Kelley's Folly and E. L. Moore in 1977

Left: Karl Osolinski's interpretation of Kelley's Folly | Right: E. L. Moore's original model

Back in July Paul sent me some photographs of a masterful interpretation of E. L. Moore's Kelley's Folly project by Karl Osolinski. Karl granted permission for me post his pictures here. 

Well, longtime readers will know I was on an extended hiatus in the summer, and when I returned to the saddle in September I had forgotten about Kelley's Folly. A few days ago Paul reminded me, and I started to feel bad that I had ignored this stunning model.

But, you know, I'm thinking it might have been good that I put off this story until now, even if it was caused by forgetfulness, because Kelley's Folly is a 1977 story. And a major one at that. Here's the headline:

Kelley's Folly was the last story E. L. Moore ever submitted to RMC

1977 was at the end of Mr. Moore's publishing career. He only submitted 3 articles to MR and 2 to RMC that year. The first one to RMC was The Firecracker Foundry, which became his very last published article appearing in the July 1980 issue, and the second, his last submission, was Kelley's Folly, which was published in the January 1979 issue. 1978 only saw one submission, and that was the North Conway Depot article to MR. E. L. Moore died in August 1979.

Hey, since we've come this far, let's take a trip back to 1977 to get a sense of how Kelley's Folly came to pass.

As I mentioned, Mr. Moore submitted the manuscript for the Firecracker Foundry to Railroad Model Craftsman sometime in 1977. There isn't a cover letter for this project in the archive even though the original typescript still exists. However, it looks like it was submitted in the spring of 1977. Later, on 26 May 1977, he sent a letter and photos off to Tony Koester at RMC to see if there might be any interest in the Kelley's Folly project: 

May 26, 1977

Tony Koester, Editor,

Railroad Model Craftsman,

P. O. Box Drawer 700,

Newton, N. J.

Hi Tony . . . . . . . .

Well, looks as though my "swan song" got side-track somewhere along the way. Anyway I'm sending you in somewhat abbreviated form, a resume of the beginning of KELLEY'S FOLLY, 2200 words, three photographs and four sheets of drawings, to see what you think of it.

My goddamed legs are going to remain numb but I can get around pretty well . . . worse is my numb finger tips . . . I gotta watch the keys pretty closely and still make mistakes . . . but I manage.

Why the hell do I have to spend all the time I do on those cussed drawings (except in the interests of accuracy) when you have them done over anyway. Still it ain't really work, just tedious, since I can sit in my easy chair and do them. But dammif I gotta move around a lot to photograph the stuff and printing the pictures is a helluva strain on the gut. I type a couple of pages then go lie down a while, then type a couple more but they eventually all get typed. It's much more fun writing longhand in bed. But hell, I got no complaints, much, I eat well, got plenty of leisure, lots of books and don't get up until I get damned good and ready . . . except to feed my cats. When they get hungry they won't let me sleep.

E. L. Moore.

525 Oakland Ave., Apt 3

Charlotte, N. C. 28204

Enc. 3 photos, resume on backs.

I believe the 'swan song' to be the typescript for the Firecracker Foundry. Mr. Moore was 79 when he wrote the letter.

On 10 June 1977 Tony Koester replied with a postcard filling in E. L. Moore about what happened to the Firecracker Foundry and expressing an interest in Kelley's Folly.

June 10, 1977

Dear E. L.:

We are indeed interested in the Kelly's (you said Kelley's?) Folly material. Frankly, after the MR piece on the fire, the other recently received material from you is too close at first-glance to publish right now. I will thus be happy to have something which is entirely different. The signs of weathering and age are also of interest.

The accuracy of your drawings is appreciate [sic], in that we can usually trace them directly. You could do them only in pencil, however, and save the inking time.

Thanks for keeping us in mind, E.L.

Tony.

The 'MR piece on the fire' is the infamous Cannonball and Safety Powder Works that appeared in the April 1977 issue of Model Railroader - yes, 1977 was a curious year for E. L. Moore.

Once Mr. Moore heard of RMC's interest in Kelley's Folly he sent off the complete article:

June 16, 1977

Tony Koester, Editor,

Railroad Model Craftsman,

P. O. Drawer 700

Newton, N. J.

Hell, it's not my fault M R chose to publish that thing in their May issue . . . they've had it in their files two, three years awready [sic] yet.

Anyway here's KELLEY'S FOLLY, 2200 words, three photographs, four sheets drawings . . . they ain't got nothing similar to this, although they've got stuff dates back six, seven years . . . . 

Hell man I couldn't send in a drawing just done in pencil . . . take these for instance . . . they wouldn't look right except in good black and white . . . so I guess I'll stick to pen and inking 'em.

You're steadily making improvements in the old magazine . . . it's come a long way in the past few years . . . more power to yez!

E. L. Moore

525 Oakland Ave., Apt 3

Charlotte, N. C. 28204

That stuff that dates back six, seven years I believe he is referring to are what we now know as his lost articles. 

E. L. Moore signed his Kelley's Folly model on the bottom

It's great to see what Karl Osolinski has done with this classic E. L. Moore project from '77.

As I keep saying, 1977 is the year that keeps on giving.

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.

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.

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. 

A micro-layout based on E. L. Moore's Bott's Cotton Gin

David Fugere's rendition of Bott's Cotton Gin (Photos courtesy David Fugere)

Paul alerted me to this excellent model of E. L. Moore's Bott's Cotton Gin, a project that appeared in the Sept '78 issue of Model Railroader, by David Fugere. It's nice how he has incorporated it in a micro-layout - looks like it's HO-9.

Photo courtesy David Fugere

Bott's was one of E. L. Moore's last published projects, and was his second last to appear in MR. 

In the late fall of 1975 ELM had to get cataract surgery, and in his usual colourful style mentioned to Russ Larsen in a letter dated 19 Oct '75 that it was coming up:

Was gonna have the other eye castrated, but now I find they gotta search around among my entrails to find a missing bolt or link or something. This has been the year of one damned thing or another but hell, 1976 is just around the corner. 

In Jan '76 ELM let Larsen know his eye surgery went fine and he was getting together some prototype photographs on which Bott's would be based. ELM submitted the Bott's article to MR in July '76 with this accompanying letter:

July 22, 1976

Russ Larsen, Editor

Model Railroader,

1027 N. 7th St.,

Milwaukee, Wisc.

Yup, like usual your letter got here the day I mailed mine . . . .

Well, here it is, Bott’s Cotton Gin, 2800 words, two sheets of drawings and three photographs.

Friday is my grocery shopping day, a cab to the grocery and then a fella who runs an off side taxi service brings me home and carries up my groceries . . . and also runs me by the post office branch. Everything works out just fine. Walk about four blocks in the morning using a plain old stick cane and later go out in the back yard to sit to keep my cats company . . . beats cleaning out the bathtub, if you get the connection. My two cats are so lazy they don’t want to go out unless I go out with them.

Keep up the good work . . . 

E. L. Moore

In 1976 ELM was 78 years old. It's good to hear that he was still building models after cataract surgery, getting around his neighbourhood, and apparently using the Uber of his day :-)

---

P.S.: David, you should consider submitting a story to The Micro Model Railway Dispatch about your layout. And thanks for allowing me to post your photos!

E. L. Moore's little layout stand

1" = 1' model of the stand for E. L. Moore's EHRR

Paul pointed out the layout stand bares a resemblance to the stand E. L. Moore built for his Enskale Hoentee RR. I had forgotten about the EHRR stand, but I did have a couple of photos of the model Mr. Moore made of it. They can be found in this post, and over on the left for convenience. These days I think the stand would be a nice piece of conversational furniture in the same vein as Bill Baron's mid-century coffee table layout. These sorts of tables could possibly make model railroading a little more convivial. Hmmm, but first it needs some wheels :-)

Restoring E. L. Moore's Norfolk & Southern yard office

After some restoration work

Until recently I looked down on E. L. Moore’s Norfolk & Southern yard office that was published in the Feb ’66 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. It seemed a simple, two-page space filler project. I shouldn’t have been so snobby. As Mr. Moore points out in the article, it’s a model of an actual Norfolk & Southern building, but what he only mentions in a letter to Hal Carstens, dated May 16, 1965, is that the prototype, along with the blacksmith shop, was one he himself discovered in Charlotte. Much like the HOJ POJ MFG CO. and the 1900’s Foundry, those two little buildings were Charlotte structures he saw, measured, and modelled. So, there’s a little thread of Charlotte history running through a subset of his models that should be given some consideration on my part.

Before restoration

The model as received wasn’t in too bad shape. The end walls have warped a bit. Some parts had broken off, but were included along with the fence section that stands in the landscape outside the front door, so it was complete. 

The more concerning problem were the discoloured edges to the end walls and the slopes on their upper brick work. At first I thought they were exposed raw wood from where the Northeastern brick sheet was cut, but looking closer with a magnifying glass showed faint brick work. It turns out Mr. Moore painted bricks on those edges to finish them, and he outlines the procedure in the article:

Now you will need a paint mixture to cover the raw surfaces to match the brick. Take a few brushfuls of red, a couple of yellow, then a touch of green - and maybe a bit of white if it needs lightening. When you’ve got a close match cover the surfaces and stripe, using a fine pointed brush, and an off white paint to simulate mortar joints.

He doesn’t say what kind of paint was used, but after 56 years it appears to have almost faded away. However, from the article’s photos, it looks like he did a good job of matching the Northeastern brick pattern. I decided not to overpaint these edges, but just leave them as is. I think I’d do more harm than good if I tried to match the brick.

I did do a little touchup painting on those two sets of concrete steps. It looks like their lower edges collected a little plaster from sitting on somebody’s layout, so I overpainted those areas with some thin flat black to blend them into the black washes Mr. Moore had already applied to the stairs. You can also see a little plaster on the lower edge of the front wall. I’ll leave it for now as I’m not sure how to remove it without damaging the brick surface.

So, not much to see here. Glued a few pieces back on and touched up some stairs. 

But, there’s one last thing. Take a look at this cover letter E. L. Moore sent to Hal Carstens with the yard office manuscript:

August 25, 1965

Major H. Hoople Carsten,

Ye Editor,

Railroad Model Craftsman

Ramsey, N. J.

Dear Major . . .

By golly, I didn’t think you’d do it — really dunno as it was worth the extra wordage but I wuz not in the mood to be factual . . . but I can understand now why Mr. Zip (JDL: aka Linn Westcott, editor of Model Railroader magazine), if, as according to one of his readers, he writes three quarters of what goes into his mag, has little time or desire for humor.

But here is one in the approved style, short and terse, to make up for Major Hoople’s excesses (JDL: The ‘excess’ was a long, tall tale in the Hoople Warehouse article; no tall tale in the yard office article). And it’s from the same yard in which I discovered the blacksmith shop.

Y’know why I kinda like RMC best? Not because of your shiny coated paper or your plastic bags — but because it ain’t so damned technical that it gives one an inferiority complex — so keep it kinda that way for us more simple minded folks. But this ain’t no testimonial because now and then I gotta pat my friend, Bill Rau (JDL: Bill Rau was an associate editor at MR at that time), on the back too.

Mud in your eye . . . 

{signed E. L. Moore}

(Had this article ready but held it about a month so as not to push too much into the old boy’s craw at a time)

Yes, that last bit in red was actually typed in red at the bottom of the copy of the letter. He’s done that on a few letters, and I’ve wondered for what reason? A note to himself? A note to a relative? A note to me? I can’t say I know anything about the complexities of the space-time continuum, but one wonders :-)