography as an inspirational tool has changed the hobby as much as any hands-on modelling technique.

When Furlow was active in the hobby in the 1980s and 1990s I gather he often took a lot of flak, sometimes personal, from more tradition-oriented constituencies and that was one of the reasons he left model railroading for an extended period. Apparently his work was accused of being a John Allen derivative, that he was an imposter, and his approach and view was out-of-step with the real prototype and operations wings of the hobby. I recall reading somewhere that Furlow said he was indeed inspired by John Allen’s work, but was his work derivative? I don’t think so. Again, from his writings, it appears John Allen’s work was one source of inspiration, but his love and affinity with the western and southwestern US was more influential. One of the hobby’s characteristics that accounts for its ongoing popularity is that it has many facets: the ability to simulate railroad business operations, electronics & control, historical modelling, scenery construction, structure building, a wide range of scales and layout sizes, and so on. Conflicts can arise when a large constituency has formed around one of those facets and believes it represents the ‘correct’ way to engage with the hobby, which is no different than lots of other activities in life. 

For me though, it was Furlow's photographs that I remember and admire. I still hope I can achieve even just a fraction of his technical mastery and skill at visual storytelling. If you can find a copy of A Treasury of Model Railroad Photos, buy it. Yes, the photographic techniques it discusses are from the film era, but the photos themselves, text from the authors, and the setups are timeless.

Cal's Lumberyard: The back wall

I decided to make the main building's back wall next.

It's more or less the same as shown in the article. The only changes I made were to add a window in the peak to match the one in the front wall, and to make sure the openings were the same height as the one for narrow gauge freight cars on the front.

The back wall's 3 vertical posts are cut from 0.125" square styrene strips.

The inside surfaces are detailed with styrene strips: mainly 0.020" x 0.080" on the back wall, and 0.020" x 0.040" on the front. Anybody who knows anything about framing real walls will note that these are quite laughable. They would be rather rickety and likely blow over in a light breeze. I've made no attempt for high fidelity in the framing department, only for some hint of realism as a stage for people and freight cars as they will be the centres of interest. It's all quite impressionistic. 

I'm always in awe of those YouTube modellers who can keep a nice, clean workspace while they are building. I've never managed it. I try to post some clean photos of major assemblies once they're finished so you can see them without visual clutter, but those photos don't represent what goes on during construction.

And, I've never managed to keep a set of plans clean throughout a build either. They're used as a tool during construction, and I will usually update and 'enhance' them as a project evolves. They are truly working drawings - arithmetic mistakes and all :-)

Now that the end walls are done, the main building's 2 side walls and interior partition are up next. I suspect these are going to be tricky.

E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumberyard: The Office

Temporarily staged office / front facade / loading platform

I'm not building this thing in any order that could be considered logical. I decided to build the office next because I had some ideas on how to change its design a little that I wanted to try out.

Overall I want Cal's to look less closed up and more open, so, with this in mind, I introduced 4 large windows along the office's long exterior side, as well as a full length window along the front with a door that had a large window. These are Tichy Train Group items. Unfortunately I don't know their part numbers as they came in Tichy's HO scale assortment box, and I lost the box and parts sheet years ago.

There was a little method to my madness in placing the windows and doors.

I had to make sure the front window and door would not be blocked by the main building's loading door when it was slid open.

Each room was to get 2 exterior windows, and 1 of each pair of windows was to line up so that one could see through to an interior door opening to the main building. 

As well, the passage door opening between the rooms was lined up to be directly in line with the front door.

These alignments were done to maximize the opportunities for long views into the model, and for light to travel as far as possible inside. You may recall I took the same approach with Caleb's Cabbage Co., so it seems to be a design principle for all of Cal's businesses :-)

Outside surfaces

The 3 exterior walls were cut from Evergreen Scale Models Clapboard siding, item #4061, which is 0.040" thick. I made a serious newbie level mistake when I cut the walls: I forgot to make sure the boards were exactly parallel to the long edges of the sheet. It turns out they were a little skewed, and I should have trimmed the sheet so I'd start off with square material. My excuse is I went directly to the sheet's flat side once I pulled it from its packaging, and then drew and cut out the walls. When I flipped the pieces over: ack! I was not in a mood to cut new pieces, so I decided to say they add character to the model and will cast aspersions on Cal :-) The other walls and floor are cut from plain 0.040" sheet styrene. The side of the wall that faces into the main building has been scored to represent horizontal boards.

Inside surfaces

I framed the edges of all the interior window and door openings with 0.020" x 0.040" styrene, which is a bit chunky, but will give some definition when peering inside. I plan to paint the interior some light colour.

I've added a long loading platform to connect the big narrow gauge car exit door opening, the smaller sliding loading door, and the office door. The platform it 8' wide, and is built up from 3 pieces of 0.060" thick sheet styrene and a piece of 0.020" thick scribed styrene for the top layer. I thought the large platform might enhance the possibilities for staging scenes on this end of the building. There likely needs to be a little more done to the platform, but I haven't settled on what just yet.

What's the next step? Maybe the back wall of the main building.

The not so Secret Origins of Cal’s Lumberyard

My 1970s build of Cal's Lumberyard

Many of E. L. Moore’s projects have some sort of origin story. Cal’s Lumberyard is one of them.

The first mention of Cal’s is in a letter E. L. Moore wrote to Russ Larsen, then associate editor of Model Railroader, on 4 May 1972 to see if there was interest in an article about Cal’s:

I have a 2500 word story covering a lumber and building supply plant - this plant covers an area of 7 x 8 inches (in HO) and can be built for less than two dollars and in about two weeks of evenings.

Materials are Northeastern’s clapboard siding and corrugated, plus some balsa.

Prototype is of about 1920, and has a car siding running into car shed . . . and in model also as N gauge track running to outlying sheds and lumber piles, using AHM lumber trucks with bolsters removed, as lumber carrying vehicles.

Three sheets of quarter inch scale drawings show three elevations of plant, accompanied by four 5/7 photos. Am enclosing four 3/5 prints for your look-see.

Let me know if you’re interested in seeing the article.

Lumber car image sourced from Walthers

My understanding is the “AHM lumber trucks with bolsters removed” were the HOn2-1/2 log cars marketed by AHM in their Minitrains line of narrow gauge trains in the late 1960s ( AHM item #3103). They likely have a long history of production as I see a very similar item - maybe the same - being marketed by Walthers, although they are listed as ‘Sold Out’. Comparing these log cars to the one shown in E. L. Moore’s article, they do appear to be the same, with the bolsters removed of course.

Russ Larsen was interested in the article and wrote back to Moore on 26 June 1972 to say so:

I would be interested in seeing an article on the lumber and building supply plant. Please send it to my attention.

Moore mailed off the article to Larsen on 30 June 1972. Here’s what he had to say in the cover letter:

Here ’tis, the LUMBER AND BUILDING SUPPLY PLANT, 2500 words, 4 photos and with 3 sheets of drawings to 1/4 inch scale.

That Milling & Feed Plant by Schneider was an interesting model in June issue . . . nice piece of work and made into an unusually fine article.

By the way, whatever became of the old Foundry — Established 1900 I sent in back in 1967? Not that it matters, I got my check for it, but I thought it was too good to get tossed out, which I presume you do whenever your files get too full. Well, no matter, just curious.

As we know, the Foundry project was never published, but a few years back MR gave permission to post it here. The letter seems to imply that Moore was particularly fond of that structure. Linn Westcott, MR’s editor at the time, must have read Moore’s letter, and I think he became concerned about Moore’s comment about tossing unused articles in the trash. In the letters I’ve seen in the E. L. Moore Archive Westcott always comes across as a high class person in the way he handled sticky situations, and his response was no different in this case. Westcott wrote the following to Moore on 12 July 1972:

That foundry story, E. L. . . . 

most certainly has not gone into any wastebasket. It is ready and waiting for a clumsy editor to schedule it. I think I made a mistake in my methods during the first ten years of being editor — it was that I did not make any attempt to publish stories in the order in which they were purchased. As a result, the magazine tended to have more shorter features — which is a good thing in itself — but some of the longer features then began to pile up in the waiting files. The result is that the authors of longer pieces may feel that they are not appreciated when actually the delay has simply been a mechanical thing.

I’m trying, now, to accept fewer long pieces so I can work off the backlog of longer features (and some short ones too) but this will take time. For about two years things have been going much better with keeping current authors in print, but it is not easy to manage from this end when balance and story size are also important.

Somehow you and I have had very little correspondence together. First Andy, with MODEL TRAINS, did most of the writing and then after we both came over to MODEL RAILROADER, it was Bill Rau who kept up the contact. But I was always looking over his shoulder, and I have appreciated always your work. Your choice of structures and your way of making a small building seem important are most appreciated.

You also mentioned, sometime back, that our rates of payment seemed low. I have no idea how they stack up with others, now, at least we have increased them considerably since you first made that remark — which is partly why I asked for a higher rate and got it.

Please accept this check, E. L., for $100.00 for the Lumber and Building Supply Plant feature on the basis of its taking about 11 columns — if it takes more we’ll send an adjustment check as usual.

And that was that. The Lumber and Building Supply Plant appeared in the April 1973 issue of MR under the title Cal’s Lumberyard.

Pluto Water reefer gets revitalized

As I thought about restoring the Pluto Water refrigerator car* I realized it wouldn't take a lot of work to bring it back to life. New trucks, couplers, and brake wheel, as well as a good dusting would revitalize it. Revitalize, not restore. For a proper restoration job I'd need to track down a lot of original parts, and since I don't even know what company manufactured this kit**, that could be tricky. Also, I thought enhancing the detail to bring it closer to modern standards wouldn't be respecting it or it's builder, my Uncle Bill.

This is how the underside looked at the start: one old cast truck and a static coupler, both held in place with tacks, along with some foot straps that had been bent out of place. Not much in the way of underside detail either. Although, I thought the construction work was clean, accurate, and square.

I had enough parts for a pair of replacement trucks in my scrapbox. The side frames are from some old '70s vintage model boxcar. The trucks' side detail was fairly close to the old truck on the model. The wheels are quite decent metal ones whose provenance is unknown to me. I drilled out the holes in the underside where the old truck tacks went and used #4 x 1/2" screws to hold the new trucks in place. One thing you can't see in the photo are two washers I cut from 0.040" styrene and inserted between the trucks and centre bolster to improve body clearance. I should also note that before installation the trucks were painted with a loose mix of flat black and my rust mix so they didn't look too shiny and new.

I didn't have enough coupler parts on hand, so I had to buy some: #143, Kadee "Standard" Head Metal Whisker Couplers. Unlike the trucks, I used Weld Bond to glue them to the body as there didn't appear to be enough room for a screw to go in without splitting the chassis or body. 

A brake wheel from an old, cheapo livestock car was stuck on the end of brake shaft.

The old foot straps were bent back into place and reglued. There are a couple that are missing, but I'll just live with that until I stumble across more.

To finish off I used an assortment of old, soft paint brushes to sweep off the caked on dust as much as possible without damaging the surfaces.

Digressions:

*Vince pointed out that I had incorrectly referred to this car as a boxcar when it is clearly a refrigerator car. Those hatches on either end of the roof are for dropping in ice blocks.

**Vince also did some research that suggests this model may have been manufactured by Red Ball. I need to do a little work on corroborating that observation.

Ok, so, enough with the digressions, as I was saying.... Stop the presses! I've just been handed this! We now know the secret ingredient at the HOJPOJ Mfg Plant:

E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumberyard: Getting Started

Sourced from the E. L. Moore Archives

In the E. L. Moore eBook I go on at length about how in August 1973 Bunn's Feed & Seed was the first Moorian project I built, and how that was followed by the construction of several new Moore projects that were published in 1974. What I didn't mention was a little literary time travelling I did in the summer of '73 back to April of that year.

Shortly after I had 'discovered' Bunn's I was off to Cedarbrae Public Library to look for other issues of Model Railroader. They had a few, and one was the April 1973 issue that contained E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumberyard. I photocopied the pages, and used them to make an attempt at building it. My build was crude, although it made up for deficiencies in craftsmanship with lots of youthful enthusiasm. I've wanted to revisit that build for a long time and give it another go. Now seems like as good a time as any given that I'm looking to get back in the model building groove and all.

But, after thinking about this project I'm not going to do a 'box stock' build (should that be 'page-by-page stock' build?). Time has gone on and I do have some other interests. I've decided on two major revisions:

1. Build it from styrene.

2. Tweak the design to enhance its 'play value'.

Yes, yes, the first is sacrilege I know, but I have a lot of styrene and styrene parts in my scrapbox I want to use up and nowhere near enough scrap balsa or scale lumber to make a dent in this project using wood castoffs. 

Sourced from E. L. Moore Archives

Ok, so onto tweaking the design.

One thing not a lot of people appreciate is that E. L. Moore had a strong interest in HO narrow gauge model railroading. I should do a post about his narrow gauge work, but for now, let's just consider Cal's Lumberyard. You can see it incorporates some N-gauge track so narrow gauge HO flat cars can haul boards out to the yard for storage. As well, there's a standard gauge siding for loading and unloading boxcars of lumber.

To make this building a little more fun for use on a micro layout that incorporates both HO scale standard and narrow gauges I thought it might be good not to dead end the tracks in the main building, but to let them extend out the front. This opens up more possibilities on how cars can come and go. It also allows for easier viewing of what's going on inside the building.

New facade for Cal's Lumberyard

After some fiddling at the drafting table, this is what I came up with. The basic sizes and shapes of the facades are the same as E. L. Moore used, but I've added a door on main building big enough to allow my Lands & Forests boxcar through, moved the smaller truck loading door to the left side, and eliminated the front wall cladding from the standard gauge boxcar unloading shed. 

In the drawing you can see I haven't precisely placed the other windows and doors. I plan to use leftover plastic castings from my scrapbox for those, and will do detailed placement when the time comes. For now, I'm just eyeballing the size and correct placement of those items to make sure there's roughly enough space for them. 

One other thing I'll note. If you extend the roof line of the main building you'll find that it intersects the outer corner of the office. Is this just a coincidence? I wonder if Moore originally had a different idea for the office's design? I only mention this as it suggests another interesting variation on this build.

Ok, so here's the main building's front wall in plastic.

A parts list:

- The facade is cut from an odd chunk of leftover Evergreen clapboard siding found in the scrapbox. I don't recall what product it is, but the sheet is 0.040" thick, and siding spacing is approximately 2.5 mm.

- All door opening trim is 0.020" x 0.040" strip.

- Each piece of vertical trim on the sides is made from 2 pieces of 0.040" square strip glued together. You could use 0.040" x 0.080", but I was using up leftovers.

- The window casting is an N-scale Tichy Train Group item I installed vertically instead of horizontally (that's why the right side of the window is thinner than the left). Again, I was using up leftovers. I'll blame the weird orientation on Cal :-)

-The foundation is a scrap piece of 0.040" sheet styrene cut to size.

I'm not sure how long this project will take. These days I'm not goal oriented, and am focusing on the experience of model making as I search for the elusive groove. I've got a few projects on the go and jump from one to another as the mood strikes. This means posts are likely to be more chaotic than usual.

The Ramsey Three

Top: RMC July '63 | Middle: RMC Dec '64 | Bottom: E. L. Moore Archives

Paper trail on the birth of E. L. Moore’s Ramsey Journal Building

Sourced from the E. L. Moore Archives

In the E. L. Moore eBook I pieced together the story of how the model and kit of F & M Schaefer Brewery came to be as it was the first of the AHM plastic kits based on Moore designs to be produced. The second kit, the Ramsey Journal Building, has no detailed paper trail in the archive documenting the development of the kit, but there are some letters that give us a look into how the model came to be.

Hal Carstens, editor of RMC at the time, was in the habit of bouncing ideas for model projects off Moore. In a 28 June 1967 letter to Moore, Carstens bounced the idea for a model of RMC’s then headquarters, the Ramsey Journal Building:

…How practical would be a model of the old brick structure that was in the RMC Dec. 1965 center fold in the Wallworth painting? And in which our office is? The front would be the roughest part. One side (left) is plain brick with no windows and butts against another building.  Railroad side has mostly simple windows not shown in the photo or painting, but for which data is available. Rear has since been added to, but what was plain brick with a coupla windows, data for which is available. Tower is gone. Be kinda big but cute…

In the margin of the letter, Moore hand wrote this note to himself as he pondered the model’s design:

Much too big as seen in painting - I would say 25x40 and 30’ high excluding tower. Would put clocks in tower - what suggestions as to lettering over lower front? Instead of Vanderbeck Drug Store (Railroad Model Craftsman maybe) or whatever? Who needs data on side windows or rear unless unique?

I guess Moore did some further thinking about the model’s design and bounced some ideas of his own off Carstens in this extract from a 3 July 1967 letter to him:

All that palaver but it’s too much trouble to research waterfronts right now and easiest things first: so, I got out that two page center spread of the Wallworth painting — no research, no nothin’ but build it. And it ain’t so big as seen in the picture which is in HO scale — say, 25’ x 40’ and 30’ high excluding tower. Would put clocks in those vacancies up there, OK? The upper front would take just a little doing. Of course there’s a difference in doing it and doing it so the average modeler can follow without rupturing his sleen (spleen). Made a little trial on it yesterday and have it just about ready to put in place when I build the rest of it. Sunbursts of chalk. Tower doesn’t present any particular difficulties. JOURNAL at top I suppose, but what of the lower lettering — RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN, maybe? Where the Vanderbeck Drug Store or whatever is. Sides no problem, just windows — rear maybe a large door and platform out to siding, and usual windows. I’ll put queries on separate card. Then lay siding and only show one main track blocking rest out with train if necessary in photograph from left.

The next relevant letter I came across is one from Carstens to Moore dated 22 July 1967. It starts off:

What freight elevator? You’ll find some more photo of the “Dater Building” in the July 1963 RMC. Not too good for the side tho. Tsk.

I don’t know exactly what prompted Carstens to mention a freight elevator. I can’t find a letter from Moore to Carstens that mentions including a freight elevator, even though the model eventually did have one. I suspect Moore did send Carstens queries on separate cards as he noted in the 3 July letter  (meaning he sent Carstens questions about the model on postcards - at times they did exchange postcards, so there is a precedent) and one was about an internal freight elevator.

At the end of the 22 July letter Carstens notes:

Ok, no Austrian on the Journal Bldg. There goes my bottle of slivovitz. Heh, if you’d drink one of his bottles of slivovitz, you’d make him a whole dang town.

Once again, I think there is some missing correspondence, but I interpret the above to mean that there had been some discussion between Carstens and Nikolas Pfusterschmid - the Austrian being referred to - about turning the Ramsey Journal Building model into an AHM kit. In the eBook chapter on the AHM plastic models I discussed the possibility of Pfusterschmid, a well known leader in model railroad plastic kit marketing and product development of the time, being the catalyst for the creation of the Original 9 E. L. Moore kits. The only other reference I’ve seen about the development of a Journal building kit was in a letter from AHM’s Peter Van Dore that it would be one of the next ones produced after the Brewery.

The next mention of the Ramsey Journal Building model is in the 25 July 1967 cover letter to Moore’s typescript for the W. E. Snatchem funeral parlour model:

Old Journal building is completed except for lettering other than JOURNAL which is in place. If with drug store below, furnishings are ready to install with colorful window display. Second floor office fully furnished, lights installed. Them four clocks up in the tower really set it off . . . I’ll run up a flag on the flag staff before I photograph it.

It appears Moore quickly went from a suggestion by Carstens to finished model in about a month. It must have been strenuous because he concluded the above letter with this:

Well pardon me while I go out and lie in my hammock a while . . . . . 

On 13 August 1967 Moore submitted the article’s typescript and included this note in the cover letter:

Well here ’tis, looking a bit like the painting, such as shows. Damned telephone poles got in my way so I slapped ‘em down. My Porter hadda do to pull the passenger train being as I don’t have much to choose from.

You can see in this post’s lead photo that the telephone poles that appeared in the painting have been eliminated.

And that’s the story - or what’s left it - of the creation of the Ramsey Journal Building.