The not so Secret Origins of Cal’s Lumberyard

My 1970s build of Cal's Lumberyard

Many of E. L. Moore’s projects have some sort of origin story. Cal’s Lumberyard is one of them.

The first mention of Cal’s is in a letter E. L. Moore wrote to Russ Larsen, then associate editor of Model Railroader, on 4 May 1972 to see if there was interest in an article about Cal’s:

I have a 2500 word story covering a lumber and building supply plant - this plant covers an area of 7 x 8 inches (in HO) and can be built for less than two dollars and in about two weeks of evenings.

Materials are Northeastern’s clapboard siding and corrugated, plus some balsa.

Prototype is of about 1920, and has a car siding running into car shed . . . and in model also as N gauge track running to outlying sheds and lumber piles, using AHM lumber trucks with bolsters removed, as lumber carrying vehicles.

Three sheets of quarter inch scale drawings show three elevations of plant, accompanied by four 5/7 photos. Am enclosing four 3/5 prints for your look-see.

Let me know if you’re interested in seeing the article.

Lumber car image sourced from Walthers

My understanding is the “AHM lumber trucks with bolsters removed” were the HOn2-1/2 log cars marketed by AHM in their Minitrains line of narrow gauge trains in the late 1960s ( AHM item #3103). They likely have a long history of production as I see a very similar item - maybe the same - being marketed by Walthers, although they are listed as ‘Sold Out’. Comparing these log cars to the one shown in E. L. Moore’s article, they do appear to be the same, with the bolsters removed of course.

Russ Larsen was interested in the article and wrote back to Moore on 26 June 1972 to say so:

I would be interested in seeing an article on the lumber and building supply plant. Please send it to my attention.

Moore mailed off the article to Larsen on 30 June 1972. Here’s what he had to say in the cover letter:

Here ’tis, the LUMBER AND BUILDING SUPPLY PLANT, 2500 words, 4 photos and with 3 sheets of drawings to 1/4 inch scale.

That Milling & Feed Plant by Schneider was an interesting model in June issue . . . nice piece of work and made into an unusually fine article.

By the way, whatever became of the old Foundry — Established 1900 I sent in back in 1967? Not that it matters, I got my check for it, but I thought it was too good to get tossed out, which I presume you do whenever your files get too full. Well, no matter, just curious.

As we know, the Foundry project was never published, but a few years back MR gave permission to post it here. The letter seems to imply that Moore was particularly fond of that structure. Linn Westcott, MR’s editor at the time, must have read Moore’s letter, and I think he became concerned about Moore’s comment about tossing unused articles in the trash. In the letters I’ve seen in the E. L. Moore Archive Westcott always comes across as a high class person in the way he handled sticky situations, and his response was no different in this case. Westcott wrote the following to Moore on 12 July 1972:

That foundry story, E. L. . . . 

most certainly has not gone into any wastebasket. It is ready and waiting for a clumsy editor to schedule it. I think I made a mistake in my methods during the first ten years of being editor — it was that I did not make any attempt to publish stories in the order in which they were purchased. As a result, the magazine tended to have more shorter features — which is a good thing in itself — but some of the longer features then began to pile up in the waiting files. The result is that the authors of longer pieces may feel that they are not appreciated when actually the delay has simply been a mechanical thing.

I’m trying, now, to accept fewer long pieces so I can work off the backlog of longer features (and some short ones too) but this will take time. For about two years things have been going much better with keeping current authors in print, but it is not easy to manage from this end when balance and story size are also important.

Somehow you and I have had very little correspondence together. First Andy, with MODEL TRAINS, did most of the writing and then after we both came over to MODEL RAILROADER, it was Bill Rau who kept up the contact. But I was always looking over his shoulder, and I have appreciated always your work. Your choice of structures and your way of making a small building seem important are most appreciated.

You also mentioned, sometime back, that our rates of payment seemed low. I have no idea how they stack up with others, now, at least we have increased them considerably since you first made that remark — which is partly why I asked for a higher rate and got it.

Please accept this check, E. L., for $100.00 for the Lumber and Building Supply Plant feature on the basis of its taking about 11 columns — if it takes more we’ll send an adjustment check as usual.

And that was that. The Lumber and Building Supply Plant appeared in the April 1973 issue of MR under the title Cal’s Lumberyard.

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:

E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumberyard: Getting Started

Sourced from the E. L. Moore Archives

In the E. L. Moore eBook I go on at length about how in August 1973 Bunn's Feed & Seed was the first Moorian project I built, and how that was followed by the construction of several new Moore projects that were published in 1974. What I didn't mention was a little literary time travelling I did in the summer of '73 back to April of that year.

Shortly after I had 'discovered' Bunn's I was off to Cedarbrae Public Library to look for other issues of Model Railroader. They had a few, and one was the April 1973 issue that contained E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumberyard. I photocopied the pages, and used them to make an attempt at building it. My build was crude, although it made up for deficiencies in craftsmanship with lots of youthful enthusiasm. I've wanted to revisit that build for a long time and give it another go. Now seems like as good a time as any given that I'm looking to get back in the model building groove and all.

But, after thinking about this project I'm not going to do a 'box stock' build (should that be 'page-by-page stock' build?). Time has gone on and I do have some other interests. I've decided on two major revisions:

1. Build it from styrene.

2. Tweak the design to enhance its 'play value'.

Yes, yes, the first is sacrilege I know, but I have a lot of styrene and styrene parts in my scrapbox I want to use up and nowhere near enough scrap balsa or scale lumber to make a dent in this project using wood castoffs. 

Sourced from E. L. Moore Archives

Ok, so onto tweaking the design.

One thing not a lot of people appreciate is that E. L. Moore had a strong interest in HO narrow gauge model railroading. I should do a post about his narrow gauge work, but for now, let's just consider Cal's Lumberyard. You can see it incorporates some N-gauge track so narrow gauge HO flat cars can haul boards out to the yard for storage. As well, there's a standard gauge siding for loading and unloading boxcars of lumber.

To make this building a little more fun for use on a micro layout that incorporates both HO scale standard and narrow gauges I thought it might be good not to dead end the tracks in the main building, but to let them extend out the front. This opens up more possibilities on how cars can come and go. It also allows for easier viewing of what's going on inside the building.

New facade for Cal's Lumberyard

After some fiddling at the drafting table, this is what I came up with. The basic sizes and shapes of the facades are the same as E. L. Moore used, but I've added a door on main building big enough to allow my Lands & Forests boxcar through, moved the smaller truck loading door to the left side, and eliminated the front wall cladding from the standard gauge boxcar unloading shed. 

In the drawing you can see I haven't precisely placed the other windows and doors. I plan to use leftover plastic castings from my scrapbox for those, and will do detailed placement when the time comes. For now, I'm just eyeballing the size and correct placement of those items to make sure there's roughly enough space for them. 

One other thing I'll note. If you extend the roof line of the main building you'll find that it intersects the outer corner of the office. Is this just a coincidence? I wonder if Moore originally had a different idea for the office's design? I only mention this as it suggests another interesting variation on this build.

Ok, so here's the main building's front wall in plastic.

A parts list:

- The facade is cut from an odd chunk of leftover Evergreen clapboard siding found in the scrapbox. I don't recall what product it is, but the sheet is 0.040" thick, and siding spacing is approximately 2.5 mm.

- All door opening trim is 0.020" x 0.040" strip.

- Each piece of vertical trim on the sides is made from 2 pieces of 0.040" square strip glued together. You could use 0.040" x 0.080", but I was using up leftovers.

- The window casting is an N-scale Tichy Train Group item I installed vertically instead of horizontally (that's why the right side of the window is thinner than the left). Again, I was using up leftovers. I'll blame the weird orientation on Cal :-)

-The foundation is a scrap piece of 0.040" sheet styrene cut to size.

I'm not sure how long this project will take. These days I'm not goal oriented, and am focusing on the experience of model making as I search for the elusive groove. I've got a few projects on the go and jump from one to another as the mood strikes. This means posts are likely to be more chaotic than usual.

The Ramsey Three

Top: RMC July '63 | Middle: RMC Dec '64 | Bottom: E. L. Moore Archives

Paper trail on the birth of E. L. Moore’s Ramsey Journal Building

Sourced from the E. L. Moore Archives

In the E. L. Moore eBook I pieced together the story of how the model and kit of F & M Schaefer Brewery came to be as it was the first of the AHM plastic kits based on Moore designs to be produced. The second kit, the Ramsey Journal Building, has no detailed paper trail in the archive documenting the development of the kit, but there are some letters that give us a look into how the model came to be.

Hal Carstens, editor of RMC at the time, was in the habit of bouncing ideas for model projects off Moore. In a 28 June 1967 letter to Moore, Carstens bounced the idea for a model of RMC’s then headquarters, the Ramsey Journal Building:

…How practical would be a model of the old brick structure that was in the RMC Dec. 1965 center fold in the Wallworth painting? And in which our office is? The front would be the roughest part. One side (left) is plain brick with no windows and butts against another building.  Railroad side has mostly simple windows not shown in the photo or painting, but for which data is available. Rear has since been added to, but what was plain brick with a coupla windows, data for which is available. Tower is gone. Be kinda big but cute…

In the margin of the letter, Moore hand wrote this note to himself as he pondered the model’s design:

Much too big as seen in painting - I would say 25x40 and 30’ high excluding tower. Would put clocks in tower - what suggestions as to lettering over lower front? Instead of Vanderbeck Drug Store (Railroad Model Craftsman maybe) or whatever? Who needs data on side windows or rear unless unique?

I guess Moore did some further thinking about the model’s design and bounced some ideas of his own off Carstens in this extract from a 3 July 1967 letter to him:

All that palaver but it’s too much trouble to research waterfronts right now and easiest things first: so, I got out that two page center spread of the Wallworth painting — no research, no nothin’ but build it. And it ain’t so big as seen in the picture which is in HO scale — say, 25’ x 40’ and 30’ high excluding tower. Would put clocks in those vacancies up there, OK? The upper front would take just a little doing. Of course there’s a difference in doing it and doing it so the average modeler can follow without rupturing his sleen (spleen). Made a little trial on it yesterday and have it just about ready to put in place when I build the rest of it. Sunbursts of chalk. Tower doesn’t present any particular difficulties. JOURNAL at top I suppose, but what of the lower lettering — RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN, maybe? Where the Vanderbeck Drug Store or whatever is. Sides no problem, just windows — rear maybe a large door and platform out to siding, and usual windows. I’ll put queries on separate card. Then lay siding and only show one main track blocking rest out with train if necessary in photograph from left.

The next relevant letter I came across is one from Carstens to Moore dated 22 July 1967. It starts off:

What freight elevator? You’ll find some more photo of the “Dater Building” in the July 1963 RMC. Not too good for the side tho. Tsk.

I don’t know exactly what prompted Carstens to mention a freight elevator. I can’t find a letter from Moore to Carstens that mentions including a freight elevator, even though the model eventually did have one. I suspect Moore did send Carstens queries on separate cards as he noted in the 3 July letter  (meaning he sent Carstens questions about the model on postcards - at times they did exchange postcards, so there is a precedent) and one was about an internal freight elevator.

At the end of the 22 July letter Carstens notes:

Ok, no Austrian on the Journal Bldg. There goes my bottle of slivovitz. Heh, if you’d drink one of his bottles of slivovitz, you’d make him a whole dang town.

Once again, I think there is some missing correspondence, but I interpret the above to mean that there had been some discussion between Carstens and Nikolas Pfusterschmid - the Austrian being referred to - about turning the Ramsey Journal Building model into an AHM kit. In the eBook chapter on the AHM plastic models I discussed the possibility of Pfusterschmid, a well known leader in model railroad plastic kit marketing and product development of the time, being the catalyst for the creation of the Original 9 E. L. Moore kits. The only other reference I’ve seen about the development of a Journal building kit was in a letter from AHM’s Peter Van Dore that it would be one of the next ones produced after the Brewery.

The next mention of the Ramsey Journal Building model is in the 25 July 1967 cover letter to Moore’s typescript for the W. E. Snatchem funeral parlour model:

Old Journal building is completed except for lettering other than JOURNAL which is in place. If with drug store below, furnishings are ready to install with colorful window display. Second floor office fully furnished, lights installed. Them four clocks up in the tower really set it off . . . I’ll run up a flag on the flag staff before I photograph it.

It appears Moore quickly went from a suggestion by Carstens to finished model in about a month. It must have been strenuous because he concluded the above letter with this:

Well pardon me while I go out and lie in my hammock a while . . . . . 

On 13 August 1967 Moore submitted the article’s typescript and included this note in the cover letter:

Well here ’tis, looking a bit like the painting, such as shows. Damned telephone poles got in my way so I slapped ‘em down. My Porter hadda do to pull the passenger train being as I don’t have much to choose from.

You can see in this post’s lead photo that the telephone poles that appeared in the painting have been eliminated.

And that’s the story - or what’s left it - of the creation of the Ramsey Journal Building.