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.