Antipodean thoughts

 Many years ago, I had a couple of modelmaking clients in Australia. One gentleman, (let's call him Mr Smith), loaded me with a great many projects, too many to complete in my lifetime anyway. To be fair, he was a nice bloke and I had many pleasant dealings with him. He liked the work of E. L. Moore, that great structural scene builder of the seventies... if you haven't heard of E. L., here's a link to J. D. Lowe's fabulous blog which has a very interesting collection of info about him, as well as a host of other truly fascinating stuff.

Anyway, I built a lot of structures for our Mr Smith, most of which I didn't record sadly. Well, it was the seventies and I didn't have a very good camera. But I managed to get a few shots of the "Eight Ball Loco Works", which was also featured in one of the first issues of the Continental Modeller.

It was a lot of fun, of course. I made it out of birch veneer and card, very much in the spirit of E.L..

Although, shock, horror, it appears that even though E.L made the model, I got the idea from an article by Bob Hayden in the Railroad Model Craftsman, here...

Thank you to J.D. Lowe for the above image.There's a strange, convoluted story about the 8 Ball Loco works which I can't be bothered to untangle, although J.D. has a good go at it on his blog. Suffice to say that when I saw the model I wanted to get the tools out and make one myself! I think that's the thing about E.L. Moore, he was an inspirational modeller, working from unassuming materials. No 3D printing, laser cut wood or 3D drawing programs for him, just, (almost) a cornflake box and some balsa wood. An american John Ahern in some ways, but much more prolific.

After all these years, I'm still grateful to Mr Smith for introducing me to E.L.'s work. At the time, I built a couple of other HO scale models, based on Mo's Molasses works and a small roadside garage. 

There were also some models that just caught Mr Smith's eye, like the locomen's bothy from Radstock, below...

This last one has probably disintegrated by now, since it was covered in Pyruma clay... I later found out the clay should be heated to a high level in order not to lose integrity, something Allan Downes knew all about-  he told me afterwards with great relish. I did tell the client when I found out, but at that time nothing had happened to the model.

My last image is of an oil depot that I made for Mr Smith.

This was featured in "Your Model Railway" and I drew a diagram for it...

 The oil depot used quite a few resin castings by Malvern Models which I made the masters for, so I reckon that's not cheating!

Incidentally, J.D. Lowe has written and extensively researched a book on E. L. Moore which can be downloaded here- it's fascinating!