I had some time over Easter to finish Bert's. Well, I finished the shell. There's still a lot of interior detailing that could be done. For that, I'm going to wait until it has a home on a layout or diorama. Maybe I'll need to replace the MG with a Model-T :-)
The roof seemed to need a lot of attention, and I thought I'd make it removable to make it easy to look inside.
To be removable it had to be a robust, self-supporting little structure unto itself. So, in classic E. L. Moore style, I made three triangular trusses to hold it all together. All the roof components were cut from a leftover piece of thin basswood.
The problem was the roof didn't fit too well. The building wasn't square or accurate enough, and neither was the roof. There were unsightly gaps between the roof and the walls that made the removable roof idea not so compelling. So, I carefully pried off the trusses and decided I'd glue the roof in place. But first I needed to panel it.
I made a stack of paper metal panels in the classic E. L. Moore style. I have a wood block with corrugated plastic panels glued on, which is used to emboss the corrugations into a sheet of paper with a spent ballpoint pen. After the embossed sheet is painted a flat aluminum, it's cut into 4' x 8' panels.
The panels were stuck on the roof with some white glue.
After paneling came the moment of truth: gluing the roof to the walls. As I mentioned, a lack of squareness made it a little tricky to get things aligned and tightly fit. But, I developed a little maneuver known as: The Oxford-Chicago Treatment !
Slather some white glue onto wall edges, carefully place and align roof on walls, place edges of weighty tomes strategically on walls, and presto! Er, well, not so much presto just yet. I scrambled around a bit to buttress the books to keep them from sliding off: a scanner with rubber feet and a weight came in handy. Then I let the whole thing be for a couple of hours while the glue dried, and then presto!
Once out of the press, the roof was stuck to the walls quite well and the little structure seemed to stand not too badly, although it's not perfectly square.
My version of Bert's has doors at either end and skylights. I wanted to maximize opportunities for looking inside, and I didn't think those two modifications were too way-out for this building. Doors on each end allow cars to be driven straight through, and those skylights would brighten up the interior of the real thing. Although, my skylight frames are too thick. I made them from the smallest plastic angle I had on hand as I thought I could build a pair of nice little frames that would trim off the openings and provide a suitable edge to seat the windows. In the end, those niceties didn't seem to matter. I should have just used some card for framing as it would have had a more realistic thickness. My plastic frames would cause build-ups of snow and water that would likely leak inside.
As you can see, the triangular trusses were removed, and instead I added some thin beams from wall-to-wall just to add a little interest if someone does peek inside. Once it's part of some diorama, I'll think about adding benches, tools, and what-not inside.
Bert's and his brothers aren't high fidelity, but they have a certain sweetness that I quite like. I'm thinking of placing them in a little diorama, along with the Mt. Lowe observatory, so I can practice making N-scale scenery before tackling that on the EVRR, and have a little fun with placing the buildings into a scene.
I had some quiet time and went ahead with installing windows at Bert's and gluing the walls together. Usually I use an old-school ruling pen loaded with paint to draw on the window frames, but this time I used a Sharpie white paint pen with an extra fine point. It's definitely easier, but I'm not so thrilled with the result. I can adjust the ruling pen to produce finer line work. Over on the left is Dilly's. I used a ruling pen filled with green paint to line its window frames, and it's not too bad. I might pop-off Bert's front doors and replace the windows - I need to think about it.
If I was doing a totally old-school, E. L. Moore style HO-scale build, these pens might be the way to go because of the convenience, and they come in a range of colours.
Once Bert's is done I'll have a small collection of retro N-scale builds on the shelf. They'll either show up on the EVRR build when it's restarted, or maybe on a very small diorama, just to show them off. Well, that's the far future, the near future sees more pleasant work on Bert's ahead.
Freshly painted walls temporarily tilted up for a glamour shot
I like to read the introductions in books; there's often surprising stuff there. Consider this slice from the introduction to John Ahern's Miniature Building Construction. A model railway can be almost anything from a featureless circle of track for large scale steam locos to a complete countryside with hills and rivers and farms, villages, towns and harbours. Between these extremes infinite variations are possible according to the tastes and inclinations of the builder. But from the pages of the journals devoted to modelling it does seem that increasing numbers of people are discovering an outlet for their creative powers in constructing not just a model railway, as the term was usually understood twenty years ago, but something more: something approaching a miniature make-believe world of their own. The explanation of this is to be found in the fact that, with the introduction of the 16.5 and 18 mm. gauges, the possibilities of the scenic model railway were increased enormously; for it at once became possible to accomplish so much in so little space, and one of the earliest workers to recognize and explore this field was A. Cosomati, whose "Alheeba State Railway" was described and illustrated in the December 1933 and January 1934 issues of The Model Railway News. After ten years it still remains one of the most stimulating and interesting examples of a railway with a "history" and a "territory" to serve, and I think it had more than a little to do with my Madder Valley line, which has been described and illustrated at various times in The Model Railway News, and of which further photographs appear in this volume. The clear implication being that A. Cosomati's Alheeba State Railway inspired John Ahern. I wanted to find out more about the model railway of A. Cosomati - who turns out to be the artist Aldo Cosomati - mentioned in that introduction so I went to Google to see what I could find. I found this interesting discussion at RMWeb, and found a place to order those two issues of The Model Railway News from the 1930s. And order them I did. Here's how that Dec '33 article starts. Alheeba owes its existence to a veritable lust of model making of all kinds. Modelling of houses, landscape, railway and ships were of course, the prime movers. Its geographical amenities, if they can be so called, were the outcome of an adventurous story, told amongst three friends over many years. This story was bristling with characters who all clamoured to be appropriately housed. All that seemed very E. L. Moore to me: lust for all sorts of model making, and story as a major creative source. That's a type of introduction I don't see that often - actually, I can't recall where, or if, I've seen one like it before. I love its enthusiasm. I also found out that the Alheeba State Railway was discussed in Model Trains International #82 (a copy of which I'm still looking for), and in the May/June 1984 issue of Continental Modeller (I've got a copy on order). I'm hoping to use all this to put the pieces of this story together. But while I wait to get my hands on these two magazines, and since this is the Wild West called the Internet, here's some wild speculation. You can call me Al I'm wondering if the Alheeba in Alheeba State Railway is constructed from the names of those three friends who cooked up the stories that eventually became the model railway: Al-hee-ba. Is the first syllable, Al, for Aldo? Who are Hee and Ba? Hee-nry and Basil maybe :-) Your guess is as good as mine. To Hav and Hav Not The Alheeba peninsula shown on the map reminded me of the geography of Jan Morris' fictional peninsula of Hav discussed in her 1985 novel Last Letters from Hav and 2006's Hav of the Myrmidons.
On the left is a map of the territory covered by the Alheeba State Railway from the December 1933 issue of The Model Railway News. On the right - deliberately flipped upside-down so it roughly presents the same orientation as the map on the left - is a map of Hav's territory presented in Jan Morris' 2006 book Hav, which contains both the novels Last Letters from Hav and Hav of the Myrmidons. Both maps present a railway that starts in some high country bordering the mainland, then cuts through the centre of a peninsula, and terminates at a sea port. This is all just coincidence, but maybe Jan Morris was a secret model railroader, well versed in the ancient texts of model railroading :-) Read in a certain way, the Hav stories could form the basis of a spectacular model railway as did the ones of Aldo and friends.
Ahern Green The other thing that made me think of E. L. Moore when I saw Bert's Garage was that it's painted green. A wooden structure painted green is almost an E. L. Moore signature. I know there isn't a real connection between Ahern and Moore even though there is one in my mind.Maybe it's just the colour green that pings a circuit in my brain. Anyway, I looked around for some green paint on my workbench and found some bottles. They didn't quite match Mr. Ahern's Bert's, but they were ok, and I didn't want to buy anything.
I brushed on some Tamiya green acrylic paint to the wall's outside surfaces. I tried to be a bit loose with the colour so some of the raw cardboard would show through.
The inside surfaces were painted with loose washes of thinned green, white and grey. The next step will be to letter the end walls with the business name, and then add trim and windows before gluing the walls together.
I can’t say with any certainty what the attraction was that got me into making miniature buildings. I can only note that there were two small events that happened one summer that in retrospect may have marked the beginning of this lifelong interest.
My friend Rob and I were fanatically interested in slot cars. I think we were around twelve years old and he had a much older brother who worked at Eldon’s toy factory. They made 1/32 scale slot cars, and contrary to company policy his brother sneaked home slot cars that were rejected from the assembly line instead of tossing them in the trash. They came to Rob and we spent many happy hours restoring them to racing condition. Somehow Rob had also acquired a vast collection of Scalextric track, and one summer we decided to use it all and build the biggest layout we could. His house had a free-standing, wood frame three-car garage out back that was a relic from the time his parents used it to store the trucks used by their dry-cleaning business. The premature death of this father resulted in the business shutting down, and that left an old, empty wooden garage behind his house. Its floor was just the thing for hosting what we thought would be the world’s largest slot car race course. Naturally, it needed pit stops, garages, grandstands, timing towers and all the other buildings associated with the ‘60s and ‘70s racing scene. I jumped in with construction paper, glue, scissors and more ambition than talent and built everything I thought a race track needed. All of it crap, but great fun to build.
Sometime during that summer, when the race track was under construction, I stumbled across a copy of Model Railroader magazine while searching for the latest Detective comics at my favourite smoke shop. What grabbed my attention was Ben King's cover photo, but the article I found deep inside by some guy named E. L. Moore on how to build an HO scale model called Bunn's Feed and Seed was what set me up for a lifetime of building. I built a version of it in 1/32 scale, and even though it was cannibalized for parts before the fall was out, I eagerly awaited other issues and other model railroad magazines for more construction projects. I was hooked - hooked for life as it turned out.
But life being what it is, I more-or-less dropped out of making HO scale buildings once I started university and didn’t return until this century. If you're a regular reader you know I've written a lot about E. L. Moore, and to some extent about a few other model railroaders from his era whose speciality was building small buildings. I have to tell you that along the way I've developed a curiosity about the whole 20th century history of building little buildings. It looks like all the story's pieces are out there in plain sight, they just need to be stitched together, and once that's done, I'll bet the complete tale makes for some interesting reading.
I'm not exactly sure where that tale should begin, or end for that matter, but it seems like John Ahern is the guy to start with. Unlike E. L. Moore, Mr. Ahern's story and legacy are well known. His Madder Valley Railway from the 1940s and 1950s, now housed at the Pendon Museum in England, is legendary, and his life's work with scenic model railways is well documented throughout extensive publications in the model railway press of the time. The Madder Valley showed what a scenic model railway was and what it could strive to become. Was his truly the first scenic model railway? I'm not completely sure. But, even if it wasn't, its impact was certainly significant. While reading my way through E. L. Moore's archives I had hoped to find some reference to John Ahern, or maybe some correspondence with him. I didn't, but it wasn't inconceivable, especially since E. L. Moore had a large personal library in the 1950s and appeared to be a voracious reader. The work of those two men seemed simpatico even though one lived and worked in the southern U.S.A and the other in England. Consider this: both loved building little buildings, both built model railroads that leaned to the scenic, both built plausible locomotives and rolling stock to meet their needs, and both had a similar humanistic approach to modelling. Well, I'll likely never know if there was a connection. The mystery is part of the fun.
Mr. Ahern's Bert's Garage seems like something E. L. Moore could have built had E. L. Moore been interested in automobiles - although, there are one or two Ford Model-Ts on his Elizabeth Valley RR, which seem out-of-place in its early 1900s setting. I thought I'd try and build Bert's in N-scale, using old-school methods, for possible inclusion on the EVRR tribute layout. And this being the 21st century, I thought I'd try some video along with the usual pictures and text. So, apologizes for the production values, but if it seems like a good thing, I'll keep going with it and try for improvements. That being said, get some popcorn, turn down the lights, and let's watch.
Here is a snippet of the elevations Mr. Ahern provides for Bert's Garage in his book, Miniature Building Construction, along with his brief explanation about constructing the main building.
Bert's celebrated establishment at Much Madder is shown in Fig. 72. This is a timber erection with corrugated-iron roof. The walls are painted green; the lettering, barge-boards, and window frames are white. The doors are made to slide, the runners at the top being boxed over. When the doors are fully open, the windows in them come directly in front of those in the wall sections so that the light is not impeded. Diagram D shows how the front corner-posts project forward of the walls, so as to be flush with the doors. The lean-to at the side contains a tiny office, with stove-pipe, an even smaller store, and a lavatory. The lamp over the entrance is made of a glass bead and a pressed metal shirt-stud, the wires being secured in a block of wood glued inside the gable. The reader can let himself go to his heart's content in the matter of petrol and tyre advertisements.
The implication in not showing the back wall is that there're no doors or windows or any special whatnot on it. I decided to make the back wall the same as the front, with large doors for driving in cars. This allows for cars to enter one end and leave through the other. It'll add a little more work to the project, but I think it'll also add interest as it allows for scenes at either end. I'm also planning on having a removable roof a la E. L. Moore, along with an inside light and maybe a skylight, to show off the insides when the roof is on. Not too sure what'll do about gas pumps; maybe there won't be any. You know, maybe it would lend itself to 21st century updating: switch the name from Bert's to Elon's, slap some solar panels on the roof, install some charging stations out front, and you're ready for the electric car business :-)
Ok, enough with the jokes, let's get going. I drew all four walls in a continuous strip on a piece of the kleenex box card. The front and back walls are 22' wide, 10' at the eves, and 19' tall at the peak. The side walls are 25' long.
Then the window and door openings were cut out using a sharp blade and a steel edge.
Vertical boards were scribed on. I used a scribing tool that I forgot to show in the video :-( but one could use the back edge of the x-acto knife instead - I've done that many times. Board spacing isn't precise and I did whatever looked about right.
Next thing is to cut the wall strip free.
I then chose to slice the strip into individual walls. On Dilly's I simply folded the walls into a box and continued on from there. On this project I'm going to detail the interior a little, and individual walls allow me to do that easier than if they were folded into a box. An alternative is to keep the strip and detail the walls before folding which is what I did on Cal's Cabbage, but that was in HO scale. There's no right or wrong way.
Here's what the inside surfaces look like. No worries, they'll be painted white once some framing detail's been added.
At this stage I sliced some thin strips from the sheet wood you saw in the video and used it, along with some larger stripwood, to build up some faux framing on the inside wall surfaces. Nothing is to scale or rigorously prototypical - the idea is to simply suggest framing so things seem to make sense if you were to glance inside when the lights are on.
While taking a break from framing, I cut the walls for the small office that's built onto one of the side walls. Those end pieces are just 4' wide, and the long wall measures 14.5'. I think there's supposed to be a toilet in there, so I'll have to figure out what to do detail-wise - if this were an E. L. Moore build, he'd have an outhouse strategically positioned nearby instead :-)
There it is, more-or-less all framed. The office is going to have a wood floor so there's a bit of space in its framing at floor-level to accommodate that. The ends on the main building need a little more truss work, but I'll tackle that when I work on the roof.
The walls were temporarily tilted up to see how things were looking. They'll need to painted, have window frames added, windows glazed and lettering applied before gluing them together.
I'm not sure when I'll continue this project once Christmas vacation is over. With this model I was interested in giving video a go, writing my 'secret origins' story on how I got into making model buildings, and trying a little something by Mr. Ahern. If I can find the time, I'll continue and post another instalment. As Mister X would say, so little time, so much to do :-)
