E. L. Moore’s Moe Lass’ Old Sorghum Mill - Cutting the Balsa Walls

[After the walls were cut out, I tilted them up to see how they looked.]

This is another one of those E.L. Moore projects that attracted my attention, but I can’t quite put my finger on why: the clerestory, the large fireplace, large front windows, and an overall interesting shape seem to add up to something for me. Mr. Moore published this project in the April 1966 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, and like 1965, this was another year where he was very prolific and published 6 building construction projects in RMC. And it turned out that this project was one of the simplest.

Ontario is too far north for a sorghum mill, so I’ll repurpose it. Apparently, Mr. Moore looked ahead to just such a possibility,

Well anyway, it’s a picturesque sort of building and if you have no desire for an antiquated sorghum mill you can always find other uses for a sturdy structure of this sort.

What the new use will be, I’m not too sure just yet.

Mr. Moore was a balsa aficionado, so although he used a material called Northeastern brick for the walls that I’ve not been able to find, I’ve substituted with 1/16 inch sheet balsa - which is the material specified for the floor and roof - that will be covered with MicroMark brick paper in keeping with the old-school nature of this build.

When I finally decided to get started on this project I was having a little trouble getting my mind settled down. I eventually decided to put my DVD of Around Midnight into the tv, and after watching for awhile, I was ready to have a go. I haven’t seen this movie in a very long time and I’d forgotten how good it is. I won’t win any awards for speed in cutting out the walls since it took the entire movie, plus the first quarter or so of The Endless Summer - although I do admit to more movie watching than balsa cutting :-)

El Camino Municipal Swimming Pool – Test fitting some parts

I’ve fitted the pickup bed, liberated the package tray from the interior bucket and glued it into what was previously the rear window, added some styrene I-beam to the base to boost the pool to a suitable height, and glued in a styrene sheet to fill the opening formed by the package tray and the door pillars. Also, a bit of filler was used to smooth out some joints that didn’t fit too well.

[I bought this kit a few years ago in the bargain bin at a nearby hobby shop. I like to look through sale items just to see if there is anything interesting, and cheap! I don't necessarily plan to use the items for their intended purpose, but more that they have interesting parts I might use in the future. This was one of those. It also has a great modern-style store front that I'll use someday, I'm just not too sure when that day will come and what the project will be.]

However, the most interesting job was adding the sign. It’s an item from an old Life-Like HO scale Kentucky Fried Chicken store kit. The sign’s support posts supplied in the kit were discarded, and some new ones were cut from 1/8 inch diameter styrene tubing. These new ones allowed me to tilt the sign to a more extreme angle than those in the kit and adjust the height to something that seemed right for this structure.

I usually spray paint car models and I want to do it on this project to get an ok finish on the body. Problem is I always spray outside and never in the house. With cold January weather here, I’m looking forward to the annual mid-winter thaw so I can squeeze in a little painting on some projects that are stacking up on the workbench, otherwise they’ll have to be parked until spring.

First Video

I shot some video of the layout over the Christmas holidays. This weekend I finally got around to figuring out how to use iMovie to put the video pieces together and then load the whole thing to youtube.

El Camino Municipal Swimming Pool – First cuts

I’ve been thinking about this build – along with several others I hope to finally get started – for quite a while. Instead of my usual pre-build fretting over how I think all the building steps should proceed, I just decided to jump in and start cutting. Although that seems reckless, it often helps me get over mental log jams. Simply making a start can often clarify things.

The donor kit is an AMT/Ertl 1959 El Camino. I chose this particular vintage of El Camino because the roof is shaped something like a cap that sits over the cab instead of being seamlessly integrated into the body as on later models. To me, this made it a little more building like. I also like the fins 

The pick-up bed, rear cab pillars and roof were cut away from the body using a cutting wheel in my dremel tool, followed by several iterations with the grinding drum and various sanding sticks. To get a square and even edge along the bottom, a sheet of sand paper was placed on the workbench, and the piece was sanded as a whole until it looked right.

I’ve been thinking this project might also be a good candidate for LED lighting. Small ones could be used in the tail-lights, and the bottom of the pool could be fitted with lights that point up into the ‘water’.

Niagara Falls Trolley Cards

Over the Christmas holidays I was browsing through the family files at my father’s house and came across a post card set that was bought as a souvenir of a trip – probably taken by my mother’s mother ‘s family - to Niagara Falls.

I don’t know anything certain about the dates of either the vacation, or the cards, but they might both date from the 1920s. The set contains 11 cards, each one printed on both sides, of views of the falls, boats, bridges, and trolleys. They are quite beautiful. I like the ambience of these images. Debra and I last visited the falls back in 2010, and some of that feel still lingers there if one looks for it, but there’s a lot of Las Vegas there too.