Turnout controls installed just in time

With the Railway Modellers’ Meet descending on Pembroke next weekend, I have installed the turnout controls just in time. I still need to paint the rods on which the handles pivot, but that is cosmetic and might wait until after the guests have left. The controls almost meet my vision, but they need some gap […]

Ten handles

The handles for the turnout controls need to be strong enough to handle. So, rather than printing them, I fabricated them from brass. This was one of the many times I’m happy to have a small layout. Ten was just enough: any more would have been tedious.

Railway Modellers’ Meet Clinic

After several years of trying, the Railway Modellers’ Meet finally accepted one of my clinic proposals. On Thursday, I delivered Reinventing Wheels: A Pembroke Update to a packed Zoom room. The title was a nod to Mark Dance, who once noted that if there is a more difficult way to do something, I will find […]

Fiddling the shelf

“Sounds fiddly,” my darling wife said when she heard the plan to fill the space between turnout controls with half-inch channel. Boy, did she get that right! Despite the provision of recesses on the sides of the turnout controls allowing for 1/16″ of overlap, every single piece – there are ten so far – needed […]

Percy visits the paint shop

I found only the dried out dregs of a bottle of paint when I went to paint Percy’s new parts. The dregs looked almost viable, and I wanted the project done so I pressed forward with thinning and spraying. It was one of the worst airbrush experiences of my life. That’s saying something as my […]