Cal's Lumber Yard in 1/24 scale?

With talk of Cal's Lumber Yard flitting through my brain these days I went looking for the 1/24 scale end wall elevation I drew up many years ago on a piece of leftover Gator Foam. I thought a 1/24 scale Cal's might make an interesting set for photographing 1/24 scale car and truck models, but once I got a physical sense for how large it would be, I stuffed it away with a lot of flat stock in the workshop. It now has a grubby patina, but is still in good enough condition to use. I don't think I'll be building this thing, but I'm still intrigued.

Was E. L. Moore's VW pickup a Husky toy?

Left: VW pickups at Bunn's Feed & Seed | Right: 1965 VW pickup made by Husky Toys

I've been doing some looking around to see if I can identify the VW pickup diecast toy that E. L. Moore used in many of his photographs. I'm wondering if it's an item from Husky Toys. It's possible, but it doesn't quite match. The search continues.

Moore in the summer of '77

Left: Cal's Lumber Yard | Right: Grusom Casket Co. (both snipped from July '77 MR)

Galen tipped me off to some E. L. Moore goodness in the Trackside Photos section of the July 1977 issue of Model Railroader. On the left is a build up of Cal's Lumber Yard by George Landow, which is appropriately called the E. L. Moore Lumber Co., and on the right is a build up of the Grusom Casket Co. kit on Lila Martin's Sierra & White River RR (I also see what looks like another Machine Shop build up in the full picture, which I didn't include here). I sometimes think a list of all E. L. Moore project sightings in model railroading magazines since the '60s would be as thick as a telephone book, if telephone books still existed :-)

A model engineer's workshop

I seem to have a thing for model engineering these days and was particularly taken by this workshop tour.

Model engineering in all its glory

I stumbled across this charming video and it made me wish for such a club here.