Ties and Ballast

As they say in another hobby, it’s time to fish or cut bait. So, this week I put away the test track and went for broke on the south module. I also happily discovered that October is still more than a week away, and I may still accomplish my goal for the month. I first […]

The Big Hairy Audacious Goal

My friend, Mark Dance, is someone I admire. He is an amazingly productive model railroader: in less than eight years, he took his quadruple deck Columbia and Western from paper to the cover of Railroad Model Craftsman, and a regular feature on the local operating scene. When I asked him at this weekend’s VanRail operating […]

The Engine House Lead

The Proto:87 Posse rode to my place last night in the form of a visit from Andrew. As I mentioned, I’m eager to get back to the layout now that I know what I’m doing with track construction. So, we cleared off the door that is still awaiting installation in the laundry room, and plunked […]

Ballast Tests

The Canada Atlantic was ballasted with gravel quarried from various pits along the line, as were most railways of that period. So, it should be a simple matter to simply dig up some dirt from the right of way or from one of the quarries, sift out the big chunks and glue it down. Unfortunately […]

Tie Colour

Now we come to one of those great challenges with modelling the turn of the century: colour. In particular, since we’ve been talking about track, what colour should the ties be? The ties on the Canada Atlantic were almost certainly untreated, as preservatives for ties were something of a research topic, and the CA enjoyed […]