E. L. Moore book notice in April '23 Interchange

A notice for the E. L. Moore eBook appears on page 14 of the April 2023 issue of the Ottawa Valley Associated Railroaders' newsletter, The Interchange. Today the OVAR newsletter, tomorrow the New York Times bestseller list :-) Oh, wait, it's not for sale, it's free :-)

A kit of E. L. Moore's Central Warehouse?

I continue to rummage through old issues of the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette, and last night I stumbled across this new product review in the Mar / Apr '92 issue for a model which looks very much like E. L. Moore's Central Warehouse. You may recall that almost 3 years ago I wrote about a more recent kitification of the Central Warehouse. 

In the book I didn't write about the craftsman-style kits of E. L. Moore designs that have appeared over the years. In many ways, these kits have nothing to do with Moore, other than continue to demonstrate his ongoing influence. Some kits state they're based on his designs, most don't. I'm not sure if any of these kits are licensed by the magazines where the projects first appeared. I suspect most are bootlegs.

Whenever I see kits based on E. L. Moore projects they always make me laugh given that the man himself had this to say about kits: 

"Fact is, I hate like poison to put a kit together."

Thoughts while building the Insectary

Over the last week or so I've been working on the Insectary. It turned out to be a rather pleasant little project and the resulting model seems rather striking. 

If you compare these photos of the model to the real thing you'll see I've taken a few liberties and made some changes to several details, but I've stuck pretty closely to the overall design. I took this approach because I wanted to build this from odds-and-ends I had on hand in my scrapbox and avoid buying new materials. Although, I had to relent on the windows. I didn't have any suitable moldings, and I didn't want to scratchbuild 25 window frames (!), so purchasing something suitable was the only way to proceed.  After some guesswork regarding window dimensions, I ended up buying Tichy Train Group item #8062, 24" x 56" 2/2 double hung window moldings. Now the windows on the prototype aren't double hung, but appear to be hinged at their tops which allows them to swing open at the bottom, so yet another deviation. 

Verticals are 0.125" x 0.125" styrene strips 

Now that the E. L. Moore book is done I've been feeling a bit adrift blog-wise. The ELM project has been 'officially' going on since 2013, and 'unofficially' it traces back to the second post I made in March 2009 on building Bunn's Feed & Seed. I have simultaneous feelings that the long era of ELM posts is over and not over as there are still many unanswered questions. For the most part though I feel the posts are over, and there's an ELM shaped void in the blog :-)

The blog's stats show the ELM posts to be by far the most popular, followed by posts on other famous mid 20th century model railroaders. Strangely, before I got into serious ELM posts, the most popular posts were those in the first series of the Streetcar Noir pulp, Light Ray Blues. For awhile it had quite a lot of views from Japan for some unknown reason. The second and third series did ok, but not as well as the first. Posts about my own projects rank well below ELM, legendary model railroaders, and novellas. In a surprising twist, the most popular post on my own work was actually a rather banal photo of my old LOL layout I posted on Instagram. There's a message in all this for me :-)

Shingles are strips cut from 220 grit sandpaper

I'm thinking the posts are going to become more random than usual - I've been told some consider the blog chaotic, so maybe no one will notice :-) - as I settle into some other groove. Frankly I'm not even sure if blogging is the way to go these days given the dominance of video when it comes to how-to build scale models material. I have no desire to make videos, so blog retirement is a possibility - although I have said that before and gotten right back on the saddle after a few days of retirement :-) 

The roof is removable; it's made from 0.060" thick styrene scraps

Building the Insectary was a nice diversion from turgid blogging thoughts: it was a bit tricky construction-wise, but small in size so I didn't have to wait days to see significant progress.

The foundation is also made from 0.060" styrene sheet

Anyway, so much for navel gazing.

I have a lot of leftover window frames. They come in 12 packs, and I needed 25, so I've 11 for the scrapbox. I can see them being used for some other buildings that are near the Insectary. The windows will give the collection a family feeling, so they won't go to waste. 

The interior is simple, just a counter that runs around the perimeter with some cupboards underneath. I popped over to Ikea to see what they had in stock, but they were sorely lacking in anything in HO scale :-) So, out came the 0.020" thick styrene sheet, and in a bit I had some counter space. Once the layout is further along I'll add some sort of interior action - genetic insect experiments gone awry ?

For this picture I put the camera lens right up against an end window and hoped for the best. Yeah, there's some messy paint work near the eaves, but that isn't visible from normal viewing angles. I'll have to clean that up when I add some interior detail.

Well, that's it for now. I wonder if the farm has an Arachnidary?

A little more on Hugh Boutell

Image sourced Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette, Nov / Dec '92

At the OVAR swap meet a couple of Sundays ago I bought a small collection of back issues of the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette - 50 more-or-less random issues from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s for $3. I've been spending some pleasant evenings leafing through their pages, seeing the sights. I was quite happy to find an article in the Nov / Dec '92 issue called The Influence of Hugh Boutell by Bob Brown, the magazine's longtime editor and publisher. You may recall I wrote a little about Boutell awhile back on his use of Pretty Village cardboard cutout buildings on his layout. Although the NGSLG didn't answer all my questions about Boutell's use of structures, it did answer a few other ones.

The NGSLG article showed a high resolution version of the photo that appeared in the August '34 issue of Popular Science - that's the one I've shown above. It allowed me to get a better view of the buildings, and the image strengthens my opinion that they are Pretty Village items, which I've noted in the image with red boxes

Second, it's mentioned that the layout in the photo is 1-1/4 inch gauge. His pioneering OO layout (which I erroneously thought was HO), was built much earlier between 1925 and 1929.

Mr. Brown ends the article by noting he acquired Boutell's structures along with his other models in 1979. That's a long time ago now, but I wonder if he still has them?

Central becomes Centennial

In our last episode I reported on fence post installation. Since then the fencing - using the classic screen door mesh method - has been installed, a corn field - using Walthers corn - has been planted, streetcar stops have been installed, a cattle path to the pasture has been added, road markings and stops at the cattle and pedestrian crossings have been created, and an entry sign has been put up near the main road.

Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm is the inspiration for this layout. It's nowhere near an exact replica, so I felt a renaming was in order. The real Central Experimental Farm became the Centennial Experimental Farm with the fictional farm's core story being its streetcar service was reinstated as a 1967 Centennial project.

For the eagle-eyed there are a few TTC inspired touches I'll leave for the reader to identify :-)