MDF is the pits

Or the pit, as is the case tonight. I just finished roughing in the turntable pit, which I ultimately decided should be concrete, not wood. The key dimension on the turntable pit is the elevation of the pit rail. Sure I’d like the pit itself to be perfectly round, but as long as it doesn’t […]

Carload from Baltic

Chris Mears published an excellent post, entitled Carload from Baltic. Here he very eloquently captures some of the inspiration for my own musings about car forwarding, and particularly the relationship of the railroad to local shippers and receivers. It’s well thought out and written; give yourself a treat and take it in.

The feeder tool

I was over to my friend, Scott Calvert’s last night. His new Boundary Subdivision is almost the exact opposite of Pembroke. Where Pembroke is small, the Boundary is huge. Where Pembroke is set in 1905, the Boundary is firmly in the diesel era. I seem to be spending my Boundary evenings on installing feeders – […]

Roundhouse Excavations

Originally, I hadn’t thought I would be building pits for the engine house as you weren’t supposed to be able to see inside. However, because the corner of the roundhouse is going to get cut off, I’m going to need pits. Well, that’s a great excuse to get the router out! So, after a little bit […]

Laying out the house tracks

I had hoped to make a bunch of progress on the roundhouse tonight, but unfortunately, the Boy and I wound up talking about Bill C-51, and I had to promise to actually read the whole thing before he could relax and go to bed. Every Canadian should read it, along with the existing provisions in […]

Last piece of fascia

One of the nice things about a small layout is that you only get to do two blog posts about many things and then they’re done. Tonight, Andrew gave me a hand with the last piece of fascia. There are, of course, only five pieces, but tonight’s piece was by far the most complicated. As I […]

Turntable Wiring

Some things I can visualize in my head. I can come up with a remarkably detailed construction plan on the way home on my bike. I can conceive an image and sketch it when a pen and paper are handy. Wiring, it turns out, is not like that. So it was that I was carrying […]

A start on fascia

Andrew and I made good start on getting the finish fascia onto Pembroke this Wednesday. I had one eight-foot length of 50-year old masonite from the original basement, and this consumed almost all of it! Rather than attempt to counter-sink and fill the screws, we elected to use button-head screws and pretend they’re all part of […]

Getting the Turntable Ends Right

I want to solder the ends of the turntable rails so they line up nicely with the shore tracks and stay that way. At the same time, I don’t especially want to use a PC board tie at the end of the turntable because I would like the first tie to look like wood. Not […]

The Pit Wall

One of the benefits of modelling a long-gone, poorly documented prototype is that occasionally you get to choose. Maybe you could call it a “benefit.” I’m not so sure, it tends to send me into a whirlpool of research, trying to find typical practices to inform my decision. So it was today when I started […]