Delving into the Mysteries of Model Railway Illumination

It weighs in at a slim 59 pages

Back in January I was rooting around Abe randomly looking for unusual model railway books. I'm always curious to see what might turn up. I was not disappointed on this expedition. 

As soon as I saw the title of this book I knew I had to have it. It's not a subject you typically see an entire book devoted to. Especially when you consider its year of publication, 1955. It's written by E. F. Carter and published by Percival Marshall of London. An inside page tells me Carter wrote 15 other model railway books for this publisher.

Of the 15, Carter hints at this book being a little unusual in his preface:

"It may be said by some that Model Railways already give sufficient satisfaction in operation without any additions or complications, and, in one sense this may be in part true. Yet there must be an intense and added interest from watching railway operations in full scale being carried out after dark. There is a subtle fascination due to not being able to see all that is going on. An engine is then only recognisable by its running lights and the indication of a semaphore only by its lamps. There is an air of mystery over the whole railway scene.

"The running of a railway - real or model - during the hours of daylight is only half the story, and if it was only fully realised that as much, if not more, activity takes place on our railways during the hours of darkness, there would undoubtedly be a whole-hearted attack on the "night running" problems of our model lines.

"It is this end that the present book has been penned, and it is the writer's sincere hope that the reader will through its medium be tempted to explore a most fascinating field. The work involved is simple and not in any sense meticulous; moreover, the basic cost of materials is low, and the writer has - as usual - endeavoured to show how the greater bulk of the auxiliary apparatus can be made from "bits and pieces" usually to be found in the junk box or around the house"

An example of 'piping' light into a building via a tube or glass rod

So, in the junk box or around the house in 1955 - well, let's call it the early 1950s - there were no LEDS or fibre optic cables. And, they weren't for sale or in use on model railways. The internet tells me the first practical LED wasn't produced until 1962, and the first fibre optic cable was invented 10 years earlier in 1952. Without those mainstays of today's lighting systems, we're looking at lighting with small incandescent lamps enhanced with some interesting tricks, some of which Carter presents in this book.

I was particularly interested in the tricks discussed in chapter 2, On Lighting Station Buildings. Carter outlines three. The first is what he refers to as 'piped lighting', which one might think of as a rather rudimentary way to channel light in the pre-fibre optics era. Basically, a metal tube or glass rod is placed in front of a light bulb and pointed to where you want to the light to go, usually towards something that will disperse the beam, like the suspended clear glass jewel shown in figure 12. This allows light to be piped into relatively confined spaces with the bulk - and heat - of an incandescent bulb remaining outside the structure. Carter also notes the building's interior should be painted matte white to aid light dispersion, and the pipe, whatever its material, should be at least 1/4" in diameter. I suspect light losses, either in a tube or glass, would be considerable. 

Other examples of using light piping for various sorts of lighting fixtures

Carter also mentions that mirrors can be used to light a building's interior by mounting a mirror "at an angle of 45° to the underside of the baseboard, reflecting the light in "bulk" upwards through a hole immediately under the building to be illuminated, on to the surface of a faceted bead or beads hung by a wire from the roof, as well as to the white-painted ceiling of the structure."

Carter ends the chapter with a third lighting method, and one I certainly wouldn't recommend experimenting with: luminous paints that make use of strontium compounds and uranium nitrate. He gives recipes so you can mix your own! If I'm reading the text correctly these were available at the local chemist's [aka pharmacy for us here in Canada] at the time, although he mentions some might need to be special ordered :-) Different times indeed.

Overall it's a fascinating look at lighting methods in the immediate post war era prior to LEDS and fibre optics. 

The back cover and spine are blank! Cost saving I assume?

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The videos illustrating this post were sourced from the following three YouTube channels:

Havelock Yard

Eric Gagnon

Steve Boyko

All are excellent and highly recommended.

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:

Pluto Water

I looked around for the Wayside Warehouse model, but couldn't find it. I suspect it has been lost to time. However, I did find these two old HO scale boxcars. I think they might have belonged to my Uncle Bill. I'm not certain as I don't recall anything related to when and how I acquired them. I believe they're wood and paper kits from the 1940s. They don't have any trademarks on them, so their manufacturers are unknown. I'd like to try my hand at restoring the Pluto Water boxcar as it would make an interesting addition to any future E. L. Moore dioramas.

HeliPad 76

No, that's not an LP, it's a helipad

I was rooting around old family photos and found that one of the helipad on my layout from the ‘70s. Surprisingly, unlike most of my old photos, this one has a date stamped on the back: May 1976. These days I’m thinking about things to include either on the current layout’s ocean park module or on a new layout. I’ve been playing with the helipad idea.

Or maybe it should be an airship aerodrome. Or maybe it’s just May weather that gets me thinking about flying machines. Back in May 2019 in one of the From the Time Machine’s Glovebox posts I pulled out the E. L. Moore-esque setup story from a fictional project called Al’s Airship Aerodrome. If you don’t like clicking links, here’s the setup:

I was renewing my liability insurance this afternoon and started to wonder if I had ever told you about the time I built the airship hanger.

Well, one day a couple of years back this Brazilian gentleman called me up from Paris – Paris, France that is – and asked if I could build him a hanger down in the County for an airship. I was glad to hear that my reputation for frugality was known in some quarters of the City of Light. This fellow – I never could pronounce his name properly, so we agreed I’d just call him Al, which it turns out he rather liked, and he’d call me Monsieur M, which Cousin Cal thought was hilarious, but I was partial to the sound of it, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Al was a ‘Personal Blimp’ builder. I hadn’t heard of such an occupation, but I figured there are personal computers, personal trainers, even personal pan pizzas, so why not personal blimps. 

Anyway, he was coming over to the County for a few months to get this financier-turned-gentleman-farmer fitted out with a personal blimp, and all the things needed to own and operate one. That included a hanger to park it in. That’s where I came in. You might ask, why was a railroad man like myself called up for this project? Like I said, there’s frugality, but it did involve a considerable amount of railroad gear.

For one thing, there’s the doors. A blimp, even a personal-sized one, is mighty big. The doors on the garage needed to park this beast are 50 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Now, Al is one smart cookie and on the hanger his guys built in Monaco, he figured out how to make the doors ride on rails so that even a 10-year-old kid could push them open. Given that Cousin Cal is the spittin’ image of the ‘before’ guy in those Charles Atlas ads, this was just his speed. 

But, as things turned out, it wasn’t Cousin Cal’s lack of muscle power that tripped up this project, it was his lack of brain power. A blimp garage is more-or-less one gigantic loco shed, so the other railroad thing you need, is some track for hauling in blimp parts, and for bringin’ in helium tanks if hydrogen just won’t do. Al’s one of those renegades who swears by hydrogen for these things – none of that expensive helium for him. No sir. He makes it – hydrogen that is – himself right there in the shed. According to Al, hydrogen is like a woman – if they are treated with care and respect, then all will be well. Unfortunately for him he never met Cousin Cal and his ancient loco. Track, an old sparking loco, lots of hydrogen nearby: you can see where this is going. Well, more on this later. Here’s what you’ll need to build a blimp aerodrome to service the more responsible personal airship aficionados on your pike...

Luckily there’s a balsa shortage or I might give this a try :-)

Back when I built Mr. Scott’s Dilithium Crystal Factory I included a shuttle craft landing pad on the roof, but I don’t think roof-top landing is what I have in mind these days. It’s got to be at ground level.

Hmm. Blimp handling likely requires too much real estate. A heliport can likely be made more compact than my youthful attempt in the ‘70s. I need to look around for HO scale helicopters. 

Railroad Modeler’s Penny Model Projects & The Progression Method

My grain elevator Penny Model built in '74

I’ve always been fascinated by Challenge Publications’ Railroad Modeller magazine that was published in the ‘70s. Back then the first issue I saw was Jan ’74, and the last was May ’74. I never saw any again throughout the ‘70s. A few years ago I acquired what I think is a complete set of Railroad Modeler’s entire run, and it’s been great to be able to read them ‘on demand’. Recently I decided to go through the entire collection again. This time around their Penny Model Project series caught my interest.

Back in the day I built the series’ grain elevator model that appeared in the Feb ’74 issue. It turns out E. L. Moore’s Clarabel Hotel was also in that issue, so that was an exciting month for me :-) What I didn’t realize then was that the grain elevator was the first of the magazine’s Penny Model Projects, where according to the editor, each model is designed to be built for under one dollar total cost and still achieve the look and scale of a custom built structure. It turns out that $1 in 1974 is about equal to $5.25 today. 

From my reading it looks like there were 10 articles in the series, where most were written by Ron Tarjany. Here’s the list of articles I’ve found, and, as always, if you know of any I’ve forgotten, please let me know:

Build a Paper Grain Elevator; Rudy Ruckert; Feb ’74

Constitution Savings & Loan; Ron Tarjany; Sept ’74

Railroad Storage Sheds; Ron Tarjany; Dec ’74

New England Vintage Storeroom; Bill James Jr.; Jan ’75

A Different Water Tower; Ron Tarjany; Mar ’75

1930’s Gas Station; Ron Tarjany; July ’75

Industrial Warehouse; Ron Tarjany; Feb ’76

Gold Mine; Ron Tarjany; Nov ’76

Handcar House; Ron Tarjany; Apr ’77

Box Car Freight House; Ron Tarjany; Sept ’77

There’re a variety of structure types and materials involved in these projects, but one aspect that is constant throughout is the structure walls are drawn as one continuous strip on a length of moderately heavy cardboard, with the wall corners scored for folding. In some cases other materials were glued over the cardboard superstructure to provide a finished surface, and in others the cardboard was left as is and just painted. The grain elevator was one project in the ‘just painted’ group.

The folded cardboard wall strip method wasn’t new to the Penny Model Project, and has been used by many other model builders. John Allen used it in his engine house project that appeared in the October, November, and December 1948 issues of The Model Craftsman, and I have no doubt it predated that famous series.

There were also other Railroad Modeler projects that made use of the cardboard wall strip method that didn’t appear as Penny Model Projects. Two of the more interesting ones were Mark Henley’s Big Tujunga’s Tiny Depot and Depot at the Crossing that appeared in the Jan ’78 and Feb ’78 issues respectively. The cardboard wall strip method of structure construction seemed to be something of a minor house style at Railroad Modeler. 

One of my favourite model railroads, John Olson’s Cielo Logging Co., appears in the Jan ’74 issue. In the article Mr. Olson mentions how he built the layout’s structures: Most are made from artist’s illustration board about 1/16” thick. I use standard techniques, most from early articles and early progression model building before the plastics and other media were available I use those because the go together fast. I do them on a drafting table with a sliding parallel and you can build a structure in four to five hours, whereas it takes that long now to put together a plastic kit by the time you’re done painting it and adding a few details…All the buildings are good “foundation” buildings to which details and finishing aspects can be added later. 

I’ve wondered what his use of the phrase early progression model building meant. Looking around, I think he was referring to applying something like the cardboard strip method where the structure is built up in a progression of steps and layers on the strip and then folded - or maybe cut out, reinforced, and then assembled - into the building prior to final finishing. I suspect walls of 1/16” artist illustration board couldn’t be folded into a structure, but would need to be cut out, possibly reinforced, and then assembled. One common feature of these models appears to be that interior detailing wasn’t a priority, and most seem to be closed boxes. Although, the models do look good.

Compare this to the more-or-less standard E. L. Moore method where each wall is cut from balsa - possibly two pieces for each wall with their grains at 90 degrees - and built up until a ‘kit’ is obtained where the individual components are glued together to make the building - his articles often featured a ‘kit’ photo of the walls prior to being glued together. A typical E. L. Moore project claimed to take 2 weeks of spare time, but an Olson project was claimed at 4 or 5 hours. However, a Moore project was likely a more complete model, often with an interior.

Another apparent variation on the progression / cardboard wall strip method are Doug Leffler’s classic wooden buildings and rolling stock built up from various thicknesses of Strathmore Bristol board. He explains his method in Modeling with Strathmore in the July ’73 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, and you can find a number of excellent projects in these RMC articles of his,

CNR Wood Caboose, Feb ’72

Branchline Station; Aug ’72

Multi-purpose MofW Car; Jan ’73

Building a Tool and Section Car House; Feb ’74.

In those projects the superstructures are made from 4-ply Strathmore Bristol, and after a certain amount of layout and finishing on the drawing board, the walls are cut out and reinforced prior to assembly.

Overall, it looks like the Penny Projects were based on creative simplifications of an older, but quite effective technique for making model buildings. Good for a young beginner like me at the time to get a start. Even if his efforts weren’t that good, at least a complete model resulted in short order :-) 

Matchbox Jaguar Mk 10

This Jag is in pretty bad shape. No interior. No glass. No hood. And for some reason I applied the let's-put-this-thing-in-a-vise customization technique - the results speak for themselves. At one time I used this thing to make tire tracks in wet plaster as a road building technique on a model railroad. That's why the tires have white on them. But, I'm glad it's a survivor.

Bunn's, Jones, & Cal's: Three sentimental favourites

[E. L. Moore's Bunn's Feed and Seed plant published in the August 1973 issue of Model Railroader. You can see Cal's Lumberyard in the background.]

I was quite pleased to find these three snapshot sized photos in E. L. Moore's collection. These are the projects that got me hooked on model railroading. Bunn's was the first, and I've written about it at length. I built it back in 2009. Styrene was used extensively on that project, so it wasn't a pure Moorian build. 

[E. L. Moore's Jones Chemical Co. published in the March 1974 issue of Model Railroader]

Next was Jones Chemical Co. I recall I was so excited to see a new E. L. Moore project I started building it almost as soon as I got home with the magazine. 

[On the left is what remains of Jones Chemical Co. that I built way back in '74, and on the right is the version I built in 2009. Back in '74 I had a fixation on a technique I read about in the Nov. '73 issue of Model Railway Constructor about how to model brick and stone walls with scribing and crayons. I figured Jones was as good a place as any to to use it on.]

The results of that '74 build attempt were mixed, but I tackled it again here in the 21st century.

[E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumberyard published in the April 1973 issue of Model Railroader]

When I had finished the Jones build back in '74 I was keen to immediately do another E. L. Moore project, so I went to the public library near our house to see what I could find. I stumbled across Cal's Lumberyard in the April '73 issue of Model Railroader. Magazines weren't lent out, so I photocopied the plans, noted a few things from the article on the copies, and went home to build it. I did a better job than my previous projects, but nothing great. I haven't yet tackled this one in the 21st century, but the century is still young.

[The remains of my 1974 build of Cal's Lumberyard.]

I don't have a surviving youthful attempt at Bunn's because my initial build was in 1/32 scale and made from some very flimsy materials. In the summer of '73 I was building a large, temporary 1/32 scale slot car setup with a friend in his mother's garage. He had what seemed like a vast collection of Scalextric track which allowed him to build layouts that took up his entire basement rec-room floor along with some square footage in an adjacent hall and bedroom. The ultimate layout had to be built in the garage as it was summer and our mothers had kicked us out of our houses to get some sunshine. 

My friend's much older brother worked on the assembly line at Eldon toys, and instead of tossing any mis-manufactured slot cars in the trash, he snuck them out and brought them home. My friend gave me a couple of the really damaged ones and I set about fixing them. Alas, none survive, but I recall there was a Mustang and Corvette that I raised from the dead that made my friend a little jealous :-)

That summer I was building 1/32 scale grandstands and pitstops and timing buildings from bristol board and balsa, and when I stumbled across E. L. Moore's Bunn's article I tried building it too. I had never seen a publication that featured instructions and plans for building model structures, so this was a revelation. I dove right into the project and I figured I'd use it as a garage for cars. I left a lot off the build, but I did have a go at making an interior complete with car repair facilities and a removable roof. In the end, it was too large to keep around and I salvaged it for parts. That experience was sort of a prod to work in HO as I could spend the effort and didn't have a space problem with the finished models.

Marmora station?

I was going through some old files and came across these two drawings I did sometime in the '70s. I recall there was a small train station in Marmora, Ontario; however, I don't have any photos and I can't remember visiting, let alone measuring. I was a kid then. An internet search shows there was a small station, but it's a little larger than my drawing suggests. I suspect I selectively compressed whatever I did or didn't see in order to fit it on a single piece of 8 1/2 x 11 paper. Crude drawing skills aside, with a little adjustment it might make for a small, utilitarian depot.

Update, 23 March 2016: Looking back through some old photos and posts, I think this drawing might actually be based on the station in Hastings, Ontario. 

[18 June 2020 Update]: No, it's the station at Marmora.

The 70's Files: A cottage in 1/4 inch scale

I built this back in 1990 over the Christmas holidays after not having built anything in years - I was ‘contracted’ by my sister to build it for her to use in her final year diorama project at horticulture school. It’s built from balsa, card, sandpaper, a sheet of plastic brick and some lime green curtains for that ‘70s feel :-)

HO-scale logging airships?

I was going through some old files, and came across these MacPaint pictures for a track planning tool I created way back in 1985 with my friend vp.

I was a Mac zealot back then and was especially enamoured with MacPaint. vp thought MacPaint and the Mac’s capabilities in general would make for a great track planning tool. He was certainly more prescient about this than me. I thought model railroaders would prefer using all their spare time model railroading – I was wrong, there is a niche for these sorts of tools.

The tool didn’t undergo much development because I lost interest as other activities over took it. Initially, it was meant to help plan very simple layouts: flat ones that used snap track. I came across some Pascal code I had developed (unfortunately I don’t have a way to run it any more), but we also thought of simply making a track planning font where letters and keys were replaced with different types of track that could be later cut-and-pasted into position with MacPaint or MacDraw.

I only post these fragments because I got a laugh out of the above picture with the blimps and trains that I had done as a diversion while we were fiddling with more prosaic track planner issues. I’d completely forgotten about it. With the popularity of steam punk, it doesn’t seem like the odd combination that it did at that time. Back then I was part of a team doing research into hybrid airships that could be used in forestry, so to my inner model railroader, this logging blimps meets the railroads of John Allen and John Oslon motif seemed like a natural combination. Although, I can’t account for the motivation behind the Queen lyrics and the all-seeing eye 

Are functional, flyable HO-scale blimps possible? A late 1970s to mid 1980s vintage Goodyear blimp has an envelope that is 192 feet long and a maximum diameter of 50 feet. Its volume is 202,700 cubic-feet. In HO scale these dimensions would translate into 2.21 feet, 0.58 feet, and 0.31 cubic-feet, respectively. The lifting capability of helium doesn’t scale, so to figure out how much mass the model could lift is simply a matter of multiplying 0.31 cubic-feet by the static lift of helium, which is 31.5 grams/cubic-feet. It turns out the HO-scale helium inflated envelope can lift a mass of around 9.8 grams.

"Logging in steep terrain" - from the LTA-20-1 sales brochure

A similar calculation can be performed on a 1980’s vintage LTA-20-1 concept logging hybrid airship. The sales brochure states its spherical envelope has a 91.9 foot diameter. In HO-scale this becomes 1.06 feet, with a volume of 0.62 cubic-feet. Since it’s about twice the volume of the Goodyear blimp model, it also can lift about twice as much mass, which is around 19.6 grams.

"Heavy-lift emergency situations" - also from the LTA-20-1 sales brochure.

Building an actual HO scale radio controlled flying model will have its challenges given that the static lift of either of these two examples is rather small; however, if the power and control technology of this Carbon Butterfly were used, they seem to be within the realm of possibility. That indoor R/C model airplane has a total mass of just 3.6 grams, so we’re certainly in the right ballpark. Cost ? Well, I’ll swag it very, very conservatively at the cost of 2 Carbon Butterflies plus $100 for helium and some miscellaneous extras; that turns out to be around $420. Pricey, yes, maybe even too conservative an estimate, but in the zone of an expensive locomotive model; maybe it’s not too outrageous for a prototype HO-scale blimp of some sort.

N-scale layout-in-a-box

I built this little N-scale layout-in-a-box back in 1978. It got stashed away around 1980, and has been in storage in various places until Christmas 2008. Around that time there were a number of clinic clients interested in model trains, so we thought it would make a nice conversation piece over the holidays. I had to do some refurbishment since it had gotten bounced around a bit during the intervening years.

The layout box measures 31 by 25 inches and has a matching lid that is connected with detachable hinges that allow the lid to be removed when the layout is in use. I made the box from 1x4 pine and ¼ inch plywood. It folds up like a briefcase for transport and storage, and has a handle for carrying it around.

This isn’t an original idea. I remember seeing a picture of a Z-scale layout built in a wooden artist’s box in an issue of MR at that time, and thought I’d like to do something similar in N-scale.

If I get the layout out this Christmas season I’ll need to buy a new locomotive, since my one-and-only ancient one finally seized up during the 2008 holidays. No big deal since it was a rather cheap one and I’m surprised it lasted that long.

The 70's Files: The PB Paper Company

This model was the only E.L. Moore building project that I actually completed back in the 1970s. It’s a build of Mr. Moore’s RMC Paper Company that was published in Railroad Model Craftsman in April 1974. My build isn’t very well done, but it does have one retro-construction method that I still find interesting even though these days your computer and printer could certainly do it better.

Mr. Moore’s project calls for commercial brick embossed paper for the exterior surface. I’d didn’t have much cash in those days, so I used a technique I had read about in the British magazine Model Railway Constructor instead of buying brick paper. In the November 1973 issue, Mr. Dave Booth wrote - in an article called Rowsley modelled in card - about a very simple method he had developed to replicate stonework on buildings. Here are the steps:

1. Use a grey cardboard as the surface for the stone. Mr. Booth recommended using the cardboard that new shirts came wrapped around - I don’t think that’s done much anymore, so any mid-weight grey coloured cardboard should do.
2. A ruler and a 2H pencil with a chisel point are used to scribe the horizontal, vertical, and any curved lines that define the stone work. I think I used a spent ballpoint pen for scribing as I did for making ‘metal’ panels as in other E. L. Moore building projects. When you’re done you’ll have a surface where the surface of the stones are raised and the lines between them are depressed into the cardboard.
3. Now you need 3 crayons (any type of wax children’s crayons will do): yellow, dark brown, and black. In that order scribble them over the embossed cardboard surface. When you’re done use your finger to blend the colours a bit.
4. If you don’t like the resulting colour, you can always use the edge of the modeling knife to scrape off the crayon and try again; however, Mr. Booth reported that his 8-year old son had no problem getting good results, you might get good results on your first try!

The black-and-white photos accompanying Mr. Booth’s article show two pictures of a building clad with material using his technique and they look good. My young and rather unskilled hands didn’t pull it off too well, but the hues and colours that resulted have some promise. With some finer and more closely spaced scribing work, this old technique might still have some life in it for use in background buildings, and maybe even foreground ones if very carefully executed.

I imagine that I could make my own brick or stone paper with a digital camera, some photo manipulation software, and a printer – and no doubt I suspect someone has in the vastness of the internet. This would provide an infinite source of very good exterior surfaces, and might also point to a way to revitalize many of the projects in Mr. Moore’s legacy.

The 70’s Files: Coaling Tower

This coaling tower was based on an article designed and written-up by Eugene Le Doux in a project book called Easy-to-Build Model Railroad Structures, published by Kalmbach. The opening pages of the book suggest it was first published in 1958 and had been reprinted several times at least up until the 1971 printing I bought. It has lots of interesting building projects; I built a few of them, and studied all of them to one degree or other. The construction methods are fairly dated by today’s standards, but it still has lots of good ideas for simple builds.

You know, I don’t know why I built this structure. I didn’t have any steam locomotives; mine were all diesels! Although the construction is very rudimentary, cardboard and balsa, with pencil lines to indicate siding, it still has a simple charm.

One interesting feature is that the roof surface is made by gluing a piece of Kleenex to a card backing and painting it a black and brown mix. And all the dust it has accumulated over the years has only improved its looks! Simple, but fairly effective.

The 70’s Files: Mr. Daniels' retirement home

Mr. Daniels' house is basically a flipped version of Mrs. Hatley's house. The young me was even lazier when I built this one: it doesn't even have drawn-on siding! These days I might use these houses to fill in background in a photo, but other than that they're just around for sentimental value.

The 70’s Files: The widow Hatley’s house

This is another project that started from a set of drawings published in Model Railroader during the 70’s. I was one lazy builder on this project. It’s basically just Bristol board cut into the basic shapes, glued together with balsa reinforcement, painted, and tarted up a bit with some balsa details. But with the widow herself standing on the front porch, the crude, wonky details, and the chintzy curtains in the windows, it has a certain melancholy charm.

These days if I wanted to make some simple row housing in bulk based on this design I might try photographing some real siding and using printouts of it as the wall material. Supplemented with some commercial plastic castings for the windows, doors, chimneys and other details, a serviceable little model might result that could be useful as a background detail.

The 70’s Files: Perkin’s Produce

Back in the 70’s I tried my hand at casting rock formations from latex moulds made from rocks I collected in the country. At the time I came across a construction article in Model Railroader– the specific one I can’t locate – about this fruit depot whose first floor is partially set in the ground. Since I wanted to show off the rock castings I was making this seemed like a good structure to build and incorporate in the layout.

The resulting model doesn’t do justice to the article. Mine is made almost completely from card-stock – using techniques that were applied to the Mineral City Depot – and the one in the article is built from a variety of commercial and handmade components like wood, card, metal, and probably other things.

I remember I thought this was a tedious build. All the siding is individually cut from computer punch-cards and glued one-by-one to the card sub-structure. The shingles are paper cut using pinking shears – my mother was none too pleased by that – and also individually glued to the roof sub-structure.

The walls are a little warped, but it seems more-or-less the way it was when I built it – hand-lettered signage and all. And it still has a little bit of the plaster rock castings sticking to it!