Toward Pine Trees

The mighty White Pine is a kingpin of Ontario history. So I was chuffed to discover several scrawny ones amongst the Thicket. Being crowded by poplar and birch and some unidentifiable scraggly trees, most of them have branches on one side and several have branches only at their crowns. They would make poor Christmas trees, […]

Thicket Progress

Armatures for the thicket are complete for now. There were fewer discards than I anticipated, and so, I may need to demote some of the first row trees to the second row as I start planting if the thicket comes out too diaphanous. Once the armatures were formed and twisted into tree shapes, I coated […]

Homage

“Homage:” I think it’s one of Brian Rudko’s favourite words. For years, he’s been producing small shelf-top displays that consist of a model on a plinth with a backdrop that explains the model and why it’s important to him along with a photo or two, all artfully arranged, because that’s the kind of guy Brian […]

More Thicket Armatures

We’ve had a parade of visitors this summer, and as a result, the armatures for the thicket trees are nearing completion. After creating a number of trees with 26-gauge wire and strands of electrical chord, I went back to Michaels and found they also carry 32-gauge floral wire. This turned out to be just the […]

Percy and the New Gearbox

It’s been a while since we checked in on Percy. After the failure with my 3D-printed gearbox and 6x12mm 3V motors, I decided life is too short to solve every problem myself. So, I ordered a couple of RoadRunner Compact kits from HighLevel Kits, and a pair of 0615 12V motors from TramFabriek. These got […]

Sliding into Staging

In response to the thicket trial run, @bawdsey of Albion Yard asked about the window and how it relates to the layout: Does the window and it’s exterior background factor into the ‘picture’?The reason I ask, I had a similar experience though my window was frosted. To get round the backlighting and distraction of the […]

Coal Loads

I made the loads for the coal cars from some chunks of styrofoam that have been aging in the garage for years. The loader in Depot Harbor was a clamshell, and would have made heaps, rather than a single big lump like a chute over a moving car. Three of the cars got three heaps, […]

Thicket Armatures

We had house guests staying in the train room for the past week, and anyway it’s summer and the weather is too nice to spend days in the basement. It turns out that bending tree armatures is an excellent patio activity that requires minimal tools or precision, and is thus compatible with the consumption of […]

Thicket Trial Run

Using a paper template, I jig-sawed a plywood base for the thicket. The plywood is 6mm thick, and so, I cut the cork away to bring the new landform closer in height to the edge of the pasture. With a little luck, I won’t have to fill the gap between the two sections as it […]

Thicket Shapes Begin

Very few model railway activities lend themselves to sunny days on the deck. I reckon tree-making might, and so, I’ve started laying out the shapes of the first row of trees in the thicket. I started tracing the trees in InkScape, but that turned out to be very slow. So I switched to an iPad […]