Mystery Derailment

I’ve been chasing derailments lately, and making steady progress until I came up against this one on the Pembroke Milling Company switch. Here the first truck of 1120’s tender consistently chooses the diverging path, rather than the normal route. Interestingly, this has been only happening for about a year. Prior to that, northbound trains arrived […]

Ontario Meadows and Fields

The land around Pembroke was settled about sixty years prior to 1905, and before that, it would have been forest. So a cleared area would not have been allowed to go fallow unless it were unproductive. Meadows are a recent addition to the Ontario landscape. Having said that, there is space in front of the […]

The Changing Landscape of Ontario

The Girl and I are travelling around Ontario this week, looking at universities. On the long drive from Ottawa to Fake London, there was ample time to ponder how the landscape has changed, even over my lifetime, and the implications to modelling Pembroke in 1905. The most alarming change has occurred in the past ten […]

Water Tower Circuit

The breadboard for the water tower has sat on my desk long enough that it finally transcribed itself into a diagram to start making the circuit permanent. Despite the apparent complexity, it is in fact just four simple circuits mediated by software in the microcontroller: I’m certain this could all be achieved with hardware, but […]