A tall tale about a small Flyer

If you had a chance to crack open the spring issue of Voie Libre - #121, for April / May / June 2025, that is - you no doubt came across an article called The Spumoni Flyer where the editor and I discuss the ins-and-outs of building a small self-propelled coach that's an homage to E. L. Moore. Here's a little extra for all you readers of 30Squares: a bit of fan-fiction in classic Moorian style to put you in a Moorian mood while you're building your own Moorian flyer:

Cousin Cal and the boys pulled my rickety Coach into the siding even later than usual last night. This time though Cal didn’t blame their extra lateness on hooch. It turns out the old 0-4-0 pulling it was on its last legs and stalled twice on the way back from the Red Eye Saloon. I was out by the track, waiting, dozing in my rocker under the moonlight when that clunker pulled in and woke me with a terrible racket. Cal jumped outta the loco’s cab and asked me, “Can you fix her just one more time? Please.” 

“I’ll do ya one better”, sez I. “I’ll build ya a brand new one. I gotta nice, new motor bogie all the way from France, and I’m just itchin’ to build somethin’ with it.”

“A new steamer?”, asks Cal.

“Nah, a new Flyer to match that them there Coach,” replies I pointing to the Coach the boys arrived in. 

Cal gave me one of his patented beady-eyed squints and asked, “What’s it gonna cost?”

“We’ll talk about that in the mornin’. Right now I’m getting to work.”

Later, much later, after you've pulled an all-nighter getting a start on the flyer:

It was a long, long night, but I got a good start on the chassis. When Cal wandered by I was dozing in my chair. 

“Hey, wake up! I’ve got ya lunch from Ma,” announced Cal and added, “Have you had breakfast?”

Cal handed me a big picnic basket whose delicious aroma could drive a man wild. I ripped into it like a starving wolf. “Thanks” was all I could mumble.

Now that I was distracted by coffee and savoury victuals Cal asked, “How much for the Flyer?”

In a moment of smoky bacon weakness I replied, “Consider it an early Christmas present”, and in a flash of coffee induced sense added, “but give me a couple of those Oom-pah records of yours I like.”

Later still, much, much later, once you've finished the flyer:

According to the dots and blots I stamped on the calendar it took me two weeks to build the Flyer. Some assemblies were tricky, but the French motor bogie worked great. I had just finished cleaning up the workshop and was leaning against the frame of its open door, staring at the Flyer over on the spur, when Cal walked up with a bag under his arm.

“Do ya got the keys for the Flyer?”, sez Cal.

“Do ya got my records?”, sez I.

Cal gave me the bag he was carrying and I gave him the Flyer’s keys. We exchanged thank-yous.

I opened the bag and there were the Oom-pah records. After glancing at the liner notes I looked up and saw Cal headed for the Flyer. I shouted after him, “Do you need the training wheels?”

Found while searching for Rolliam photos

I stumbled across this old film footage of the Grasse River Railroad, the owners of the Rolliam (the inspiration for E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach), while looking for pictures of the vehicle that might help in modelling a motorized version of Mr. Moore's creation. It's fascinating to watch even though there are no up close and personal shots of the Rolliam. However, there are a few places in the film where there are blurry but tantalizing shots of a boxy, Rolliam-like vehicle parked on a siding like these two screen captures:

There might be more and better images out there hidden in the backgrounds of obscure films. The search continues.

More Coming Attractions: Motorizing E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach

Left: My build of E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach | Right: BD Concepts drive unit with my base attached

If you are a longtime reader here you may recall I've had it on my to-do list for quite awhile to motorize E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach project. If you follow that link you'll see that back in 2016 I noted that what E. L. Moore, Lucious Beebe, and Charles Clegg thought was a regular old coach operated by the Grasse River Railroad was actually a self-powered vehicle called the 'Rolliam'. Since finding that out I've been toying with the idea of motorizing the coach, but have never gotten around to doing it.

BD Concepts HO gauge (16.5mm), 28mm wheelbase drive unit

Recently the magazine Voie Libre has been promoting some drive units manufactured by a company called BD Concepts. I found their motor bogies intriguing and thought one of them may be a good choice for a motorized coach.

Mr. Moore notes in his article that he used a passenger truck from Central Valley that had an 8' scale wheelbase. I didn't have such a truck on hand, so I used one with a 8'-6" wheelbase that John generously gave me. BD-Concepts has an HO-gauge drive unit with a 28mm wheelbase, which translates to 8 scale HO feet, so that seemed a good choice for the project. I bought one from here, and the instruction sheet can be found here.

There are two ways one can attach the drive to a body: using a screw through the centre post, or by clipping on a flat base by way of those 4 sprung protrusions near the centre top of the unit (there are 2 on each side). I chose to use the second method as I think it's more appropriate for this project. 

0.040" thick, 19' x 8' styrene base with a 21mm x 12.5mm rectangular hole in the centre

The BD Concepts instructions note that if you're using the second method, the base needs to be 1mm thick, with a 21mm x 12.5mm rectangular hole for accommodating the top of the drive unit. The 1mm thickness translates very closely to 0.040". E. L. Moore notes his base is 19' x 8', so I cut a piece of 0.040" thick sheet styrene to that size with the recommended hole cut in the centre. You may recall Mr. Moore used a scrap of yard stick for his base, and so did I, so this is a big change!

The base fits the drive quite well and is held in place very snuggly by the little clips. I was chomping at the bit to give this thing a try, so I went ahead and got it ready for a test spin on the Way Out Layout.

I put a piece of electrical tape over the centre opening because I didn't want my weight shorting out the motor. The instructions say that for the unit to run reliably it needs a little weight, so for that I used a 1 euro coin, which the internet tells me weighs 7.5 grams and seems appropriate for this test. I used some household tape to attach it to the base.

The BD Concepts instructions say the unit's operating voltage is 0 to 12V, and not to exceed 15V. To be on the safe side I ran the test with my Rokuhan RC-02 battery powered controller. It only puts out a maximum of 10V when the batteries are fresh, so the recommended maximum can't be exceeded. As well, I did some loops of the track simply by pushing the terminals of a new 9V battery against the track. In this video of one lap of the track, the Rokuhan controller is set to about 2/3 maximum.

  

The unit runs quite well and I think it will be alright for the Spumoni Club Coach, er, Spumoni Club Rolliam :-) This is another project awaiting the snow to fly, but in the meantime I need to think about whether I'll just replace the truck on the coach I've already built, or build a new Spumoni Club Rolliam specific body. The current body doesn't have an interior control station, or a place for a driver, and I would suspect there'd need to be a radiator out front as the Rolliam was powered by an automobile engine. Well, these deep questions need lots of coffee :-)

E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach Photos

Earlier this year I tried my hand at building E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach; one of his unpublished articles. I only had the manuscript and a photo of the finished model to figure out how it went together. Two construction photos and the plans were missing. Well, the plans are still missing, but the construction photos have been found.

This first one is of the kit pieces prior to final assembly. I'm glad to see that mine isn't too far off his. One difference though is I left off the belt-line trim until I had glued up the sides into a box. I was worried that I wouldn't get them lined up properly if they were pre-installed. 

Take a look at this note that was taped to the back of the photo,

I didn't cement on any inside strips and didn't encounter issues with the side walls splitting - this was probably just luck on my part given the material I was using.

Here's the interior shot. I wish I had this photo when I was building mine. Look at that card game! You can more-or-less read the cards and the hands in play; notice there's a stray one on the floor. And there's a handy jug nearby to keep everyone honest :-)

Lucky for them "with the door locked ther's not a chance of Ma breaking up the game".

E. L. Moore’s Legacy in the 21st Century: The Spumoni Club Coach

You’re right, I’ve already written a short series on this lost E. L. Moore project. However, the manuscript was divided into pieces and my own construction story was interleaved in order to provide a modern take on building the old project. For indexing the Coach project amongst the other posts in the E. L. Moore’s Legacy in the 21st Century series, I thought I’d repost the Spumoni Club Coach manuscript in its entirety much like The Combination Houses and Shades of Buffalo Bill posts.

But, fear not, this post isn’t all old news. I did a little digging about the Spumoni Club Coach prototype, the private car of the Grasse River Railroad that appeared in Beebe and Clegg’s Mixed Train Daily I discussed in Part 1 of the series. Turns out that it wasn’t a coach at all, but a self-powered vehicle that used a Flyer Model 31 automobile engine for get-up-and-go. Yes, that’s right, it was a self-propelled vehicle, not a coach that needed to be pulled! It was custom built for the railroad by Roy L.Sykes, one of the founders. It was called the ‘Rolliam’. You can read about it here at the Rail City Museum site, and here at Gino’s Rail Page and Museum.

To get things started, here are the 5 posts that discussed how I went about building a version of the Spumoni Club Coach:

Lunch, ruler and wheels

Body and soul and cheese

Going on a diet

Done like dinner

E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach Photos

And here’s the original manuscript restored to its non-chopped-up form:

SPUMONI CLUB COACH

BY

E. L. Moore

I'll admit Spumoni Club Special sounds a lot like a three decker sandwich. Fact is, back in the days when Ma Spumoni presided over the Red Eye Saloon, she did put out just such a sandwich. Pork, beef and chicken, with pickle, all for 15 cents. But them days are gone forever. The Club Coach was really the old man’s idea -- Pa Spumoni’s. He wanted a mobile retreat where the boys could get together for a little friendly game and some celebrating now and again. The middle of Skunk Hollow Trestle seemed the ideal spot, but apparently Ma set Pistachio, Jr on their trail and dogged them down.

Now if you think this coach is a modeler’s wild dream, then just you take a gander at page 298 of MIXED TRAIN DAILY. However, the interior of Pa Spumoni’s coach is probably a bit more sumptious than that of the Grasse River club car. Photograph (A) pretty well shows the necessary parts of the coach ready for assembling. The only commercial parts used are a T-25 Central Valley old time passenger truck with an 8’ wheelbase, and one from a set Selley’s #335 work car steps. Any truck with a similar length wheelbase will do. A few scraps of balsa, about five inches of 1/16” thick commercial sheathing, and you’re in business. Instead of regular sheathing I sanded down some 1/16” corrugated wood roofing to get the effect of very narrow sheathing (I had hoped!) And then, of course the floor, a piece 1’ thick by 8’ by 19’ long. A slice from a souvenir or advertising yardstick makes ideal flooring. The roof is removable and fits down over the sides.

Beginning with the floor, center the truck and fasten it on with a screw, then lay it aside and tackle the sides and ends. The sides are 8 3/4' high by 20' long, and the ends are 8 3/4' high by 8' wide (presuming you're using 8' wide flooring). Since there are quite a few windows it would be wise to take the precaution of cementing a piece of thin stripwood above and below the window areas to prevent splitting while cutting out the openings (see Photograph A, inside of coach. At the same time another piece of stripwood should be cemented all around just 1' from the bottom edge for purpose of providing a ledge, simplifying matters when you come to assembling ends and sides around the floor. The window openings are 2' x 3' except one which corresponds to the door and is 3' x 3' and the end windows are also 3' x 3'. Each opening is then fitted with an inner sash of 1/32" square stripwood cemented in so as to be flush with the inside surface. Then, after painting, a single strip of acetate will serve for the row of openings.

The door isn't cut all the way through. The wood was shaved down to a smooth surface and a simulated door worked in with pencil and knife. It's the type of door which might have been salvaged from a bus, opening as it does, in the middle. Six inch wide trim (1/32 x 1/16" for HO) sanded down to a more refined thinness, is added to the sides and ends as shown. One piece of 1/32 x 1/16" stripwood forms a window ledge all around.

When assembled around the 8' x 19' floor, it should present a coach with a finished body size of 9' x 20'. For a removable roof you'll need a piece of balsa 9" thick (3/32" for HO) by 10 1/2' x 21 1/2'. Round the top of this by sanding, then taking a sheet of 1/32" balsa measuring 11 1/2' x 22 1/2', cement it over the rounded length to form the top of the roof. When you paint this, press a tissue against the wet paint, then follow up with a second coat, this giving the effect of a canvas covering. Now, as seen in Photograph A and in the drawing a 15" strip of sheathing is cemented to the under side of the roof leaving a 9 1/2 x 20 1/2' center clearance so as to fit down over the coach sides.

Bumpers and couplers of your choice can now be added to the ends, also the door step and door grab irons. I painted the outside and roof of my coach a light green and added a trim of yellow.

The inside of the Spumoni coach is even more colorful than the outside. Light green walls, a velvety green carpet and upholstered coach seats in bright red. Full width seats were installed at each end, then four 3' wide seats were arranged in the middle. Uncle Charley, who provided that jug of mountain dew, is snoozing in his own special chair. The coach seats are easily built of balsa, shaped and joined as shown in the drawing, bent pins used for arm rests, then upholstered with tissue and painted. Lastly, a card table is done in green, was set in place.

And that is the Spumoni Club Special . . . OBG. The OBG? I'm not certain, but I think it means ON BURNT GRAVY.

Well, I’ve got a little NWSL Stanton Drive power truck sitting on the shelf I’ve been saving to build a model of Thaddeus Lowe’s personal trolley, but maybe it should go to retrofitting the Spumoni Club Coach - the Spumonified version might be called a 'Rolloni' :-)

[Update 1 September 2016: Added a link to the post about the lost photographs that accompanied the manuscript.]

Spumoni Club Coach: Done like Dinner

.... he ougtha be thankful I didn't stick a book review in the middle of it and maybe a recipe for rhubarb pie...

E. L. Moore in a 15 May 1965 letter to Bill Rau suggesting all the extra things he could have added to his article, Turn Backward O Time, that appeared in the January '67 issue of Model Railroader.

Before continuing on with the interior, I added windows cut from a sheet of overhead transparency film and a door cut from a piece of 1/16" balsa with stripwood trim glued on. But once those two tasks were completed, it was on with the show.

The inside of the Spumoni coach is even more colorful than the outside. Light green walls, a velvety green carpet and upholstered coach seats in bright red. Full width seats were installed at each end, then four 3' wide seats were arranged in the middle. Uncle Charley, who provided that jug of mountain dew, is snoozing in his own special chair. The coach seats are easily built of balsa, shaped and joined as shown in the drawing, bent pins used for arm rests, then upholstered with tissue and painted. Lastly, a card table is done in green, was set in place.

I don't have any photos or drawings of the interior, only the above description. I made a few changes along the way - left out the card table, mountain dew jug, and Uncle Charley's special chair - but the interior worked out ok in the end.

And I swapped out the carpeting for astroturf. I used a piece of Woodland Scenics grass mat instead. 

The seats were built up from scraps of balsa. I used a couple of seated figures to help get the dimensions right. Those are the full width end benches above before they have been sanded into their final shape.

The individual 3' wide seats were made the same way. Once the seats were done, it seemed like a good time for a sit-down lunch of one of my favourite midday meals, Solihull-style Beans on Toast, and to continue the tradition in this series what E. L. Moore never was able to do in print :-)

This tasty little meal is courtesy of my English cousin who, when we naively asked him what were all the ingredients of beans-on-toast other than the obvious, proceeded into a detailed conversation with my Texan wife to come up with an Anglo-Texan version of an English classic. 

First off, you need some potatoes and cheese.

We used some organic potatoes, which are a bit on the small side, so you'll need 4 or 5 for two people. You'll also need to shred some cheddar cheese. Again, organic was used in this recipe.

Next, you need to heat up the pot of fixings. It consists of a can of Amy's Organic Chili (medium heat), a 114ml can of Casa Fiesta green chilies (mild heat), 1/3 cup of your choice of medium heat salsa (I can't recall the brand we used, but it was likely organic :-) ), and a little cumin. You can change the heat levels to suit your tastes. 

While the fixings are heating, cook the potatoes. We put them in the microwave then wrapped them in paper towel and transferred them to this 'potato pillow' to sit for a few minutes. However, any way you want to cook the potatoes - baking, boiling, etc - is fine.

Those are the cooked potatoes in their paper wrappers. Unwrap them, place two on each plate and mash flat. Pour on the fixings and sprinkle with the shredded cheese.

Lunch is served.

Suitably fortified, I went back to work and finished the seats. They were sanded to shape, painted with Model Master Acryl British Crimson, and thin wires were cut and installed for arm rests. I didn't wrap the seats in tissue to simulate upholstery because I didn't quite like that technique when I used it on the roof.

Getting to the bench seat on the left end of the coach might require breathing in or maybe stepping over the seats in the way. Things are a little tight, but it could make for a nice private setting for a card game :-)

And that is the Spumoni Club Special . . . OBG. The OBG? I'm not certain, but I think it means ON BURNT GRAVY.

Spumoni Club Coach: Going on a Diet

After basic construction was finished, Cal used the newly painted engine to push the coach onto Ma's siding out back behind her place. The boys were sittin' around enjoying the sun. Once they've done loafing, there's the interior to outfit. Luckily Cal's cousin had the foresight to take a short movie of this auspicious event.



For a removable roof you'll need a piece of balsa 9" thick (3/32" for HO) by 10 1/2' x 21 1/2'. Round the top of this by sanding, then taking a sheet of 1/32" balsa measuring 11 1/2' x 22 1/2', cement it over the rounded length to form the top of the roof.

I did exactly as Mr. Moore specified on this part of the build. That's a piece of 3/32" balsa in the above photo and I've just started to sand in a curved shape. I drew a line down the centre so it was clear to me where the peak was supposed to be.

My curve wasn't as smoothly elliptical as his. Free form sanding is something I need to practice, but it's serviceable and doesn't look too bad when painted up and installed on the coach.

When you paint this, press a tissue against the wet paint, then follow up with a second coat, this giving the effect of a canvas covering. 

I applied a single-ply tissue as specified. There was wrinkling that I tried to smooth out as best I could. When the green paint was dry I washed on a very thin flat black.

Now, as seen in Photograph A and in the drawing [JDL: Note both the photo and drawing are missing], a 15" strip of sheathing is cemented to the under side of the roof leaving a 9 1/2 x 20 1/2' center clearance so as to fit down over the coach sides.

15 HO scale inches translates into about 4.4 mm. If I used that height for a sheathing strip, the roof would have rested on the trim pieces above the windows. I wanted the roof slab to rest on the coach walls, so I made the strip 2 mm high. This leaves no room for lettering, but I like the roof fit better. It gives the coach a little sleeker look too.

The roof's inside surface was painted flat white.

Bumpers and couplers of your choice can now be added to the ends, also the door step and door grab irons.

I used standard Kadee couplers glued to the floor's bottom. It turned out they had just the right height without any extra shimming or adjustment. A lucky break! The bumper is a little different than the one used in E. L. Moore's model and the prototype. His used a different coupler and I built something from balsa and stripwood scraps that looked right with the Kadee couplers and didn't interfere with the wheels.

In this view it looks like the two couplers are skewed off the floor's centre line, but in fact everything lines up ok. As you can see there is a gigantic screw holding the truck to the floor :-)

The door grab irons were bent from small diameter piano wire - I don't know what exactly the diameter is.

The trim around the door was drilled to accommodate the grab irons so that the wood wouldn't split when they were pressed in place. The step is a plastic stair unit is cut from a molded set of stairs meant for a building. I didn't have any coach stairs on hand, so I made due with what I had.

I painted the outside and roof of my coach a light green and added a trim of yellow.

Yeap, me too. Now it's onto installing the interior...and giving up on dieting and seeing what's in the pantry for lunch.

E. L. Moore’s Spumoni Club Coach: Body and soul and cheese

There is no use pussyfooting in this matter. Do we or don’t we wish to wade into a passenger-car? We do? All right, let’s start. If we use home materials, the least we can do is to squander some time. If the result of our labors should not be satisfactory, we always have the trash can.

[Raymond Yates kicks readers in the metaphorical butt regarding passenger car construction on page 273 of his 1939 opus, Making & Operating Model Railroads]

The sides are 8 3/4' high by 20' long, and the ends are 8 3/4' high by 8' wide (presuming you're using 8' wide flooring).

At this point I thought it a good idea to make a drawing of a side and end to better understand the sizes of things. I laid out the drawing in 1/4" scale so I wouldn't have to fiddle with a tiny picture. The drawing's rough, but accurate - it's for working, not showing. You could do this on a computer, but I understand things better when I draw them with a pencil.

Since there are quite a few windows it would be wise to take the precaution of cementing a piece of thin stripwood above and below the window areas to prevent splitting while cutting out the openings (see Photograph A, inside of coach [this photo is missing]). At the same time another piece of stripwood should be cemented all around just 1' from the bottom edge for purpose of providing a ledge, simplifying matters when you come to assembling ends and sides around the floor.

I didn't do that prep work, but cut directly into the basswood without problem. Later, I did install an interior ledge so that the body fit properly on the the floor.

For the coach walls I used 1/16" basswood HO scale clapboard siding. An odd choice I realize, but I had a sheet - from the Mt. Albert Scale Lumber Co. - in my scrap box. The inscribed angling wasn't all that pronounced, so I decided to use what I had on hand inside of buying new material. E. L. Moore used 1/16" corrugated basswood sheet with the corrugations sanded down, so he too likely made do with what he had lying around. So, at least the 'made-do' ethos was preserved :-) Using the plan I drew the side in reverse on the sheet back.

The window openings are 2' x 3' except one which corresponds to the door and is 3' x 3' and the end windows are also 3' x 3'.

I used a brand-new #11 Xacto knife blade to cut out the openings, and used a new blade on each side. 

Then the side was cut free from the sheet. At this point the openings are still a bit rough and need to be cleaned up a little with sanding sticks and files. After all this work, and staring at that ribbed paneling for so long, I was reminded of my sandwich grill and had worked up an appetite :-) 

My favourite sandwich is a grilled cheese. Luckily, Debra had read my mind and had bought some aged cheddar, so we were ready to go.

Here's what you'll need ingredients-wise,

5 year old aged cheddar - Debra picked some organic stuff

Oatmeal bread

Honey mustard

6 slices of double-smoked bacon - if you're in Eastern Ontario, I recommend the stuff from Roadapple Ranch

Honey mustard

Olive oil

Once you've gathered that up, let's move on to assembly.

1. If you can convince your significant other to fry up the bacon while you prepare the sandwiches that would be most excellent, otherwise you need to get frying.

2. Brush olive oil on the outside surfaces of the bread. This is so the sandwich doesn't stick to the grill.

3. Shred enough cheese to make a significant pile as shown in the photo.

4. Spread the honey mustard on the bread's inside surface and then pile on the shredded cheese.

5. When the bacon is done, drain off the excess grease, cut into bite-size pieces and then stack equal amounts on both sandwiches. 

Once the grill is hot, stick the sandwiches in and grill until they're golden brown and the cheese is melty. The aged cheddar will look a bit curdled when done, but everything will taste just fine.

Get some plates; you're done! These sandwiches have intense flavour, so If you want something a little milder, as we did the next day, use a 50/50 mixture of a medium cheddar and mozzarella instead of the 5 year old aged stuff.

After sleeping off lunch for awhile, it was back to work. The coach wall openings were cleaned up with sanding sticks and files. The pieces were then painted with Tamiya acrylic XF-76, Gray Green (IJN).

Each opening is then fitted with an inner sash of 1/32" square stripwood cemented in so as to be flush with the inside surface. Then, after painting, a single strip of acetate will serve for the row of openings.

Instead of Mr. Moore's recommendation, I glued in some 1/32" balsa sheet to the inside of each wall. You can see that a ledge is provided for the wall to rest on the floor. These inner panels also act to form a recess for some clear strip to be used as window glazing.

The door isn't cut all the way through. The wood was shaved down to a smooth surface and a simulated door worked in with pencil and knife. It's the type of door which might have been salvaged from a bus, opening as it does, in the middle.

I did go ahead and cut the door all the way through. I'll make up a separate door and install it when I get around to adding the windows.

Six inch wide trim (1/32 x 1/16" for HO) sanded down to a more refined thinness, is added to the sides and ends as shown. One piece of 1/32 x 1/16" stripwood forms a window ledge all around.

For trim, I used Mt. Albert Scale Lumber Co.'s 2x4 scale lumber strips I had in my scrap box. Trim pieces were painted with Tamiya acrylic XF-4 Yellow Green prior to installation. I thought it would be tedious gluing all that trim into place, but it was a surprisingly pleasant activity. I think it was because the sides seemed to come to life as each piece was added. 

When assembled around the 8' x 19' floor, it should present a coach with a finished body size of 9' x 20'.

Yeap, it does! Once the trim was installed on the long sides, I glued the 4 walls onto the floor. I trimmed the end walls once everything was dry. For some reason I thought I wouldn't get the trim on the end walls to line up properly with the side wall trim if I trimmed the end walls prior to assembly. 

Well, it was a little awkward to apply trim strips to the ends after assembly, but it wasn't too hard and I got the alignment I was looking for. Digital photos are unforgiving, I see a few areas that need some touchup painting :-( Gotta go clean up the grill - until next time.

Probably there is a moral side to this car building. Many beginners are afraid to tackle the job of making a car of any kind, feeling that it is quite beyond their skill. This is a rather cowardly attitude. Perhaps our first work will not merit a blue ribbon, but what of it? As we move along, we shall gain in experience and, if we are made of the right stuff, we shall eventually reach a point of perfection that will permit us to fashion cars of all sorts with really delightful results. It costs little to nothing to try our hand at it. We don’t need to buy our scale trucks or couplers unless the body of the car merits such attention when it is finished.

[Raymond Yates revels the secret that all experienced model builders know: keep building, don’t give up on page 278 of Making & Operating Model Railroads]