E. L. Moore

Earl Lloyd Moore (March 14, 1898 - August 12, 1979) was an American model railroader who published over a hundred pieces in various American model railroading magazines between 1955 and 1980 under the name E. L. Moore. His articles dealt primarily with scratch-building HO scale structures from low-cost, simple materials, primarily balsa wood. Moore prided himself on being able to construct complex models in little time for little money. He often noted that his projects could be built for a couple of dollars' worth of materials in a couple of weeks of evenings. Moore undertook this work while a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Moore concentrated on depicting the buildings and life of rural America in the 1890s and early 1900s - the period around his boyhood - in accordance with his personal view on the era. Moore's articles are notable both for their subject matter as well as their style. Along with the model under discussion, Moore would write the text, shoot and develop the photographs, and draft the plans. The accompanying photographs would often include one or more detailed staged scenes depicting everyday life with the building, and the text often wove in a humorous fictional story about the building and its inhabitants. He did not concentrate on modeling particular real railroads as is the norm for model railroad hobbyists, but focused on modeling buildings of both railroad and non-railroad subjects, as well as scenery.

Pre-model railroading biography

Early life Moore was born and raised on a farm in rural southern Michigan. it was within a 9-mile radius of Bangor, Michigan, about 2 miles from a two-room school he attended as a boy, and there was a windmill and water tank about 2 1/2 miles away where one could board a Chicago bound 'flyer' while its locomotive stopped to take on water.

His father was the school treasurer, and on the first of each month one of Moore's chores was to deliver the teacher's paycheck. Treasurers were known to handle money, and one night Moore's father was held up at gunpoint and forced to open the safe in his parents' bedroom. The robbers made their escape by breaking open a nearby railroad section house and stealing the handcar. The next day the handcar was found abandoned down the line about a dozen miles away.

Moore served in the United States Navy on the USS Georgia in 1917 and 1918 during World War I. and had an intention of publishing them. They were never published, but did surface in 2016. Also in 2016 a collection of previously unknown and unpublished manuscripts were found among Moore's papers.

Story characters His construction articles and photo essays often wove in a humorous fictional story about the structure and its inhabitants. This set his work apart from the more usual form of construction article presentation that focused mainly on materials and how-to instructions. Moore's characters were often cast as members of his extended family; how much they were based on actual family members is unknown.

Fictional characters that have appeared in Moore's stories include: Cousin Caleb, Uncle Wilber, Mr. P. Pottle, Great grandfather Lucifer Penroddy Snooks, Waldo Hoople, Cousin Rube, Grandfather Pudzi, Uncle Peabody, Uncle Dinwoody, Cousin Elmer (Dinwoody), Pistachio Jr., Ma Spumoni, Cousin Leroy, Uncle Sim, Grandpa Bunn, and Uncle Charley Spumoni.

Moore had a large personal library and was a voracious reader. The influences of written material on Moore's projects and stories include the works of: Charles 'Chic' Sale, Rowland Emett, Dorothy Parker, Carl Fallberg, Bill Schopp, H. Allen Smith, Lucius Beebe & Charles Clegg, Charles E. Carryl, Richard Armour, George Allen and Robert B. Nixon, Jr.

Moore would sometimes appear in his stories as himself, the project's builder. In his photos of HO scale scenes he would sometimes appear in the guise of his avatar: an HO scale old time photographer hunched behind his tripod mounted view camera cloaked in a horse blanket style focusing hood.

Outhouses Inspired by Charles 'Chic' Sale's fictional character Lem Putt, a carpenter specializing in outhouse construction, Moore built a number of HO scale outhouses of various designs that he mounted on small squares of card, signed on the bottom and gave to friends as gifts. Moore considered himself a master of outhouse modeling and eighteen of his creations were presented in his article A Mighty Relaxin' Job that appeared in the November 1975 issue of the NMRA Bulletin.

Television appearance In early July 1971, a camera crew from the television show Carolina Camera, produced by WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina, shot a segment on Moore and his model railroad work at his apartment. It is not known if it aired. Moore did not own a television.

Model construction techniques

Although Moore used a variety of techniques and materials to build HO scale structures, he was known for using certain construction methods again-and-again. They formed a suite of techniques for keeping his projects easy and low-cost. Moore's article, Bunn's feed and seed, that appeared in the August 1973 issue of Model Railroader, is an example project that makes use of most of his standard construction techniques.

Balsa wood Balsa was Moore's preferred material for all aspects of construction from wall and roof substrates to the load bearing members of bridges and trestles. It was a soft and easy material to work, but also strong, lightweight, inexpensive and readily available as it was also a primary airframe building material for model airplane hobbyists.

Shingles & siding with a wood burning tool One of his earliest articles, Burn those models, that appeared in the May 1955 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, and Modeling with a burning tool, that appeared in the July 1962 issue of Model Railroader, outlined his technique for using a woodburning tool to score shingle, brick, stone and siding patterns into balsa instead of purchasing equivalent commercial materials.

Paper metal If a building called for corrugated metal siding, Moore would make his own by taping a piece of 20-pound bond paper over a piece of Northeastern brand .040” spaced corrugated board and then scribing the corrugations into the paper with a spent ball point pen. To make metal roofing, he would score only along every third groove. When finished, the paper was cut into suitably sized scale panels.

Paper pipes His buildings often needed overhead and rooftop piping, which he would make by first rounding off some balsa strips whose cross section was close to that required, and then finishing the circular profile by forcing the strips through holes of the desired diameter. He would complete the job by wrapping the now cylindrical balsa strips in paper.

Inked window sashes & mullions Moore rarely used commercial window castings, but would make his own windows by rubbing a piece of clear acetate with an abrasive like pumice, talc or kitchen cleanser and then drawing in the mullions and sashes with a ruling pen and straightedge.

Selective compression Many real life buildings suitable for use on a model railroad can take up an inordinate amount of space on a layout in relation to its other elements; especially so in Moore's era when many HO scale model railroads were built on standard 4' x 8' sheets of plywood. Selective Compression is a technique used to remove redundant visual and spatial elements from a building and distill it down in size to just the features that make it unique and useful on a model railroad. The resulting model is then proportioned more consistently with a layout's other elements and spacings. Many of Moore's projects were sized or selectively compressed to fit within a 1 square foot area. Moore's selective compressions were not without controversy. A letter to the editor in the August 1974 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman noted that Moore's paper mill that appeared in the April 1974 issue was rather unrealistic because it had only a 7" x 8" footprint and actual paper mills were far more massive

The dot & blot method of time recording Moore often boasted that many of his projects only took about two weeks of spare time to build. He developed a tongue-in-cheek method of keeping track of time, outlined in his article Ceresota flour mill that appeared in the November 1976 issue of Model Railroader. On a calendar he would mark a dot for each hour worked, half a dot for a half hour, and a blot for anything thing that seemed like 3 hours. To get the time it took to build a project, he would add up the dots and blots, and add a few extras in for good measure.

Layouts & dioramas Traditionally, model railroaders are defined by their layouts. Moore built 5 layouts and dioramas. There was a 6th layout: Gordon Odegard noted that Moore's very first layout was a 4' x 6' Lionel O27 based setup, In February 1980, Jim Kelly, editor of Model Railroader, wrote a 5-page tribute to Moore in E. L. Moore's Legacy.