Core Silo Assembly
Actual Marx Operation Moonbase core shown.
Note position of ladders on litho
The Core is
made of 6 three inch wide panels, back and front, on a 9+ inch piece of thin
cardboard. These are glued back and front on the cardboard folded in a U shape
shown. Hint: the Upper Stories all have red floors,
the ground floor has brown, or none. The litho graphics are beautiful in the
original, depicting what a moonbase was supposed to
look like underground in 1962. The
graphics I have are awful for this, but I had to lift them from a variety of
pictures found on the net. Efforts to find someone with an actual core and
willing to send me clear pictures of that failed. These are at least adequate.
I apologize for this.
21 Aug 14 I was able to find some better but not great pics, I include the upgraded versions here.
Front center panel PDF Improved
Back center panel back PDF Improved
Inside of both sides PDF (print two)
Outside of both sides PDF (Print two)
You may mix
and match the sides for variety if you wish.
Also print
out the floor and assemble that. I recommend printing out the floor on
cardstock.
Once the U
is made, dry fit it to the floor, the plateau, and see if everything fits. You
may have to trim the core to fit. The two red center “targets” on the floor
should line up with the twin missile holes in the roof. Once you are satisfied,
glue the core to the floor and glue the top of the core to the Plateau roof.
The floor should also be glued to the floor of the plateau. Take another piece of
cardboard, as thick as the floor cardboard attached to the shoebox, and glue it
to the overhang of the floor. This prevents bending of the floor.
Notice if
you will that the red center targets are usually covered with a blue rocket
launcher. This is common, and those rocket launchers are usually broken as you
see in the top of the page picture.
These
vertical launchers are very hard to find, and expensive when you do. To make
do, I created a cheap and simple rocket stand that I think does the job quite
well.
This is made
from a restaurant plastic condiment container with common wire connector hot
glued to the bottom.
I tried this
with the lid on it, for added strength, but the lid caused problems in the
confined areas of the moonbase, so I took it off. I
recommend painting the “rocket stand” dark blue to keep with the Marx style. If
you do not want to do this you can stand the missiles directly on the red dots
on the floor, as shown in my picture, but they have a tendency to fall over if
you do.
The rocket
stands are useful in displaying all the Marx rockets that were designed to be
used on the vertical launchers. At the very least, they prevent them from
falling over.
That pretty
much takes care of the plateau.
Questions or to show me how it turned
out send email here:
All serious email will be answered