Saturday, November 21, 2015

E. L. Moore's Uncle Sim's Snuffery

[E. L. Moore's Uncle Sim's Snuffery; J. R. Fisher collection]

E. L. Moore's Uncle Sim's Snuffery was published in the December 1975 issue of Railroad Modeler. A snuff mill and associated snuff quarry you say? Well, lest us not forget those deposits of molasses that required a mine. Mr. Moore clearly stumbled across some odd geological formations in his time. I'll let him tell it from the article's intro.
I can already hear some skeptics pishing and pshawing at the idea of quarrying snuff, but to these I can only point out that scientists have made a quite simple explanation of the phenomenon and that Ripley on his "Believe It Or Not" column, gave it quite a display.
I've had to build my model largely from a faulty memory, aided to some degree by some much faded postcard pictures and some almost indecipherable letters written my mother [sic] by Uncle Sim. Plus some imagination of unknown percentage.
The article shows there was a small, narrow gauge Baldwin 0-4-0 and a string of mine cars from AHM that were used for mining snuff and driving it right into large end door with that chunk of track sticking out. I didn't see the train at the meet-up.
Uncle Sim's reminds me a lot of the Stuckum Glue Works as to overall shape and design even though Stuckum is brick.
The roof uses Mr. Moore's tried-and-true paper metal technique.
And that roof comes off to reveal a fully detailed interior. Unfortunately I didn't get a good photo the insides - too much shadow.

7 comments:

  1. I just have to comment again on how wonderful it is to see EL Moore's models in color as opposed to the black and white photos in the magazines. Color makes them even more amazing.

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    1. Colour, and the fact that these models are in good condition, makes them look new. Looking at the magazine black-and-whites today can give the impression that the models are dated and from an era with no relevance to ours. However, I think the colour emphasizes their vitality gives them back their place in our era. That vitality has been hidden a long time.

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  2. Everything today is buy this, buy that, place it all together on your layout. ELM showed true scratchbuilding and inspired me to new techniques of my own.

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    1. I agree things are more consumerist today. It's a golden age of good stuff to buy, but something is lost along the way. There seems to be strong do-it-yourself strain in some English blogs and it's likely in many other places as well - I just need to find it :-)

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  3. This building is a lot more like Rube's Rhubarb than Stuckum. Rube's has five tanks, and a slatted "crib", but it's the same layout overall, same positions for pieces.

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  4. To me it looks a little more like the famed Cannonball and Safety Powder Works. Whatever its origin I'm glad to find it, and all the other Moore models on this blog. I've managed to amass a reasonably collection of his articles but MR's and MRC's, particularly from the 50's and 60's are hard to find over here in England. Sometimes you strike lucky - though my wife doesn't quite see it like that, as the old pulp paper they were printed on has a marked aroma. I'm a bit like VDI above - being a mean ol', penny pinching Limey (my middle name is Scrooge) I have a sort of inbuilt opposition to paying £150.00 + for a loco, or the £40.00 approx bills for buildings I can quite happily build myself - so I do just that. There's far more sense of creative modelling fun, personal achievement and satisfaction out of making something from wood, card or brass than going out and simply waving a debit card. Mind you, the way the hobby and the world is going, the days of make it yourself or you don't have it may shortly be staging a comeback. Who knows?

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    1. To help keep the musty smell of old magazines under control, I put each magazine in a clear, archival bag, and then store all the bagged magazines in cardboard boxes designed for that purpose.

      ELM-style projects might make a comeback, but the allure of RTR and such is pretty strong in the marketplace.

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