Design for turnout control

I decided to take a break from the trackwork this evening. The Bullfrog is going to be a two-person job, and so, I’m going to ask Andrew to help me on Wednesday. The guard rails can go on either on Monday or Tuesday evening. In the meantime, I have some visitors coming to use the […]

More thoughts on Pembroke:87.1

Will I build Pembroke:87.1? The jury’s still out. However, I’ve been having fun thinking about the project. So, here I will jot down some of my thoughts. I don’t want the display layout to distract me too much from the main layout. That means it must use minimal resources in terms of both time and […]

North switch points

The points are by far the hardest part of getting Proto:87 running. The flanges are so tiny that they like to find any excuse to go the wrong way. For this switch, I originally planed the points using the Screaming Banshee Rail Grinder almost a year ago. Miraculously, I found them in my increasingly dusty […]

North switch closure rails

The first step in forming the closure rails is to bend the wing rails at their ends, leaving them over-length. I then bend the closure length so the rail wants to lie very close to its final position. Here the diverging rail has been bent and is awaiting trimming. Once I am satisfied with the […]

North switch feeders and stock rails

To accurately locate the feeders, I place the rail in position, and then file a groove in the bottom of the foot with a triangular file. I use my old file, so it doesn’t get gummed up with Pliobond. I then flip the rail over and deepen the groove slightly, and then scrape the Pliobond […]

Elitist? Bring it on!

Mike Cougill has initiated another interesting conversation via his blog, this time responding to the allegation that he is elitist. He also points to the Model Railroad Hobbyist thread on the topic of elitism, which I started reading when it was a young thread, but lost interest a few days ago even before there were […]

North switch ballast and rail preparation

I am getting the bulk of the ballast in before the rails go down on Pembroke. I’ve always found that ballasting after the rails takes a lot of fussing, and then it moves anyway. I’m leaving the areas around solder clean until they are proven to work, but the plain track, which is glued, is […]

North Switch Tie Colouring

Before getting on to colouring ties, I had to correct the throw rod hole. Unfortunately, when Andrew was here on Wednesday, we aligned the hole for the throw rod with the original centreline. Now that the centreline has moved, I needed to move the hole over as well. This was a simple matter of whittling […]

Ties for the North Switch

After scratching my head for a while over the misalignment here at the north switch of the siding, I decided to pull a few more ties off and smooth it all out. With the aid of a wooden spline and my darling wife, who braved basement and sore back, we got a new centreline marked […]

One More Turnout to go

Andrew came over last night, with the intention of starting to test the parts that we’ve already done. However, I got to thinking that the only thing stopping us from connecting the two sections was the corner desk top, and I can as easily slide that in the side as drop it in the top. […]