Last post for this year

Merry Christmas 

and 

Happy New Year

Thanks for stopping by throughout the year. I'll be back online sometime after Christmas or in the New Year, but I'll be around. If there's any breaking news I'll put down the egg nog and post about it here.

Now, where did I put my snowshoes?

Kicking 2021 to the curb

In the middle of Thrifty's construction

I’m never quite sure where to begin these year end retrospectives, but I guess listing the 10 most viewed posts in 2021 seems like a good place to start. So, here they are, from the 10th most viewed to #1:

#10: Repairing E. L. Moore’s Central Warehouse

#9: Cardboard thoughts in The Art of Architectural Modelling in Paper by T. A. Richardson

#8: Master index for the “E. L. Moore’s Legacy in the 21st Century” series

#7: E. L. Moore’s Ma’s Place: Original vs Kit

#6: Mr. Rogers meets E. L. Moore at the Ramsey Journal Building

#5: Did E. L. Moore’s track plan actually work?

#4: E. L. Moore’s Legacy in the 21st Century: HOJ-half-POJ

#3: The Art Metropole is finished… well, sort of

#2: E. L. Moore’s Legacy in the 21st Century: The Elizabeth Valley Railroad

#1: Was E. L. Moore’s Enskale & Hoentee RR inspired by the Gleish Valley RR?

Balancing the Pietenpol Air Camper

My special interest is making miniature buildings, and I finished a few this year, although not as many as I thought I would back in January:

Steinberg’s supermarket that was located in Cedarbrae Mall (ok, this was one I started in earnest in late 2020 and finished in the first couple of days in 2021, so even though it’s in the list based on a technicality, I like it, so here it is :-) )

Thrifty’s jeans store that was located on Yonge St.

The Art Metropole, also located on Yonge St.

The 30Squares HQ, which isn’t on Yonge St, and only exists in my mind.

Bachmann’s Contemporary House was built straight from the box.

Ocean Lookout built from an Atlas Elevated Gate Tower kit

Gluing down the roof of the Contemporary House

Like 2020, I’ve posted a lot, what with the pandemic encouraging me to stay home, or at least in nearby wilder parts of the province. Other than the E. L. Moore model restoration work, and chasing down the elusive Space Hopper, I’ve felt my heart wasn’t in many of this year’s posts or projects. However, over the last few months I’ve felt my interests coming back to life. I’m finding layout building and pursuing odd projects quite pleasant. I’m hoping I can bottle whatever caused the change (I think the pages of Voie Libre and the videos at Boomer Dioramas had something to do with it) and drink from it in the new year whenever my spirits are lagging. That’ll be good to have on hand for the wintry pandemic months ahead.

Gluing the 30Squares HQ's walls together

Although, I don’t think even guzzling down the entire elixir will perk up my enthusiasm for the E. L. Moore book project. I’ve tried a few times to work on the manuscript, but whenever I do I have a sense I’m wasting my time on a lengthy and expensive project for which there’ll be little interest. But, I will continue to work on the E. L. Moore dioramas as I quite enjoy that, and I think photos of them will help further show what good work E. L. Moore did. If Google shuts down Blogger, and the E. L. Moore posts disappear along with all my others, then so be it.

Creating the cliff face on the Loonar Module

Predictions for the year ahead are always troublesome, but I’m hoping 2022 will be The Year of the Layout(s) and I’ll continue riding the wave of layout inspiration started in 2021.

Well, that’s it for me. Thank you for taking the time to drop by here throughout the year. Best wishes to you and yours for 2022!

Happy New Year!

A look back at 2020

My mum and a lost tinplate train from Christmas '61*

This year’s wrap-up seems quite trivial and banal in light of events in the wider world, but maybe some inconsequential banality has its uses in temporarily resting the mind. I hope that 2021 is much better for all, and I wish you and your families good health, peace, and some sort of resumption of normality in the coming year.

And now for the inconsequential banality: some highlights from this year at the 30Squares Media Empire’s World Domination Headquarters :-)

This year I finally made a serious effort to build some HO scale modern buildings: here're the Thomson Building, and the Canadian Press Complex. I know, two isn’t many, but a start’s a start, and there was a lot to learn. The challenge for the coming year will be to figure out how I can build these sorts of models faster, and with the look and style I have in mind, as I’ve got a lot of projects on my list.

Progress was made on my HO-scale Ocean Park Loop layout. The fundamentals of all the modules were built and streetcars were run. Much fun was had building and painting the streets, constructing a subway entrance, and stringing overhead ‘wire’. Even though the ‘wire’ is actually just decorative cotton thread, it improves the look of photos staged on the layout. All layout related posts can be found under the Ocean Park Loop keyword.

I felt the need to read a lot this year. As well as much re-reading of old books that I haven’t cracked open in a long time, I read many new-to-me books. I particularly liked The Last Samurai, The Blind Assassin, Clyde Fans, and Whiskey Galore.  I’m currently reading Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, and was surprised by an early delivery of a used copy of Robertson Davies’ Cornish Trilogy, so it’s next up**. I don’t know if I’ll read as much in 2021. I suspect the new year will have a different vibe, and maybe the compulsion will ebb.

The most popular posts made in 2020 were those on the construction of AHM’s Weekly Herald kit.

And with every year, I did a little bit of time travelling and found these kits :-)

Although I consider the E. L. Moore project to be more-or-less over, this year I learned a lot about his designs that were converted to plastic kits. There are still many open questions about E. L. Moore’s work, and with each passing year it becomes more unlikely they’ll ever be answered. I was glad to have many great conversations and exchanges with Martin regarding the world of plastic building kits, especially on the various releases of E. L. Moore's. The Machine Shop has been a kit of interest.

My favourite project this year was Cal’s Coastal Café. It had the right combination of pleasure, build speed, uniqueness, and story. A close second was the Hot Wheels Maserati Mistral restoration. The surprise factor, along with a relatively quick and easy restoration, made that one fun.

Model railroad cartoons popped up a lot this year. I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the work of Bill Baron, Gil Mellé, and Doug Wright.

In the summer I set up an Instagram account. Its purpose was mainly to post photos of finished scenes from layouts past and present. I was looking for trends in my work, and for clues about what needs to be improved to realize the feeling I’m after***. Although it doesn’t have many followers compared to most Instagram accounts, uptake and viewership is much stronger there than here at the blog, which lead me to wonder if I should continue blogging considering the effort some posts take. The jury’s still out on that question. I’ll see how things play out in the new year.

And that’s that. I’d like to thank everyone who came by and spent some time here! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

---

* This year I scanned all my father’s 8mm home movies. The opening picture is an image I sliced from a movie of our 1961 family Christmas: it shows some sort of windup tinplate toy train scooting around a circle of track. I had no recollection of this toy - I was only 2 at the time. The train only makes a 2 or 3 second appearance, and isn’t the centre of interest in the frame, so the image is fleeting. Various types of real and miniature trains make appearances in several of the films, so I wonder if maybe train stuff was imprinted on my brain much earlier than my proposed got-interested-in-model-railroading date of summer ’73. Maybe I was subconsciously primed from an early age? Another question among many for Dr. Freud :-)

** I jumped ahead a bit and cracked open the first in the trilogy, The Rebel Angels, to get a taste. Among other things, the first few pages seemed to have an interesting late '70s, early '80s Toronto vibe that grabbed me, so this looks like something I'll be sticking with.

*** I must admit that none of my photos have yet to capture what I’m after. A few have come close, but there’s something missing in all of them. There’s a certain sense of being in the world that I’m looking to capture, but haven’t yet. It isn’t something that I can completely express in words, although I think that my photos need to consider things like surface textures, street accoutrements, figure placement and staging, signs and markings, spacing, sidewalk sizing, eye-level viewing, and lighting - especially lighting and eye-level viewing - to help realize what I'm looking for. What about detail? Detail is a fussy word. So much effort is spent on detail and relatively little on lighting. In a lot of photos I come across the lighting is so uniform and boring I often wonder what the people who take them are seeing. Maybe the lighting is done that way so details are clear? I'm also at a point where I dismiss any photo that doesn't look like it could have somehow been taken by a figure in the scene - God's eye views are leaving me cold. 

I don't think the conventional wisdom of weathering and detail are some secret sauce that will help me bring about the sense I’m looking for. The city I’m chasing is a living thing almost as much as the people in it. In a lot of model railroads and dioramas, cities or towns, and their buildings, are backdrops - just static movie sets to fill out spacial requirements. So, the usual kits, maybe with some unique signs, will do. Because I grew up in a vastly different Toronto than today's - one in transition with an extensive network of buses, streetcars, and subways that interconnected the whole thing - I have a particular sense of what a certain type of urban place is like - or maybe, more accurately, what I want it to be like. I’ve not seen it expressed, and I’m working on developing my impressions of it. I see a lot of North American urban modelling is of rundown and derelict places, or olde timey places if ‘trollies’ are involved. Did the modeller live through that? Just drive through it now and then? Learn about it from tv or a book? Is it all just made up from a mishmash of stereotypes? I don’t know, but it doesn’t capture what I’m thinking of. What I see ahead of me is trying to capture a sense of being in a certain type of city I have in my head by way of photographs.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

It has become something of a tradition here to recap the year just before taking a Christmas break. And with this year marking the 10th anniversary of 30 Squares, I thought I'd continue the tradition with a little post before taking my leave.

The 10th anniversary was celebrated in a series of posts called From the Time Machine's Glovebox, and to get the year started there was a series of Hot Wheels diecast posts.

Essays, both one-shot and extended, had a hold on my mind in 2019:

The Moore Way

 A 'Miniature Building Construction in the 20th Century' Reading List

Gil Melle, via the Vinyl Detective, caught my interest this year

The Sgt. Rock School of Management Studies

The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms

There were many posts made to the Legendary Model Railroaders tag

as there were to the E L Moore tag

I made a start on a new layout, the Ocean Park Loop, which replaced the Alta Vista TC well before it neared completion. Although, reorganization and renovation of the workshop helped slow work on the OPL to a stop.

The OCTranspo's Confederation Line went into service in the fall, and your 30 Squares reporter was there at the inaugural ride. That lead to a number of posts about Ottawa's new LRT system. The LRT got off to a good start, but as the weeks 'rolled on', many operational problems arose that adversely impacted its on-time performance and reliability. 

Fewer than usual model building projects were undertaken in 2019, and most of them were in plastic. Included were,

Bert's Garage 

(although posted a couple of days before the end of 2018, this was the most popular series published in 2019 by a long shot, and the associated videos were the most popular of any of the videos posted here -

the second most popular post, but far behind Bert's, was the miniature building construction reading list)

The Natural History Museum

Moore's Balsa Products

The Elevator Building

Variation No. 3 on a Moon Scope

(this project had special significance for me as it connected the here-and-now of my life today with that of my boyhood and brought today's world into stark contrast with day-to-day life back then)

and, a start on A&A Records

Like in many years passed, I continue to think about ending the blog. Apparently it's a recurring affliction, like cold and flu season :-) This year the pull to stop was stronger than usual as I look at changing a number of aspects of my life in the coming year. Strangely though, giving serious thought to quitting prompted me to write far more posts than usual as I work this through. I think I'm looking for a new spin, or aspect to blogging as I feel I still haven't written the stories I need to write, or pursued all the ideas I still have. The E. L. Moore series over the last 5 (!) years - it's frightening how time flies - has been my magnum opus here at the blog. It's been fun and fulfilling, although a proper paper book hasn't materialized due to copyright and financial issues. There're other stories I'm looking to write, although I'm not sure what form they'll take. It looks like I'll be blogging for the foreseeable future as I work it out :-)

I can't wrap-up without wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thanks for dropping by throughout the year and spending some time here. I'll meet up with you again sometime after Christmas. 

Dropping off 2017 and picking up 2018

It's hard to believe 2017 is just about over. Seems like only yesterday I was writing about how hard it was to believe 2016 was ending. I don't have any sage insights or resolutions. I'm terrible at predicting the future and never keep resolutions, so I'll just rummage through 2017's closets and see what I can find.

. . .

Thanks to a generous reader, the most exciting discovery of 2017,

Found: Elizabeth Valley Railroad trackplan!

. . .

Not to mention some interesting discoveries about a couple of once famous and now neglected model railroaders,

Was Robert E. Gilbert REG?

Gil Mellé: Jazz Legend, Model Railroader Extraordinaire

. . .

Again, thanks to a generous reader, we got to see what E. L. Moore looked like,

Alternative E. L. Moore biography portraits

E. L. Moore, Adventurer

E. L. Moore and the fedora mystery

. . . 

A Wikipedia entry for E. L. Moore finally got written.

. . . 

I came close to retiring from blogging,

Rootin' and ticketin'

This year-ender will be the 958th blog post here at 30 Squares, and 2018 will be my 10th year as a blogger. I know, I know, 30 Squares has only been around since 2009; however, in 2008 I had a blog called Streamlines that I ended up deleting before that year was out. It was too cynical and arch for my tastes, and didn't reflect what I wanted to write about - it was too now and not me. I got back into model making and model railroading in 2003, so 2018 is year 15 as a revived hobbyist. 

Although I only 'retired' for just 2 weeks this year, hanging up blogging is always on my mind these days. I sometimes think I may have written all that I set out to write. But, I'm not going to do anything drastic. I'll go out on a limb and predict I'll do much less posting in 2018. Then again, I sometimes think I still have some things to write about. If I keep going I hope to cross the 1,000 post mark sometime next year. 

. . . 

Speaking of 1,000, my letter about the Aug '73 issue of Model Railroader appeared in Model Railroader's 1,000th issue,

Bill Rau and MR's 1,000th Issue

. . . 

Debra and I took a road trip to pick up a collection of Railroad Model Craftsmans and Railroad Modelers,

Did you bring the boxes?

Once I got those issues home I spent a lot of time reading them. Their presence in the house was an attractive force I couldn't resist and I 'wasted' days and weeks going through their pages. 

It turns out the collection isn't complete and has significant gaps, but it's a great starting point and I'm glad I was able to obtain it. I spent time organizing, cataloging and boxing the RMCs from the 1950s and 1960s as well as all the RMs. It turns out the RM collection is complete, but the RMCs from those two decades have considerable gaps. I filled many with purchases from Railpubs, but these ones are still missing (eBay is my next port-of-call),

1957: July, Aug, Sept

1954: July

1952: June, Aug, Oct

1964: Dec

I have yet to begin on the 1990s to present, and Vince has the '70s and '80s. I see much pleasant archiving work on the horizon for 2018.

. . .

A start was made on the 2' x 3' N-scale Elizabeth Valley RR tribute layout.

Track in the Valley

Making the grade on the EVRR

. . . 

Is model railroading fun? For me, not really. It's pleasurable and satisfying. I often experience the flow state while working on projects. Fun? No. It's more than that.

. . . 

In 2017 I thought I'd try to write a series of  essays on walking, streetcars, bookstores, science and writing as these things have long been tangled together in my mind. I started with A Field Guide to Pedestrians, but put it and the rest of the series aside well before it was finished. Here's the rough draft of the field guide's beginning. Maybe in 2018 I can pick it up again, along with The Kitbashed X, and see what it has in store.

A Field Guide to Pedestrians

In that old Tuxedo Junction series by George Allen and Ernie Hubener, I’d often read about them taking field trips to look for and photograph buildings or railroad related stuff they liked for inclusion on their layout. I rather like this sort of field work, but given that my two favourite streetcar lines are in the urban areas of Toronto and Ottawa, and Ottawa’s is a ghost line at that, means walking around cities with my camera taking pictures of stuff. Sometimes I’ve done it Moore-style from the window of a car, but the images are a lot less thoughtful and taking them has its risks if I’m driving - which I don’t do if you’re wondering.

In downtown Toronto the pedestrians have been pretty mellow about me stopping on the sidewalk to snap a picture of a building or taking one from a café window. For the most part they pay no attention and go about doing whatever it is they’re doing. Although, I’ve had people stop walking so as not to obscure a view as I snapped – well, maybe they just didn’t want to appear in the picture - and then gave me a pleasant wave as they passed once I was done. Of course I thanked them.

It’s not like that everywhere. In one not-so-small town on Vancouver Island, I took some photos of a resale shop that Debra liked and I though had an interesting look. When I went inside to see if Debra was still there, I was greeted by a customer who pointed at me and frantically shouted across the store to a woman at the cash desk, “It’s him, it’s him! That's the one who was taking the pictures.”  I explained who Debra was to the woman at the counter, and she, who apparently was the owner, said they had chatted. I said I was taking some pictures so we’d remember the place. The owner liked that and gave the customer a sharp look. Should I ask permission to take photos of the façade of a store that faces the public thoroughfare? I don’t think Google Streetviews does, but on the other hand, they have at times been met with open hostility. It doesn't always sit well with people.

When I’m outside and taking photos is on my mind I use my little Canon Digital Elph. It has a strap I can cinch-up to my wrist to prevent dropping it, and the camera body fits comfortably in the palm of my hand so it’s out of sight when not in use. In the winter, that means I can keep it warm in  a mitt. I have a DSLR, but it’s big and obvious and not so easy to switch on in an instant and take a quick photo without attracting attention. Although I should probably use the DSLR more because it might change the social perception, if I was being observed with suspicion, from one of snooper to photographer. I find my phone’s camera to be useless. It takes ok pictures, but the phone’s slab shape isn’t conducive to taking quick photos while walking. With the Canon, I can take it out, switch it on, snap some photos and put it away without breaking my stride and calling undue attention to myself or getting distracted from what’s going on. When crossing a busy intersection in Toronto, snapping streetcar photos while I go, this is an important feature. Although in less dynamic environments I’ll often stop for a properly framed picture.

Walking is my main way of seeing. I don’t wear headphones or earbuds or talk on the phone. Usually my phone isn’t even on. I just carry it in case of emergency. Which doesn’t make much sense, but when it’s on it seems like an unfriendly presence. 

Sometimes I’m walking because I’m going somewhere or on an errand. Sometimes it’s to take photos of something. Sometimes is just to get out of the house and stretch my legs. I have this sense that if I can walk, I'm doing ok and things aren't so bad.

Over the years it seems like the other pedestrians I see on these walks fall into classifiable groups. Now, I've gotta be a little careful here. Yes, there are recognizable groups, but they differ from place to place. I do most of my recreational walking through the blocks of the residential neighbourhood where we live. The groups are quite different from those I see when I walk from my home into the city. There's some sort of boundary that gets crossed and the groupings I see around my home neighbourhood dissolve into others that inhabit the city. It's a kind of space travel.

So, these are the home groups, not the city groups - those are for another time. And these are summer observations. Winter's another story.

There’re the exercisers. They’re running. They’re jogging. They're power-walking. They’re running and walking. They’re using the outside world as a gym. Within this group are two sub-groups: those who are dressed in all the latest running fashions and equipment, and those who just threw something on. The first group is usually young or youngish and fit and plugged into some sort of electronic entertainment device. Mostly women, but men aren’t uncommon. The walkers often have ski-pole style walking sticks. The second group are older, and I think are hesitant about the whole running thing. They don’t seem happy; they often seem to be struggling.

There’re the dog walkers. Usually, couples or single women. Rarely men. Always equipped with poop bags. I’m glad of that, but I wouldn’t want the majority of my walking to be done while holding a bag of fresh dog poop. Just sayin’.

There're the commuters and students walking back and forth from their homes to transit stops at rush hours. They’re purposeful and the variety is large.

There're the family groups. Usually a young couple with pre-school kids and a stroller. There might be a dog or two on a leash. They're strolling. Sometimes these family groups will be riding their bikes on the street. Stroller replaced by mom or dad pulling a trailer. Everybody is wearing a helmet except dad. 

And sometimes there're cats. One summer it seemed that every evening around dusk there were lots of stray cats wandering the streets. Each evening I'd see at least two or three slumming around. There was an imperial one who regularly sat Sphinx-like on the soft-top of a parked Jeep. He surveyed the street from his rooftop perch and gave me the evil-eye when I stared at him.

There're many pedestrians who don't fall into those groups. The trace elements doing whatever it is they're doing. Not everyone can be stereotyped. And the stereotypes wouldn't be stereotypes if I knew them and wasn't just noting their passing.

. . . 

Some interesting books read in 2017,

Against Everything by Mark Greif

Chinaman's Chance by Ross Thomas

The Spectacle of Skill: Selected Writings of Robert Hughes

Nothing if Not Critical by Robert Hughes
Mister X: The Archives by Dean Motter + Co.
good bones by Margaret Atwood
The Toronto Civic Railways: An Illustrated History by J. William Hood
Cardboard Engineering with Scissors & Paste by G. H. Deason
Lost Ottawa by David McGee
Ottawa's Farm: A history of the Central Experimental Farm by Helen Smith & Mary Bramley

. . .

It's traditional here to time travel at least once a year,

From the Hanger

. . . 

I made a start on a new HO-scale streetcar layout I'm calling the Alta Vista Transit Commission, or Alta Vista TC for short. Here's the first spin over the newly installed track,

Looping

But first the old layout, the Lost Ocean Line, had to go,

The Lost Ocean Line, 19 June 2011 to 5 February 2017, RIP

End of Summer Edition

. . .

Thanks for dropping by! Happy New Year!

2016 wasn't 1976 and 2017 won't be 1977

[My grandmother set up a snow village every year at Christmas. The photo has no date, but was likely taken sometime between the late '40s and late '50s - before my time, but it's the only photo I have. I recently found the picture stashed with some other old photos. If my memory is functioning properly, it looked much the same in the late '60s and '70s.]

First, some blog factoids before the navel gazing and crystal ball divining.

Most accessed 2016 E. L. Moore post.
Wales meets Colorado on the Eagleroost & Koontree RR

My favourite 2016 E. L. Moore post(s) - it was a tie :-)

The Spumoni Club Coach

The Holy Grail of E. L. Moore Photos

My favourite 2016 project

The Spumoni Club Coach

My favourite E. L. Moore photo of 2016

The Water Wheel Mill

Favourite binge watched tv series in 2016
Life on Mars (UK series)

Most ego expanding post of 2016,
The Cobol Building
This excellent build - I especially love the sign - has done more to convince me to upgrade to modern building methods than anything else I've read. And if you were wondering, The Fortran Building got some upgrades and repairs this year.
Repairs to the Fortran Building

2016 post that inspired me to get off my duff and finish a stalled project
Scenery and buildings for Mt. Adams
Suitably inspired, here is the finished Mt. Lowe observatory
At the Mt. Lowe Observatory

Least viewed 2016 post
Garner's Sin Sniper is not crummy

Three most commented 2016 posts
Fella from up Canada way

Wales meets Colorado on the Eagleroost & Koontree RR
The Holy Grail of E. L. Moore Photos

Some good novels read in 2016

The Sin Sniper and Murder Has Your Number by Hugh Garner

Brighton Rock, Stamboul Train, and A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene

The Was An Old Woman by Howard Engel

The Saratoga Barrier by Frank Herbert

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

The 2016 build most likely to cause a nervous breakdown

The HOJPOJ water tower

Cutest build of 2016

HO-scale Piper Cub

Most eye-strain inducing build of 2016
Dilly Behind the Eight Ball

Favourite hobby related books read in 2016
Clear the Tracks! by Joseph Bromley
Welcome to Marwencol by Mark Hogancamp & Chris Shellen
Elgin Park: An Ideal American Town by Michael Paul Smith
Elgin Park: Visual Memories of Midcentury America at 1/24th Scale by Michael Paul Smith & Gail K. Ellison

Light Ray Blues, Series 2, got started in the spring of 2015 with 4 instalments. I wrote 16 more over a long, hot weekend in July 2016, and then posted the series throughout September and October. If you need some jaw dropping excitement to help work off all that turkey, you can begin binge reading all 20 pulse pounding chapters from here :-)

Package Deal

What's that you say, you can't take the excitement of Series 2 without first reading Light Ray Blues, Series 1. For all you Sheldon Cooper style completists out there, you can access the first of 39 mind-blowing instalments that set the model streetcar world on fire in 2012 and 2013  from here:-)
Light Ray Blues, part 1

Best movie seen in 2016

Miles Ahead

Strangest time travel short story of 2016 (and the only time travel story of 2016)

One day in July of 1967

The 2016 build most deserving of a place in Las Vegas

The new post office

Biggest HO-scale party of 2016

Last Thursday's Car Show

Most impressive E. L. Moore 'lost' article of 2016

Cole Mfg. Co.

This has been a year of change. In February, the new owner of the company I worked at for 20 years decided I was too old and expensive for them, so they laid me off. On the upside, in October I started work at a better job, at a better company. I was lucky. I was glad to have the E. L. Moore project to provide a pleasant diversion.

Speaking of the E. L. Moore project, I think it'll be coming to an end in the next few weeks. Likely by around the end of January or early February I'll have posted most of the outstanding material. No doubt there'll be a few more posts throughout 2017, but the majority of the mainline posts will be wrapping up. It's been an unbelievable little adventure. When I got started in August 2013 I figured I'd write a few posts about some things I liked about his work and it would end in 2014. I'm glad it took the turns it did and it has provided lots of fun. There are still many E. L. Moore mysteries, and if I'm lucky enough to help solve them, you'll get all the breaking news here :-) 

Ah 2017, there's an entire generation of people poised to enter, or who are entering, post-secondary education who are pure 21st century people. E. L. Moore was a pure 20th century man even though he was born in 1898. He passed on in 1979, well before the 21st century was much of a concern. My series about him is called 'E. L. Moore in the 21st Century' and as it comes to an end I'm often thinking about what message his work might have for this century. Even though he was prolific, and left a large legacy of projects, I think he has more than that to offer. He bridged the old American miniature building folk art tradition and mid-20th century model railroading. Those folk artists were all about manifesting their love of certain buildings that were important to them using whatever means were at hand, and Mr. Moore brought that to model railroading. For sources, he drew on photos, books, his own experiences, observations and travels, his memory, discussions, and his imagination. Sometimes he pilfered ideas from kits and made versions better than the 'originals'. He didn't like building kits and thought their only use was providing examples in how to, or not, write assembly instructions. Here's what I think his message is for us: look around; collect references; consult your memories; find what you love; build it;  build a lot; there's probably a story in there somewhere and it's good to communicate that too; remember that it doesn't take a lot of money to produce something good. You don't have to let the dominant culture lead you by the nose.

The American folk art miniature building tradition isn't completely dead. This year I stumbled across the work of Michael Paul Smith. Although he has professional experience, his work is deeply personal in that old folk art vein. Inspired by his project to recreate his childhood home in 1/24 scale, I spent some time drawing 1/24 scale plans and elevations of my childhood home. It's tougher than it seems. All I had were photos of the house and my memories. No dimensions. No drawings. No measurements of any kind. Sometimes my memories were at odds with the photos' objective facts. And sometimes unpleasant memories were dredged up along with the pleasant ones. Those plans took weeks of spare time to finish. Reality caught up with me and I didn't have time to move on to the next step of building a model. And I got a little stalled trying to decide whether to build an HO or 1/24 scale version. Maybe I'll give it try in 2017.

I can't mention the E. L. Moore project without sending out a big thank-you to everyone who has provided information, access, content, clues, questions and great discussion along the way. Many people who have helped have wanted to remain anonymous in our internet infested world, so I'll stick with first names and aliases for now in my thanks. Many thanks and best wishes to Debra, Paul Z., Vince, Chris, Jim, Becky, JR, Melinda, Nick, John, Mr. X, John, M, Leigh, Neil, Mary, Penny, Paul, Melissa, and Valerie.

I'm terrible at making New Year's resolutions, not to mention keeping them. For 2016 I thought I'd give up how-to style blog posts. I couldn't see any future in them. I wasn't writing about any new techniques, so what was the point. As regular readers will note, I fell off the wagon hard and wrote plenty of them, but all that was comfort writing. Debra doesn't agree with my no more how-tos stance. Her view is that retro-scratchbuilding needs to be taught to a new generation, at the very least as a gateway to better, more modern scratchbuilding. I'm not so sure there's much interest. She's probably right, but we agree to disagree :-) We'll see how long my self-imposed how-to prohibition lasts.

I'm thinking 2017 will be a year of shifting gears, trying new things, tooling up with new practices and hopefully with new ideas. Over the last few weeks I've been taking my layout apart and storing things away in preparation for whatever's next. I started building it in the fall of 2011, and it was more-or-less complete by 2015. One of the things I've learned is that my interest is making buildings and photographing staged scenes. I'm not into operation. I only run streetcars and trains around Christmas, and for friends and guests throughout the year if they have an interest in seeing the layout, otherwise my layout is my personal movie set where all the movies are static photos :-)

Any new layout is going to combine a retro-Toronto urban setting integrated with a beachfront scene. I'm kicking around lots of ideas; for example, using proper street rail for streetcar track instead of embedded train track; long streets; planning by placing buildings and things first and adding track later; building some retro-future stuff into the layout;  building a scale model of Sam the Record Man or Honest Ed's; use an 'exploratium' style instead of a 'layout' style for the layout; and on and on. 

Hmm, the retro-Toronto aspect might be blended with a little Ottawa. Ottawa used to have a streetcar system. It closed down in 1959, but the streetcar city aspects are still here if you look close enough, and there's some favourite places I'd like to incorporate in a new layout. This year I was in contact with the owner of Our Home and Miniature Land, a Miniature Worderland style HO-scale layout and facility representing Canada that is being built in Toronto. So far, the core display is focused on Toronto and some outlying regions, but work is underway to include Ottawa. After some summertime exchanges, I sent the fellow a brief on some things to think about that would help create a display that goes beyond Ottawa's tourist attractions and stereotypes. I haven't heard anything since, but it got me thinking that those non-stereotyped things that help make Ottawa, Ottawa can be included in my own layout if I put my thinking cap on straight. 

But, there are a couple of R/C aircraft I'd like to take a crack at building, so model railroading might go on hiatus for awhile. And I'd like to try either laser cutting or computer controlled paper cutters. I'm also thinking about light and how to use it better to get the moods I'm looking for. And I want to listen to a lot more music and read a lot more novels in 2017. I'm thinking about lots of directions, but haven't decided which to take.

Sylvie suggests I start a local club. I'm a Groucho Marxist when it comes to clubs: I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member, not to mention found one. Although, I'm never adverse to good conversation, drinks and food. 

I'd like to thank everyone who has dropped by and spent a few minutes here. I especially enjoy the discussions that take place. And to all those who control the spam-bots that constantly knock on my virtual door here at 30 Squares, and the spies who snoop on what's going on, why don't you read some of the posts and take-up retro-scratchbuilding :-) It's quite fun and more rewarding than what you're doing now.

Happy New Year and best wishes for health, happiness, peace and prosperity! I'll catch you on the flip flop.

P.S.

Maybe I'm not the Groucho Marxist I think I am. While in Toronto, Debra and I visited George's Trains. We hadn't been there in almost a year, so we had a lot of catching up with Sherwin to do. While we were chatting, a gentleman who was listening in, who only identified himself as Richard, invited us upstairs for a private tour of the Railview Model Railway Club's layout-in-construction. And what a tour it was. It's a vast layout being constructed in what was some rather banal office space. I started taking pictures as Richard narrated the layout's story and walked us through the areas, but I quickly realized that the room-after-room of interconnected layout was never going to photograph in any conventional way that would do it justice, so I'll just give you the one picture and note that if you're looking for a club to join in Toronto, this is the one. 

The layout focuses on the rail scene in Hamilton, Oakville, Burlington, St. Catherines, Aldershot and thereabouts areas of southwestern Ontario, and various areas will be set in the '60s, '70s and '80s. It's been under construction for three years, but it looks like there are still lots of great modelling opportunities ahead.

The other thing about George's is that it seems whenever I drop in there is always some sort of E. L. Moore related thing for sale. This time I stumbled across a constructed Molasses Mine kit on the resale shelf: $34.95 CDN if you're interested. And there always seems to a Ma's Place for sale. It was no different this time; there was one just a few feet away from the mine. Weird.