Gear trouble resolved

I spent some time examining and fiddling with the loco's inards and I think I've got it resolved. I installed a 0.040" styrene shim underneath the back end of the motor so its worm gear would tilt down some more and engage with the drive gears.

I noticed the manufacturer was a little too generous with the gear grease as there were large lumps everywhere and very little in the gears, so I scraped the blobs off and will make a cleaner application.

Overall, from the clean state of all the components I speculate that its first owner tried it, found it didn't run, and then put it back in the box. It doesn't have the usual telltale signs of an active running life. To me the gear problem didn't look like the loco had been abused, but that its design and manufacture was the root cause.

When I bought this loco the vendor asked me if it was for a child as he'd give me some track too if it was. I'm glad a child wasn't the recipient of this thing. Imagine the disappointment of not having it run straight from the box.

Ok, well, it's on to painting.

Gear trouble

Yesterday in some comments I mentioned I had bought a loco (a Life Like # 8302 Dockside Switcher) at a swap meet awhile back, and I was assured by the seller that it was basically new-in-box and ran. Later I found it didn't run, but for $10, no loss. It can be used for photographing scenes, which is what it was meant for. I wanted to have some sort of loco that would look appropriate in an E. L. Moore type of diorama, and this will once I've repainted it.

The body's in great shape and will be straightforward to convert to an EVRR livery.

The gears on the other hand need alignment, and maybe replacement. I'll have to take it apart to know for sure.

And those side arms on the wheels don't move that freely. They'll need some sort of adjustment.

A Dilly of a diorama

I finally got the lead out and finished the first diorama. This one is an homage to the industrial strip that ran along one edge of E. L. Moore's old time shortline terminal yard, featured in his article Turn Backward, O Time that appeared in the January 1967 issue of Model Railroader. If you have access to that issue you can see these models on pages 57, 62, and 64. Here we are in January 2023, 56 years later, and I'm still impressed that these little buildings are in such great shape. They let us see that Mr. Moore was a great colourist, something that readers half-a-century ago in that long gone black-and-white world never knew. That yard of his would have been a sight to see. Well, my time machine's buried under a mountain of snow, so we'll never know :-)

Still life with static grass

Working on object placement

I've shifted from cutting and gluing foam slabs for mental diversion to creating scenery, specifically using my static grass applicator to build up the ground cover on the ELM diorama. I want to take some beauty shots of that setup, so this helps get things ready.

The very beginnings of an open field

At the same time I'm building up an open field on the LOL II with static grasses. I'm experimenting with different types of glues, and finding I'm liking the effects I can create using Mod Podge Ultra Matte spray.

Working between the two I think I'm finally getting the knack of static grass application.

And it's relaxing.

Three diorama panels

 

I've been doing some work on the E. L. Moore dioramas. Mainly getting the five blank bases painted with a white acrylic primer coat and gluing the styrene trim pieces to the backs and sides. However, I did go ahead and add the front trim piece to the backwoods shortline yard industries diorama. It's a length of 1/16" sheet balsa painted with some thinned Tamiya green that I thought was close to one of the shades of Moore Green. Speaking of green, this one is ready for some greenery and figures.

The second and third dioramas are just in the initial placement stages, although as I mentioned above, the bases are now primed and ready for scenery. I'm tempted to add a built-up AHM Ma's Place kit to this one just across the street from the original Ma's Place. 

I'm not quite sure if I've got those two large buildings on the third diorama with the correct sides facing the track. I need to check on that. 

Early arrangements of E. L. Moore dioramas

I finished building diorama bases over the last few weeks. So, I've got a total of six now: one that has been more-or-less fully detailed for the backwoods engine house buildings, and five others awaiting models and stories.

I've started to play with building arrangements. Two things are quite clear: all the models will require more than 6 bases, and getting the right story arrangements is going to take some thought. I'm not sure that I'll make more bases just to have a single display method. Some of the models seem too large for the concept, and maybe they should be displayed separately, but in a way that seems consistent with the cartoon panels. Danger, thinking ahead :-)

Base elements

That's a stack of the last three bases required for the E. L. Moore dioramas. I've made six now, enough for two 'cartoons' of three panels each.

Next I want to spend some time arranging the models on the bases to put together the stories. Also, each will feature E. L. Moore's photographer avatar, so I need to figure out how I'm going to make six of them. Looks like there's some interesting work ahead.

More (Moore?) diorama bases

I swung by the building supply and bought some more 1" pink foam board for building more E. L. Moore diorama bases. They're nothing to look at now, but I find it's important to have a few around as I like to try different arrangements. It helps me to use actual bases instead of just trying different layouts on a sheet of paper. 

Over on the left is Spratt & Kean Meat Packers. Given what it is, it'll likely have it's own base - don't want to disturb the neighbours with the smell :-) The diorama on the right has Hoople & Sons Warehouse and the Village Grist Mill. I'm thinking the rightmost diorama will have the track along the back edge as the action in E. L. Moore's model happens near the wagon loading dock, but we'll see what future iterations hold.

'Tain't broken no more, McGee

Lumber stack fixed and new leg added

While photographing the diorama base it was clear to me that I'd have to replace the missing front corner loading dock leg on McGee Lumber, and try to do something about the broken stack of lumber.

Replacing the missing leg sort of goes against my do-the-least restoration philosophy, but that long, unsupported stretch of loading dock would be front-and-centre to any viewer and look odd. I found a suitable piece of balsa strip in my scrapbox and cut it to fit. It was finished by rubbing with a 4B pencil, and then glued in place with some Weld Bond.

Lumber stack before repair

I was a little more concerned about repairing the broken lumber stack because it's even more visible than the leg, which could be obscured by some strategically placed weeds. It turns out I needn't have worried as I was able to find the broken pieces along with some others included with the collection. All I had to do was glue them back in place. Once that was done I applied a thin wash of raw sienna watercolour paint, followed by some lightly applied graphite scrapped from a pencil, to blend the repair into the lumber stack.

The only road leads to the lumber shed

I surfaced the road leading into the lumber shed with fine grained ballast from Woodland Scenics. It's hard to tell from the photo, but I did weather the surface with thin washes of browns and black to tone down its colour. I think I'll need to have another go because it doesn't look quite weathered enough.

The front edge will be panelled with a 1/32" sheet of balsa stained green. In the photo I've just tilted up a piece for testing the look. I'm going to hold off attaching it until detailing the base is done.

At this point I'm going to set this base aside now that basic scenicking is done and move onto creating the next one, as well as buying and creating the various detail items these things will need.

Ballast and test photos

 

Photos taken outside ....

I added ballast to the track and applied some weak washes of flat black and Tamiya smoke to tone down the ballast's rather bright grey. I also applied some test tuffs of grass, but the colour seems a little too spring-like, and I think I need to use some darker summer grass colours. I still haven't decided what sort of material should cover the road into the lumber shed. My thinking cap is applied. Stay tuned !

... to see how the colours looked in sunlight. I like the shadowing.

First layer of ground cover

I dug out my scenic materials and had a go at laying down the first layer of ground cover.

I reviewed E. L. Moore's Turn Backward, O Time article for some guidance regarding colour and texture, but all I saw was that the area looked like it was covered in some sort of level, light coloured dirt. 

Halfway through gluing down the sand mix

I mixed up some light coloured sand with a little darker dirt from the garden and some brown Woodland Scenics ground cover with an eye towards keeping the overall colour fairly light. The darker constituents are to add a little variety. This mix was bonded to the base with a thin coat of white glue spread over the brown painted areas. I covered the base in two sessions. 

Next up: ballasting the track and surfacing the back road to the lumber storage shed.

Track & painting

Over the last few days I've done a bit of work with my paints and brushes. And a little with track too.

Instead of using old sectional brass track I decided on pieces of Atlas nickel-silver code 100 flex. The ties look better, and the dog-leg piece looks more uniform than being built up from 4 pieces of old sectional track. However, even with the flex, all the ties and rails were painted to make them look a little more realistic. The base was painted with a random mix of acrylic earth tones. Most of that colour won't be seen once covered with scenic material, but for the odd area that does show through, I wanted the base coat to not be overly uniform. That grey streak at the top is the road that leads into the lumber shed.

Next job: applying the base scenic material and ballast.

First base

The track plan

I was going to present a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how I built the first of the E. L. Moore diorama bases, but I won't. I was so keen to make some quick progress that I rushed, lost patience, and bungled things. I recovered, but it wasn't pretty, and much cursing accompanied getting things together properly, so I'll just summarize a bit.

Back view

I made a base by gluing together 2, 1" thick pieces of pink insulating foam board cut to 9" x 24". Originally I had planned to make the bases 27" long, but since the raw material came in 24" widths, I figured smaller was better, and 24" seemed to work just fine. The sides and back edges of the base block are finished with 0.040" thick styrene sheet, which will be painted black when done. The front edge will be sheeted with a piece of 1/16" thick balsa wood painted in some shade of Moore Green. The base's top surface was painted with acrylic raw sienna in preparation for scenic work.

The flat car doesn't look out of place

The track is some ancient brass rail that won't ever get used again on an operating layout, so I figured it would come in handy for these modules. My guess is E. L. Moore hand laid the track on his module, but that's beyond me at present. I think with some appropriate paint on the rail and ties, this track won't look too bad, so the next job will be to have a go at track painting to test out this idea.

E. L. Moore's Cabinet of Curiosities: Comic Book Edition

It struck me that a few 9" x 27" displays could be stacked in a cabinet and the overall view would look a lot like a cartoon. Each 'panel', each shelf, would tell a little bit of the story, and one panel might narratively lead to the next. So, overall, the cabinet is a life-size E. L. Moore story in cartoon form.

Maybe the story would be a variation on The Adventures of E. L. Moore, Train Photographer, where each panel contains a scene where Mr. Moore's icon anchors the viewer's attention and the buildings fulfill supporting roles. Or maybe it's a remix of The Adventures of Baby Spumoni? Stories were a big part of E. L. Moore's mythos, and maybe story-centred dioramas / panels / shelves are the way to bring the models to life. And lighting. I can't forget lighting. 

Galen tells me Weston figures command high prices these days, so if I'm going to go the story route I'll need to be mindful of the costs associated with all those figures. Luckily E. L. Moore's photographer doppelgänger was a custom item he made, so that one I can probably cobble together myself.

One more time ...

I’ve had a lot of good comments both on and off the blog about the E. L. Moore display design. They got me wondering if a layout is the way to go. I tried a design with a small loop of track because I didn’t want the display to appear dead, and thought maybe an injection of motion from trains was the thing to do. But, like all layouts, it raises questions about how will it be stored and displayed in the house. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that concept and footprint wasn’t going to be practical. 

Also, I see all these excellent small layouts in the pages of Voie Libre and think that’s the direction to go. They have both life and small, manageable footprints. I’ve got traditional layout thinking so ingrained in me, it’s hard to knock it loose. Ok, so I’ve started to give my brain-box a shake. You might want to stand back a bit from the screen because whatever comes out might be a little messy :-)

We’ve got a few Ikea cabinets and bookcases around the house, so the first thing was to find a typical shelf size for one of those things as I’ll likely use something from that company for display storage. After a brief survey with tape measure in hand, it looks like 9” x 27”, which is approximately 229mm x 686mm, gives about the largest base footprint that could be set on a shelf and still have room to get my fingers around inside edges for adjustments, and close the doors without problems. A typical Ikea cabinet could possibly house a few of these sorts of displays. There’re questions about lighting, but I’ll park those for a bit.

I drew a 9” x 27” rectangle on the layout table and started fiddling. As well, I reviewed E. L. Moore’s Turn Backward, O Time article for a few pointers on how to proceed now that the loop was out. I think the linear design will better reflect the original. If you look at the article you’ll see a jog in the track down by McGee’s that services the industries, some intriguing foreground details, a switch and an interesting switch stand, as well as trackside fencing by Ma’s house to name a few things that might be included. 

I need to get some coffee and stare at this thing awhile. More later. 

Another iteration of the E. L. Moore diorama design

Whenever I'm in the basement I always take a look at the E. L. Moore diorama design and study it a bit.

This one has a Ma's Place at either end, and a road down the centre to service the various industries, which terminates at the lumber shed attached to McGee's. I'll add some large, strategically placed trees along the road to get scene separation without a divider.

It's quite hot here, and is predicted to continue to be so for the next few days, which means I'll be spending more time in the cool basement escaping the blast and tinkering with the design.

An E. L. Moore study diorama

The collection contains three of the industrial buildings that appeared on the right side of E. L. Moore's 1900 era shortline terminal yard:  Dilly Manufacturing Co., Central Warehouse, McGee Lumber Co.. Since all of them appear in a row along a siding on Mr. Moore's diorama, I started to wonder if some sort of display or diorama could be put together that replicated that part of the yard. 

One thing lead to another and I started to play with the idea of building a small layout / diorama, 2'x4' say, that contained the three buildings from the yard, along with a few others.

Right now I'm thinking of a loop with 10" radius curves and 2 sidings for industries. I'd also like to include the original Ma's Place and the AHM plastic kit of Ma's - painted to match the original - as well as my handcar shed, which was my attempt years ago to try a variety of Moorian building techniques. 

The base would be foam, power DC, and it might incorporate a scene divider down the centre to split the layout in two. Design work continues.