Breaking the Water Tower

The water tower will be a nuisance to fix if it ever breaks, and so, I decided to find out when that will be. While The Boy is off at university, he doesn’t mind if I raid his Lego supply for some experimental apparatus, and I soon found the battery pack and motor I was […]

But is it a Model Railroad?

Back when I lived in Ottawa, the Ottawa Valley Associated Railroaders (OVAR) organized a day trip to a couple of layouts in Montreal; on the way home, the bus stopped at a McDonalds, which happened to be alongside some tracks. Somewhere between the delight of licking Big Mac sauce from our upper lips and the […]

Water Spout and Sheaves

To get the water spout to pull the chain over the sheaves, I had to move its centre of balance away from the tank. To do so, I made the far end out of brass and the near end from acetal, which turns nicely in the lathe. The two parts fit together with a post […]

Massing the Thicket

Whilst in Ontario a couple of weeks ago, I kept my eyes open for inspiration for a screen for the edge of the pasture background. My requirements were simple: trees in the 30-foot range that loosely formed a triangle. I didn’t have to search long. For twenty years my brother has been surreptitiously caring for […]

Balancing the Water Spout

With masses of tape and whatever I had lying around on the modelling desk, I rigged up a prototype of the sheaves and spout to see if I can make the spout raise and lower. The real spout would been connected to counterweights to hold it up when not in use, with the connection being […]

The Opera of Railway Modelling

In Italian, the word “opera” means simply “work,” but to us English, it refers to a piece of art where robustly-sized talents exercise their robustly-sized lungs in a language we don’t understand. “Opera” the base for the model railroad jargon, “operations,” and as we consider our audiences’ responses to our layouts, the operator is one […]

Booming in Ottawa

On the railroad, a boomer was an engineer (or other running trade?) from another division or railroad. Was the act of being a boomer “booming” or “boomering?” It doesn’t matter; the fact that does matter is I’ve been working in Ottawa this past week so I could spend some time with my mum, and I […]